I almost made a mistake the other day of opening the Bible with an agenda. I’d had an idea about a certain “Biblical principal” and I wanted to check a text to see if I was right. Then I realized that’s a slippery slope. There’s not a lot you can’t use the Bible to support. And besides that, if the Bible is designed to be a constitution, it’s horribly organized. I had to put myself in check.
This isn’t an easy thing to do. If you drop your preconceived grid when you go to the Bible, you may in fact find out that the grid you had been filtering the Bible through isn’t as concrete as you previously thought, and you may then have to admit that you were wrong. I wonder if our grids aren’t so solid for this reason, rather than as supposed guardrails to keep us from straying from the truth. What I mean is, a grid can help you understand the truth as much as it can cause you to reject the truth. When I hear a pastor or theologian speak in concrete terms about their grid, and especially when they defend that grid with emotion, I trust them less, not more. I trust them less because their paradigm is fixed, and they simply aren’t open to Biblical interpretations that contend with the ideas upon which they’ve stated and defend, ideas associated with their identities and even their financial security.
In my opinion, it is dangerous for seminaries to teach students a fixed grid that is not open to change or evolution. I trust an academic institution much less when they have only one interpretation of scripture rather than multiple interpretations that contend with one another. If the search is for truth, we can’t reject debate. This is not to say there is no truth, it’s only to say all of heaven hardly fits inside a mans head. And any man who says it does has made something small of heaven and something rather large of his head.
Boy, I would really like to argue with your post but i have tried to do the exact same thing too many times. For me, as a seminary alum, I have started to see the grace he gives me when my “hunches” are complete crap. There is such a subtle difference between being shaped by the word and shaping it ourselves. Good stuff.
Your blog shows a very “suspicion of certainty/postmodern type” grid. We all have and use a grid all the time.
Can you explain to me what this grid is? I’ve never heard of it? What are the elements of this grid?
Don, I’m afraid you’re not going to hear back from Brett, even though I would really like to hear his response.
Funny. I was thinking it showed a humility grid.
I enjoyed reading this post. When i read the Bible I just take it for what it says. And not attempt to explain it any other way. The Bible speaks for itself.
I dislike when people say they just take the Bible “for what it says” or “at face value”. I believe the Bible is true, but we also have the responsibility to understand what the writers meant to their intended audiences. Some passages in the Bible can best be understood by learning about the culture of the day. One may misunderstand the Bible because they are reading it through the lens of a 21st century.
*21st century American.
I agree, A lot of times when I read the bible for what it says, I realize that there are a lot of terms and situational stuff that I really can’t understand from my cultural lens. Reading the bible can sometimes require some context in order for a modern day reader to fully grasp the concept.
I also think there should be some God provided discernment when reading the bible and any other supplemental text. It’s important for our questions not be answers by a book, but by a real living God.
But we all have a grid. It’s impossible to read scripture and “just take it for what it says” because we are colored by our own culture and experiences. If you were to say “The Bible speaks for itself to the original readers” then I might agree. But we have to try hard to understand the original context and language and culture or else we make mistakes in interpretation. In short, we’ve got to understand our grid that we all have, we’ve got to undertand the grid that the original authors/readers had and allow the Holy Spirit to bring it all together.
[...] Donald Miller gives us advice on How Not to Read the Bible. [...]
You’re more right than you realize, Donald. When you look to the Bible for answers of any sort in the first place, you’re presuming that the Bible provides answers, and those answers are reliable. Better to begin by observing the book and considering it in all of its context — textual, historical, cultural, political. If you really want to search for truth, you have to subject all of your assumptions to thorough examination.
trickle down theology, from the seminary professors to the congregation. A great strategy the devil uses.
Don, I think you’re talking about extremes here. I think you’re absolutely right that when we come to the Bible wanting it to say something we can walk away satisfied because we can twist it to fit whatever we want. This is wrong, and it’s not allowing the Holy Spirit to work in your heart and change your ideas. I think you might agree that you can approach the Bible and come away with wrong interpretation.
But this doesn’t practically translate to a seminary that teaches from a certain theological bent. I attend a very reformed seminary and what I’ve found is not that we are taught “This is what the Bible says. The end.” But we have a (Scripturally founded) hermeneutic with which to understand the Bible better. In my experience my grid/worldview (which is similar to the golden thread in my understanding of Biblical Theology) allows for a lot of movement of the Holy Spirit.
I think when we talk about interpretation of the Scripture without talking about the Holy Spirit, without talking about community and without talking about the role of tradition (whether it be emphasized or not), we open up the door to approach Scripture and take away whatever we want (including wrong interpretations). We are still broken people, so even if we tried to empty our motivations and erase our grids we can’t without God’s help, which he offers us willingly.
We all come to Scripture and to God with our own worldview. The grace of God is that he shifts it from that of a broken sinner to that of a child of God. I am thankful that he’s put the people around me who might have a specific grid of interpretation, but who have helped me mine the depths of the riches of God.
Margaret,
I can appreciate that you are defending beliefs that are very important to you. However, I interpreted what Don is saying to be more about the very (scripture founded) hermeneutic that you are defending. There are many others who are equally convinced that their interpretation/understading of the very same scriptures is right (which in turn makes yours, and others, wrong).
The word of God is powerful but Jesus did not instruct us to worship it (at least not the written form). If anything, he was hard on those who were caught up in ‘understanding’ His Word because they were missing the bigger message of grace and mercy.
Let us unite in defending God from the offenses we continually launch in His name and stop pretending we can explain Him. Fall at His feet, surrender, worship, and live the good news – the gospel of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
I concur. While I think it’s impossible not to interpret the Bible through our own perspective, there are many different factors at play. It takes humility to hear out other interpretations and not keep our minds from hardening against those who disagree, especially as we become more set in our beliefs. Also, as a book largely composed of letters and narratives, The Bible is meant to affect and transform in ways that can’t be boiled down into doctrinal lists all the time. I think people (probably myself included) impart themselves upon the passages because many have told them what they must find before they’re old enough to really explore for themselves. Such is the struggle, I suppose, of being an orthodox Christian in a world that is constantly moving away from the notion of orthodoxy. I think some hold firm to the idea of orthodoxy and specific modes of interpretation more than what is actually contained inside the Bible. I dunno. Just my thoughts. Anyway, thanks for the re-post.
OK Don…So…. then what happened?
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