When I was young I was blessed to know a man named Obed Edom Balken. I used to jump at the chance to ask him questions after church. He was kind and wise and had a twinkle in his eye that made me smile. He was one of those people that made you feel more alive every time you talked to him.
One day in response to one of these questions, (and I don’t even remember the question), he looked at me with that twinkle in his eye and said, “you know, you can fall into the ditch on either side of the road”. This thought got me thinking about the role of balance in biblical interpretation. It is a thought that has guided and helped me ever since as I became a missionary and eventually a bible teacher to young aspiring missionaries.
What is “Interpretation”
I was brought up thinking that interpretation meant, “what does this mean to me?”. But that definition gets the cart before the horse in a serious way. Bible study ends with me it does not begin with me. It begins with the people it was originally written to. If we want to understand the bible the first thing we need to do is get our own interests out of the center of our focus.
I have been teaching an inductive bible study method for over twenty years now and the process has permanently changed the way I read the bible, even in my private devotions. At the core of this method are the following three steps.
Observation
This is reading the text carefully and making sure you understand what the words are actually saying.
Interpretation
This is not what it means to me but what it meant when it was written. What the author intended and what the original readers would have thought.
Application
This distills the timeless truths from the interpretation and applies those truths to our current situation and culture.
Each of these principles can be expanded on to no end so obviously I can’t get into all the details today. Talking about method might make bible reading sound academic and dull. But today I want to stress that reading the bible with understanding is not some ivory tower goal that can never be reached by mere mortals. The bible was written to regular people with the assumption that they would understand what the author was saying. So with a bit of background information as we discussed in the last podcast regular people today can accurately interpret and apply these books. But more than that, the inspired word of God transforms, encourages, corrects, guides, and inspires us then and now. In fact, at no time in history have so many people had as much access to the scriptures as we do now. Around the world the bible is reaching into peoples and cultures of every language. What is lacking at this point is not so much access to the scriptures, at least not for the majority of the world. What is lacking are the skills required to read and understand those scriptures. This has been and still is the need that motivates me to keep going, helping people learn to read, understand, and enjoy the scriptures.
How do we know we are right in our interpretations?
In a word, humility. But in practice, it is a little more involved. To begin what do we mean by “right”? The “right” interpretation is the authors intended interpretation. So what did it mean when it was written is really the key question when you are discussing interpretation. Once that is done you can “apply” that truth to our situation today. But here is where things often go wrong.
We often run into the ditch of feeling right but failing to apply what we have learned, or we fall into the other ditch of becoming so convinced of our rightness that we become for all practical purposes unteachable, either by God or by others. We confuse knowing the truth with living the truth. We seek answers to difficult questions just for the satisfaction of knowing the right answer, but too often refuse to let the truth change us. Does the truth change our behavior?
As I have studied and taught over the years I have become convinced that it is not the parts of the bible we don’t understand that should bother us the most, it is the parts of the bible that we do understand that should really bother us. It is the truth we know that should drive us and shape our lives - everyday. Obeying the truth will lead us to more truth. (Seek and you will find) Disregarding the truth we know will harden our hearts and make us unresponsive to God and His word. (The Pharisees never learned anything from Jesus, neither did those that simply went home when the show was over.)
This Week
So what are we going to do this week that we were not doing last week? This week let’s be more intentional about our bible reading. If you don’t have a reading buddy think about finding one, someone to talk with about what you are reading and what you are learning. And this week let’s try reading in the four step method that we have described so far.
Read in a study bible or online and get some background on the book you are reading. Find out who wrote it and when they wrote it. Try to understand why they wrote it and what the problem was that they were writing into. Try to understand those original readers of this text and try to discern what their questions were.
Read the text carefully watching for repeated words and ideas, looking for comparisons and contrasts, and watch for any purpose or summary statements made by the author. Read the text with a “blank slate attitude” don’t read your questions and conclusions into it, but rather let the text speak to its own issues and in its own voice. Remember these are ancient texts from a very different culture. Their questions were not our questions. Their questions must always come first. That takes us to the next step
Ask yourself what those original readers would have heard in this text. Ask yourself, “what did the author want his readers to do?” or “what question does this answer for the original reader?”. And when all that is done you can finally ask the question, “what is the timeless truth that is being taught in this text?”. What remains true regardless of time, circumstance, or culture?
What does this truth mean in today’s world? Or, what should I do with this truth today? While it is true that we don’t have the exact questions that the original readers had, the truths taught in answer to their questions are still true today. This last step requires that we find those truths and find ways to express them in our culture today.
These simple steps if taken carefully can open the door to a deeper level of understanding. So get a friend or two or three together and try to read the bible using this approach to interpretation. If you have any questions about this method feel free to ask them in the comments below, you can be sure you are not the only one with questions so don’t be shy.
Have a great week!
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