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March 23, 2014 |
| Understanding the Bible | ||
Most of the Bible is very clear and direct in its message, but not all of it. Some parts are just hard to understand others are very symbolic, or have multiple meanings. Some of the authors were very skilled writers who used advanced writing techniques. Other parts of the Bible need to be understood within the textual and historical context they were written.
In this lesson we will look at how to read and understand the Bible.
It may seem too obvious to be mentioned but it is too important not to be mentioned. We must want to know what the Bible really says. If we read the Bible with a desire to find where it says what we want to hear, we may find a verse that we can twist to support our view but we will have deceived ourselves.
If we read the Bible to try to find fault in the Bible we are wasting our time. For thousands of years people have tried to find a fault in the Bible so they could prove it is false. If they had succeeded, Judeo-Christianity would not exist today.
If we read the Bible because we have to, because we were told we should, because it is part of a reading assignment or plan, our attitude isn't where it should be to be prepared to receive what the Bible has to say. If we find our attitude isn't what it should be, we can change that. We can remind ourselves of all the great things the Bible has in store for us. The Bible really is the water of life. It was given to us for our benefit, not for God's benefit.
So the key to understanding the Bible is really having the desire to understand the Bible. If you are reading the Bible for any other reason you will find that it is closed to you and you will come away no wiser than you were.
All of us have world views - ways that we see how the world works, how people work, what is right and wrong. We must always be careful not to bring any other world view with us when we read the Bible. We should only bring that world view that we have learned from the Bible. If we bring in another view, unconsciously we may be trying to fit the Bible into that world view.
But there is nothing harder than shedding your world view. We have spent years building it up from our experiences and observations and it is built in to us in ways that we don't see and affects our thinking in ways we don't realize. The best guidance is to believe what the Bible says even when it conflicts with what you think is true.
In Luke 18 Jesus makes the same point about starting over to build a new worldview
16 But Jesus called the children to him and said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 17 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."
And when Jesus says "you must be born again"1 he is saying the same thing. Everything we have learned from the world is wrong and we must start all over, bringing nothing of the old world with us.
The Bible is like a painting where some of the paint is missing. Everything in the painting is related to everything else in the painting. Therefore one part of the Bible can help in understanding another part of the Bible that is not clear. Yet, the Bible doesn't tell us everything and so there are places that are missing paint, if you will. But even as parts of a painting will help to show what should be in the missing part, other parts of the Bible will give some insight into the missing parts. Even so there are some things that God has not chosen to reveal to us.
So don't just limit your reading to one section of the Bible. It's all for your benefit. By the way, this painting has a theme to it - God's plan to rescue as many of a fallen people as possible. Everything else is details.
Sometimes people will have some useful insights into the Bible, but you must always test what they say to see if it is true. Ask yourself "is that really what the Bible says" or "where does the Bible say that".
This is not just true of friends and family but also of respected people in Christianity, your pastor, TV preachers, and authors of Christian books. In Acts 17, the apostle Paul praised the Berean people because after he had told them what the Bible said about the Messiah they would go and read the Bible (Old Testament) to see if what he said was true.
11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
The Bible speaks about testing everything (1 Cor. 10:15, Col 2:18, 1 John 4:1, 2 John 10). Paul does also in 1 Thessalonians 5. Although he speaks specifically of prophecies here, the principle is useful more broadly.
20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil.
The universal experience of Christians relating to reading and understanding the Bible is that the more they read it the more they get from it. Everyone has had the experience again and again where they read a verse they've read many times before but this time they see something in it that they never saw before.
Some people will tell you that the King James Bible is the only true Bible. That is false. Find a Bible that you can read and understand.
There are some Bibles that are false. They have been translated to support a particular world view. But if you pick a widely read Bible you will be OK. There are many good ones to choose from that are different in reading level or different in directness of translation. You can find comparisons of Bible translations on the web.
Your first Bible may not be your last Bible. Don't become too dedicated to a particular translation. It may be that as you mature another translation may be better for you.
In fact it is wise to use more than one translation. If you are having trouble understanding something in one translation try another translation. There are even Bibles available that have side by side translations for easy comparison.
Start by understanding the basics of Christianity and build on that. Just like when you were in school. First you learned addition and subtraction, not calculus.
