Trading in fortune cookies for Biblical understanding (2/3)

(This is part 2 of a 3 part series on reading the Bible. Please read part 1 if you haven't yet.

In the last post, I talked about why reading the Bible in short bursts (a verse, a paragraph, or a chapter at a time) doesn’t make a lot of sense, as the Bible is 66 books and not 31,000 Bible verses. I said that we’re not getting a clear picture of what the Bible is about this way.

But if we’re not learning what’s truly in the Bible, what are we learning?

Without strong training and concentration, our understanding from a typical Bible comes not from the Bible itself, but from our own experiences, our own theology, or some random thought that pops into our heads.

I have heard a lot of people refer to this as “leaving room for the Spirit” to teach. But that’s silly. In helping understand the Bible, the Spirit should be working in cooperation with the books, not apart from or against them.

I’m not speaking purely on minor points. I would argue that 80% or more of what a Bible reader learns actually comes from what he already knows about theology and his/her own ideas/experiences that he/she remembers as he/she reads the Bible, not from what the Bible is actually teaching.

So what am I saying, that the whole of Christian understand and teaching is totally wrong?

The odd thing about all this is that of course God’s Spirit still works mightily as we read the Bible in any form. A few posts ago I referenced Woodrow Kroll’s “Back to the Bible” radio program, saying it sometimes has very little to do with getting back to the Bible. I said that because Mr. Kroll will sometimes talk about one verse of the Bible for an entire teaching. What does that have to do with understanding the Bible?

Some might portray this as a high respect for the Bible, positing that every verse has a wealth of wisdom for it. The truth is this: That’s absolute nonsense. If you want to show a high respect for the Bible, read everything the author had to say instead of one sentence. Reading one or two sentences like Kroll sometimes does on “Back to the Bible” does not teach us the Bible authors’ agendas. Instead what we get from “Back to the Bible” is teaching on Mr. Kroll’s theology, life experience, and wisdom.

And here’s the tricky part: I still appreciate Kroll as a man of strong, ethical and wise faith in God, and he has a lot of meaningful things to say that God’s Spirit works through him to provide. So why complain, right?

I have to complain because of the potential misuse this kind of “Bible teaching” leaves us open to. Sure, Woodrow Kroll is a nice guy, but what about the people who argue that the Bible says ”God hates fags”? Or what about the people who argue the Bible says that the heavy beat of Christian and secular rock music make it inherently evil? What can someone like Kroll say to them?

He’d probably say they’re taking the Bible out of context. This is the catch-all phrase to denounce someone else’s “Biblical” belief. But we need to stop using this phrase until we ourselves start taking the Bible more seriously as a piece of literature. The sad, sad truth is that most Bible readers are taking the Bible out of context in the same exact manner as those they denounce. The reason it seems better when we do it is because our message our is positive and loving, or because our message fits in with a more mainstream doctrine. And although that doctrine may have come from the Bible originally, as we study the Bible, we usually rely on the doctrine instead of its source.

Skeptics are starting to catch on and are unfortunately reading the Bible with cynical, misguided views about whether or not the Bible’s God is truly loving, rational and forgiving, which he is. If we do not start reading the Bible in true context these problems will only escalate!

In the next post, I will give some suggestions about how we can better read and teach the Bible.