When you write something, you intend for it to be read and understood in a specific way. If I write you a poem, that will be understood differently than if I write a life update.
Some view the Bible from cover to cover as a legal document. A list of rules and authorizations. And they do that without even thinking…it is just the air they breathe…you don’t tell your heart to beat. And you have assumptions you never consider that impact your understanding.
And if the passage is not meant to be read that way, the person will miss the point thinking they found the truth!
And that gives them license to condemn others who disagree with their conclusion. But they are confident that the Bible agrees with them when it doesn’t.
Reading the Bible as a law book that grants us authority and authorization for what we do (typically for one hour on Sunday) is a fairly new innovation.
It comes out of the Enligthenment, the Scottish Common Sense philosophy and Baconian method that shaped Campbell,. This is the very soil the Restoration Movement was born in. It is a cultural lens that we filter things through and that means it impacts our understanding of the Bible.
And this complicates things because the Bible was also written in a culture that is different from our own. And their culture influenced the meaning of what they were saying (head coverings is a good example).
So here we are living in our culture, applying our culture to their texts in a way that is unaware of how our culture colors our view and unaware of how their culture colored what they wrote down and what it means.
The solution is to become aware of your culture and theirs so you can begin to notice things that impact meaning. This same thing would be true if you went overseas and were communicating with people as an American and in a different language!
The question – “Does the Bible authorize that?” – comes from a culture that reads things like legal documents rather than reads things from the culture in which it was written. That doesn’t mean the Bible has nothing to say about instructing us as to how to go about things. It does. It just isn’t everywhere and under ever rock and behind every bush.
But if you do ask that question, what does the Bible authorize or does it authorize XYZ, then you have to go looking to the Bible to give you some information or bits of information to string together to infer some kind of conclusion that may not actually be what the Bible is saying.
That was a long explanation but it is a crucial point to understand that I don’t think many people understand.
If we are culturally unaware, you can wrestle the text into agreement with you and not even know it. Then you can take that conclusion and accuse others of being false teachers, convinced your view is biblical. But what your view really is, is a culturally influenced per-conceived idea read into the Bible that the Bible doesn’t actually teach.
A lot of harm in the body of Christ is done due to this process.
Have you ever experienced this? Practiced this? Been on the receiving end of accusations?
2 Responses
“If we are culturally unaware, you can wrestle the text into agreement with you and not even know it. Then you can take that conclusion and accuse others of being false teachers, convinced your view is biblical. But what your view really is, is a culturally influenced pre-conceived idea read into the Bible that the Bible doesn’t actually teach.”
So, where are the boundaries? From a “legal” reading, homosexuality is wrong. From a “cultural” reading, homosexuality is just fine – today. How do we make those ‘decisions?’
In the legal reading, the husband is the head of the wife. Where does that take us culturally?
In the legal reading, elders are male. In the cultural reading that is no longer the case. We have had female elders for about 25 – 30 years – but those congregations who made that decisions have been “black-balled” by other local congregations.
The Bible is very direct about homosexual sexual activity. It couldn’t be clearer. The Bible is clear about murder. It is clear about lust. Where the Bible draws lines, we draw lines. But we don’t need to create systems that make new lines that aren’t stated in the Bible.