We live in times with the information superhighway, and most access to commentaries and study guides and sermons of all time, and yet we have to actually teach people how to read again. It is no exaggeration when I say that while we have the most access to information of all time, we are also the most illiterate of all time. Not only do so few people actually read books anymore (they read blog posts or hear commentaries on social media, but few actually read), it’s left a generation that is truly the dumbest of all time. Don’t believe me? Watch Jeopardy! Why have we had several excessively strong winners all in a row? Look at the questions. They are getting easier. The reason we have three of the top winners all in the last few years is because they have little competition. I’m not taking away anything from them academically. They did their job. But so few can rival them because we have an illiterate generation.
There is a saying: as goes the family, so goes the Church. As goes the Church, so goes society. Yes, I will put a big chunk of this problem on the Church from the past 50-some years. When Barna released their latest polls last year, 6% of professing Christians have a Biblical worldview and 34% of pastors (and I think that’s being generous). Where are you going to find a pastor actually preaching from the Bible? Hardly anywhere on TV today. Where are you going to find a pastor who strives to teach his congregation how to read the Bible? I’m glad I am part of a church that wants to do that. My previous church touched on it, but overall, there is an assumption that those in the congregation are reading the Bible regularly and know how. We know that is not true because of how many false teachings pastors are letting through their doors and proclaiming themselves. And we have to ask as well: how many pastors are actually reading the Bible besides to find something for a sermon? What is going on here?
The only solution for any of this is to get back to reading the Bible and actually believing it. For this post, I am going to give you tools and tips on how to read the Bible, and these are not magical formulas by any means. It is simply putting to words what should be practiced in normal reading. This is about what the Bible says; what the Bible means is a separate topic that I will address next week.
The first tip is to identify the genre. We do this naturally and subconsciously with nearly anything else we read. We know what a historical document is, what a poem is, what a metaphor is, what a myth is, what legal document is, what fiction is, etc. After all, I do assume we passed basic English or literature classes here. The Bible is written in multiple genres and the only ones it does not have are myth and fiction. Even if you don’t agree with it, at least be honest about what genre it is. Genesis (for example) is a historical document. Despite many scholars trying to say otherwise, there is no legitimacy to any such argument. Each argument boils down to, “I know what the text says, I don’t believe it, but I want to show I believe the Bible, so it must not actually mean what it says.” And these are people we have deemed to be good preachers saying this, not just your average academic. The language, the grammar, the syntax, and the verb conjugations all speak of plain, simple, historical narrative, just as much of the rest of the Bible is. But many try to make Genesis anything other than this so they can be justified in holding positions that are directly contrary to what it actually says.
The next thing to learn is called exegesis. Don’t panic over this theological term; it simply means to let the text speak for itself. We do this with every other document. Yet why is it so hard with the Bible? When the Bible says “the first day,” it MEANS “the first day.” When the Bible says, “The waters parted and Israel crossed on dry land,” it means that waters parted and Israel crossed on dry land. When the Bible says Jesus rose on the 3rd day, it means He rose on the third day. When the Bible says that Jesus is the ONLY way into heaven, it means Jesus is the ONLY way. That is what it says. That is what the words say. “But how do we account for modern science?” We don’t try to account for modern science. Not at this stage. The first stage is: “What does the Bible say?” Once we get that straightened out, THEN we can go try to figure out how it all works.
My friend Bobby Maddox is a business lawyer and to help address this topic, he came up with a list of ten principles that we all normally do anyway. If we keep these principles in mind, we’ll avoid the traps and errors that so many have fallen into. In this video, he explains his structure, so take the time to listen for more details. Here are just a few of the ten principles.
• The plain meaning is to be the intended meaning unless the context demands something different. The adage goes: “Adding more sense to the plain sense leaves you with nonsense.”
• Stay within the four corners of the document. In other words, get as much out of the document as you can from within the document itself. The phrase preachers use is “Scripture interprets Scripture.” Follow this and most confusions will clear up.
• Use of other sources should be limited and only used for help to clarify what the document is saying, never for interpreting and making it say something it didn’t. These outside sources are only to be used after all other internal sources have pretty well been exhausted.
• Keep it simple. Don’t try to overthink it. The mental gymnastics people do in order to try to keep track of their misinterpretations is simply mind-boggling. God did not write a book that takes a super genius and 80 years of scholarship to figure out. He made it simple so even a child and the uneducated can get at least the basic message.
One final tool is the acronym OIA, which stands for Observation, Interpretation, Application.
Observation: What does the text say? Get all the data you can before you start putting the facts together. Don’t read a single verse and lift it out of context. Keep it in context.
Interpretation: I’ll emphasis this more next week, but only put together your interpretation after you gather all the facts. Don’t be like those CSI teams that quickly jump to a conclusion too early and then a new piece of evidence reveals the actual truth. Get all the facts as much as you can. And please, test your interpretation against the whole message of Scripture.
Application: The purpose of the Bible is first to be believed then obeyed. It is not meant to be academically scrutinized (though there is great truth to be found in unpacking Scripture, which I will address in a couple weeks). You cannot obey the truth that you don’t know. And if you misinterpret it because you left out some of the facts, how can you obey the truth?
Read the Bible – all of it. It pretty well clears itself up. There will be some things that are harder to understand than others; I get that. But the whole message is pretty clear. It is clear enough that Jesus’ audience understood perfectly what He was saying, and they hated Him for it. Please do not confuse unbelief with “it’s hard to understand.” That’s just a cop-out to cover for unbelief. Next week, I’ll address how to understand the Bible, rather than “interpreting” it according to our own understanding.
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