On Understanding Scripture

“The truth is, it doesn't matter what a verse means to me, to you, or to anyone else. All that matters is what the verse means!”  -  John MacArthur, "Charismatic Chaos"

"The B-I-B-L-E, yes that's the book for me!  

I stand alone on the Word of God, the B-I-B-L-E!"

Earlier in my life, I'd held to the idea that there is essentially one way to understand any particular portion of the Bible.  This wasn't something I remember being taught explicitly, it was just something I understood. Gradually though, after leaving home, I started seeing things differently.  My horizons were broadened, if you will.

Just because a particular story in the Old Testament seems to be a simple narrative doesn't mean that it can't have specific application to my particular circumstances.  Perhaps to the Israelites it reminded them of God's saving hand in their lives, but for me it really spoke to the battle I was facing with social awkwardness.  Why can't it mean that too?  Can't the Holy Spirit use the Word however He wants to?  If He wants to employ the use of allegory in relating a truth to me personally, who am I to say He can't?  I trusted the authors I read, and the people who taught, because I knew their character and that they loved the Lord, so they must be right.  And who was I, to pridefully think I knew better?  Gradually my understanding of biblical interpretation was loosened, and I began accepting almost any of the many understandings as valid.

At some point though, I came to the realization that, you know what? with that kind of view of Scripture, you can really make the Bible say aaaaanything you want it to.  That epiphany was a little...unsettling.  I pushed it to the back of my mind, but it was still there, nagging me.

On reading many different books from many different authors, all Christian, and all using the Word of God as the source of their ideas, you will find that not all of them agree.  This happened with me, yet it was not something I picked up on immediately.  Most everything that I read made sense, sounded good, seemed to be biblical and reasonable, and I readily accepted.  Certainly there were some things that I questioned, that I rejected, but on the whole, I believed what I read, and trusted the sources.

A funny thing happens, when you simultaneously believe conflicting ideas: it's called cognitive dissonance.  All these different ideas of what the Bible was saying started interacting with one another, and the friction they caused drove me try to find some relief. I can only describe it as a feeling of something being "off", of some sort of inward tangle that needed unraveling.  This wasn't something that overtook me all at once, but rather on occasion, when an event would occur or something would be taught that just...didn't sit right, and I didn't know why. Personally, I found pen and paper useful, for getting my thoughts out where I could see them, and hopefully organize them a bit. 

Facebook post, April 14, 2016

Reason, however, can only take you so far.  How do you know what is true and what is not?  Is there actually real, objective truth, and can it be known?  Pondering this, I came to the conclusion that this kind of truth must be universal.  It must be true not just for me, but also for someone living in Iceland or Peru, someone homeless or affluent, someone on their death bed, and even someone who lived in ages past.  If it didn't fit that criteria, then it couldn't qualify as the universal truth I was after.

I still held to the belief that the Bible was inspired and inerrant, and thus understood that truth must be contained within its covers.  But which interpretation is the right one?  And why would God give us His Word, and then make it confusing and unclear?  In a rare moment of boldness, I actually asked for help.  I went to my pastor and asked him if he had any books on biblical interpretation.  He seemed surprised, but gladly lent me a book entitled "Principles of Biblical Interpretation" by Louis Berkhof.  I immediately devoured it, like a starving person.  I started to see that there were in fact some rules to reaching a proper understanding of Scripture, and my note-taking started being more centered around the Word, around actual verses in context, taking the dissonance in my head and reducing it, bit by bit, with actual solid answers I could stand on.

Of course, once you believe you've found the truth, then what do you do with it?  Particularly when it's not the common opinion?

Things started getting shaky, as more and more of the things that I wrestled with, and found answers for, didn't line up with what was embraced by my church friends.  Some of those issues found alignment with what was taught and practiced at the new church when we switched, but then there were new ideas that needed reviewing, other beliefs that were brought to the surface and needed analysis.  I began to see how frequently verses are taken out of context and twisted in order to make them say the thing we want them to say.

I'll give you one mind-blowing example:  Proverbs 23:7a "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he;"  This verse is used frequently to validate preaching about how our positive thoughts bring about inward change.  I quoted it, and it only is ever quoted in this way, using the KJV, and usually only this first half of the verse is employed.  Look at it in other versions, and you won't even think it's the same verse.  Here it is, with a little context, in the ESV:  "Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy; do not desire his delicacies, for he is like one who is inwardly calculating.  'Eat and drink!' he says to you, but his heart is not with you.  You will vomit up the morsels that you have eaten, and waste your pleasant words."  Say, what?!

One after another, beliefs that I'd held were toppled over with this simple concept:  the Bible in context.  Realizing you've believed things that aren't true is a terrifying, unsteadying feeling; finding out the truth though, is incredibly liberating, and I found it to be worth it. 

In a sea of fluid truth, even within the church as a whole, I found comfort in standing on the Word of God.  I came to believe that a right understanding life, of God, of the Church, must all start with a right understanding of God's revealed Word.  With that as your starting point, you can then safely build all manner of theology and doctrine, and know that it will stand.

On May 9th, 2017 I purchased a book entitled "Has American Christianity Failed?" by Bryan Wolfmueller, a Lutheran pastor.  In it he talks about a lot of the core beliefs of the Lutheran church, and the one that really grabbed me was his chapter on God's Word.  He said that the Bible is not just inspired and inerrant, it's also infallible ("...means 'unable to err'"), clear ("The unclarity of the Scriptures abounds when small-group Bible studies are centered on the question 'What does this text mean to you?'"), sufficient ("The Bible is enough. Everything we need for life and salvation is found in Scripture; nothing more is necessary.  The clarity and the sufficiency of the Scriptures go together.  They stand together or they fall together."), and efficacious ("The efficacy of the Scriptures is the teaching that God's Word has POWER and AUTHORITY... If God's Word is not efficacious, creative, and powerful, then we are looking for strength and power in other places, most often in ourselves.")  I was thrilled to read these things, and they confirmed what I'd come to suspect: that the doctrines of the Lutheran church were derived from the right starting place.  That was immensely important, and resulted in my desire to learn more about what they believed, and how and where it was different than what I had believed.  I took the red pill.

As my husband said to me, (and I paraphrase awkwardly):  it's not the things that you don't know that are most dangerous, it's the things you don't KNOW you don't know that will take you down.   He was right, as I came to discover.  There was so much I didn't know I didn't know.

-M


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