5. Are you willing to be wrong? James said that the wisdom from above is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, and sincere” (James 4.17).
6. The first book I ever read on the subject of hermeneutics, that is in its fourth edition of being used today, is titled How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth. One big idea that the authors seek to communicate repeatedly regarding interpreting the Bible is this: “A text can never mean what it never meant.” What they are saying is that a text is not some formless blob of playdough that the reader is allowed to come along and mold at any point in history so as to shape it and give to it a newer, more updated, savvy meaning or add to or take away from it at one’s personal impulse. Rather, men under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit wrote the Bible, and yet the original human authors’ voices are still preserved in real space and time. Our job is thus to hear and understand what they had to say to their original recipients, and then seek to apply that same truth in our context today.
Here are a few points on studying your Bible and seeking understanding:
The first step is to try to get as close as possible to thinking the author’s thoughts after him. This involves getting acquainted with the author, date, location, time of writing, occasion for writing, the audience to whom is was written and so forth.
The second is like the first: Conduct word studies, considering the genre of literature (Law, Wisdom Literature, Gospels, History, Apocalyptic Material, etc.), arrangement of the material …
Third, go grab some helpful commentaries and see what other pastors and scholars have to say on the subject.
Stay mindful that you don’t come to the text totally unbiased. You come with your history, your presuppositions, your beliefs, all shaped by your denomination, creeds, hymns and traditions. These are not bad things in and of themselves, just something to stay mindful of.
If your church is being unfaithful to the original context and content of Scripture, you’ve got good grounds to show yourself to the door, but as a peacemaker.
If you have studied and are certain that you are correct in your conclusions, how you leave is critical. If you snobbishly prove the pastor or church wrong and then walk out divisively, your character is stained, you’ve offended people and you’ve just given everyone reason to not take all your hard work seriously because you chose to hurt the body rather than seek to help her.
