How can we ever attain unity of the Spirit when there is so much intolerance, certainity of doctrine, and known prejudicial bias that goes into so much of a Christian's reading of the Bible? Or is it just me? Well, if it is, let me confess my known prejudices and maybe, just maybe therein, you might see one for yourself and we could make some headway to accepting that none of us is righteous- only God is GOOD as Jesus reminded us.
Pride and arrogance goes before ther fall you know.
Over the years we who read the Bible find "groupings" that seemingly have more meaning for us. It's simply a matter of us growing in spiritual matters. At one age and in one stage of life certain things matter for us more than others. The bottom line is that we READ VERSES WE LIKE! If we don't quite understand a verse, we shy away from it, or at least we don't put it on the outside of the refridgerator door or commit it to memory.
We all READ VERSES that we agree with and seemingly understand.
Secondly, we have our OWN INTERPRETATION to whatever verses that we're reading. We can try to be as objective as possible, but it is in the mere reading of a Scripture that we interpret it. There's no way of getting around the fact that we comprehend and understand verses based on our vocabulary, intellectual achievement, presuppositional bias and teachings, and from the culture from which we grew up.
A verse can mean one thing if read from the deep South and another if read from Seattle, Singapore, or South Wales.
Thirdly, my view of God and the Bible is affected by which TRANSLATION I decide to use. There's a world of difference between the King James Version and the Amplified Bible for instance. The are subtle but big differences in the NIV and Ferrar Fentons version. I prefer the Revised English Bible because it's drawn from one of the oldest manuscripts (Codex Sinaticus) and where the existing manuscripts contain mistakes (yes errors), they are fote-noted (such as Mark 3:26 and Matthew 23:35). And where older manuscripts don't carry what newer and altered ones do (John 8:1-12 as an example), it's noted and put at the back of the book of John.
And so on.
Fourth and finally, there's the ATTITUDE and paradigm that one takes towards the Bible overall. I do not take all of the stories as LITERAL. Many are metaphorical and as a result richer and more meaningful than the facts render. I see the Bible as a SACRED document but I do not fall into Bibliolatry.
So much for my Biblical bias.
What's your Biblical approach?
ernie@lrchouston.com