Here are the basics. There are three beings who are God. They are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There are no others. They act in complete unity as one entity and there is no separation between them. All things that were created were created by God. Man was one of these creations but man willfully disobeyed God and was separated from God. Because of that sin, all the offspring from that man were born separated from God. There is nothing that a man can do for God, or give to God that can pay the debt that is owed by that sin.
The Son was sent by the Father to pay that debt through the sacrificial death of a perfect life. He was raised from among the dead to life by the Father and is now the redeemer of those who believe in him.
That's the basics. Yet in the early years of Christianity many people tried to bring false teachings in. This became such a problem that the leaders of the church felt they needed to establish a clear statement of beliefs. Of course with anything written by man we must be Berean, but the Nicene Creed that they developed is not a bad summary.
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father [and the Son].
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
The Bible is the message from God to mankind. The message is God: who he is, what he expects from us, his plan for us. God is able to preserve that message and has chosen to preserve that message through time down to us. Everything it says is true.
The best teacher of the Word of God is God. Open yourself to the Holy Spirit to show you what it means.
The Bible was given by God to man by revelation from the Holy Spirit. Every word in the original text is the word that God wanted to be there. The Holy Spirit knew those writings would be carried down through time to us and the message in them is for all times. Messages for a specific group or a specific time were delivered by voice.
Start by assuming that the Bible is literal, that everything it says is to be taken literally. Most of the Bible is literal, but not all. Some of the authors use a writing technique called hyperbole where an extreme example is used to emphasize the importance of a point.
Some of the writings use symbolism to describe things that were hidden from man or still are. For example the multi-headed beasts that Daniel and Revelation say will come are not literal beasts that will be walking down our streets but symbolic descriptions of organizations.
Jesus used parables as teaching tools to allow him to express ideas that some would not be able to understand. These stories are not necessarily literally true. Instead they convey a deeper meaning.
If, in your reading of the Bible, you encounter parts that might not be literal you may be right. But mostly it is literal.
Some people want to find deeper meanings in the Bible than are there. There are deeper meanings in the Bible but those who allegorize and spiritualize use unusual meanings of the words in the Bible to extract unusual teachings. If the author wouldn't have meant it that way and his audience wouldn't have understood it that way it is probably allegorized.
Allegory takes a few words from the verse or verses and ignores the rest of the words, to arrive at a new meaning. Therefore the meaning is not really attached to the scripture but is more of a free-association within the mind of the interpreter. Therefore the result of allegorization and spiritualization is under control of the person and not the scripture.
People who do this are sometimes trying to ignore the true meaning of the text and find a meaning they are more comfortable with. Sometimes they are trying to bring in teachings from the world
Allegory can be difficult to tell from symbolic interpretation and poor symbolic interpretation often leads into allegory. This is a very large problem with prophetic books which are often very symbolic. Especially with the book of Revelation where much of it is still hidden from us, it is easy to get caught in the trap of filling in parts that are not understood with garbage from one's own mind.
Hermeneutics is a set of tools that can be used to dig the correct meaning out of scripture. But there are some parts of scripture that God has not yet revealed to mankind. What God has chosen not to reveal, Hermeneutics cannot reveal. Instead in cases like that Hermeneutics produces non-sense as good as any other method.
Don't worry about using textual analysis techniques. I've found that those who use them often find what they were determined to find and list the techniques as validation for what they found.
It is just a fact though that sometimes you just have to say I don't know what it means. Other times you have to say I used to think it meant that but now I think it means this. We are all students learning at the feet of the master.
I worked on this lesson while at a public library because my internet connection at home was not working. It so happened (or so we say in human terms) that I was directed to a table right next to the Religion section. Who could resist looking through the available selections - not me. One book caught my eye. The author was rejecting the Rapture because it didn't fit her world view. She explicitly stated that she didn't want a returning Messiah who would be a conquering king. She wanted a lamb. She thought that people who believed in the Rapture were showing their hatred for the Palestinians (I won't try to explain the tortured logic there). She wanted God's wrath to be focused on the real evils of those who harmed the environment and didn't treat others equally.
When I flipped to the back cover I found that she is a professor at a major university in the religious studies department. Her specialty is the New Testament. What better example could you have for why you should follow everything in this lesson.
1 John 3:3