Interpretations

I was talking with a family member about an experience I'd had talking with someone who'd insisted that a particular word in the Bible meant something that it so decidedly does not. The word was "world". In the particular context I tried to show him using Scripture that "world" referred to the unsaved people who reside on the earth, whereas he believed that it referred to the physical planet itself, changing the entire meaning of the passage, but he had already made the decision that I was wrong, so I decided to drop the conversation and move on to other things.

It happens like that sometimes. It makes me wonder at how people can read the same exact passage of scripture and then completely disagree about what it means. There are different things that can have an affect on how people interpret Scripture though.

The first thing that comes to my mind would be the fact that we're human. We are finite beings. We have limitations. God doesn't have limitations as He is infinite. The Bible is His revelation to us and because of our sinful, limited nature we're pretty prone to make errors. That's true of believers and unbelievers alike. It's true of even the believer you think of as the most holy guy or girl you've ever met.

It would be so easy if as believers who are indwelt with the Holy Spirit that we would all end up with the same interpretation. The trouble is, none of us is completely objective. We are influenced by preconceptional thinking. Some of us are woefully immature spiritually speaking and we are often not sensitive to His leading. As a revelation of truth from God, the Bible is an objective work. We on the other hand, with our limited ways are usually subjective when we study, even when we're trying to be objective. The Word is supposed to be our authority, but in spite of that some people allow their egos to get in the way. They have a "position" that they approach Scripture from, and they wish to protect it in order to stay within their theological comfort zone.

These are some the reasons we need to constantly ask God to search our hearts, to change them, and to give us awareness and to keep our egos in check while getting rid of our personal preconceptions. We need to ask Him to help us to allow the Word with its historical background, people, geographical settings, chronology, sayings and teachings to become our authority. We need to be to open to God's leading when He is trying to show us where we are wrong and allow Him to correct us.

Another thing that comes to mind is the way I've seen some folks become awestruck by a "teacher" with a very charismatic personality or a dynamic way of speaking and then follow them into whatever aberrant position they hold to. They become impressed by the teacher, by his intellect, training, the school he attended or even his looks that they accept whatever he says. The Lord Jesus and the Apostle Paul both warned their disciples about just this kind of thing. In Mark 4:24 the Lord tells us to take care in how we listen. We're to pay attention, because how we listen can have eternal consequences. If one were listening to and accepted the wrong message, a message that rejects or diminishes Jesus, it would mean the loss of one's eternal soul. Once again, we need to let the Word be our authority and not men.

Sadly too, there is an enemy who is the father of lies, that would like nothing more than to lead people away from God's truth and mess up their lives to make them as ineffective as he can for Christ. Satan doesn't really have any new tricks. He's still doing the same thing he did in the Garden of Eden. He mixes the truth with lies. Sometimes they aren't even clever lies, but unfortunately if one isn't paying attention to how one reads and listens to the Word, the lies don't need to be clever.

The answer to that problem like the rest, remains the same. Let God's Word be the authority and meditate on that Word, objectively and in prayer. Do this diligently and I believe the right interpretation will ultimately be be made.

"24 because all flesh is as grass, And all the glory of man is as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, And its flower falls away, 25But the word of the Lord endures forever." Now this is the word by which the gospel was preached to you. 1 Peter 1"24,25