{"id":1020,"date":"2014-10-17T06:59:09","date_gmt":"2014-10-17T06:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/commonsensechristianity\/?p=1020"},"modified":"2014-10-16T17:56:32","modified_gmt":"2014-10-16T17:56:32","slug":"reading-the-bible-without-supervision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/commonsensechristianity\/2014\/10\/reading-the-bible-without-supervision.html","title":{"rendered":"Reading the Bible without Supervision"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"provincial<\/a>
Reading the Bible and meditating upon it is the province of every Christian. If we own the book, and it’s in our language, and we can read it without being shot, we might want to take advantage of this opportunity. Provincial Afternoon, original oil painting by Steve Henderson, sold.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Many Christians — myself included — have looked to various events and stories of the Bible as paralleling our\u00a0own lives. We derive wisdom, teaching, instruction and comfort from the Exodus adventure and subsequent wanderings of the Israelites in the desert, or we see ourselves in the man who called out to Jesus,\u00a0“I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”<\/em>\u00a0(Mark 9: 24)<\/p>\n

This is one of the purposes of God’s Word\u00a0— in detailing actual, historical events describing the involvement of God with His people,\u00a0it leads us to discover\u00a0and absorb truth\u00a0that\u00a0apply to our situations today — there is great comfort in knowing that when the writer proclaimed,\u00a0“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,”<\/em>\u00a0(Hebrews 13: 8) he was addressing not only\u00a0his 1st century readers, but\u00a0providing words of comfort to the generations of believers to follow.<\/p>\n

Stretching Scripture<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

That being said, most of us are intelligent enough to recognize that the historical events of the Bible, and the Psalms written around them, and the prophecies of what was and is to come, do not dovetail seamlessly into our individual lives, and we won’t necessarily find word for word and sentence for sentence application.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite\u00a0gymnastic interpretations\u00a0of Scripture is\u00a0Gloria Copeland’s quote<\/a>\u00a0regarding Mark 10:29-30, the Scripture saying,<\/p>\n

“No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or\u00a0fields\u00a0for\u00a0me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much –“<\/em><\/p>\n

There’s more, but prosperity preachers\u00a0like to cut it off there.<\/p>\n

Copeland says in her book, God’s Will Is Prosperity:<\/p>\n

“Give $10 and receive $1000; Give $1000 and receive $100,000 . . .\u00a0\u00a0give one house and receive one hundred houses or a house worth one hundred times as much. Give one airplane and receive one hundred times the value of the airplane\u00a0. . .\u00a0In short, Mark 10:30 is a very good deal.”<\/p>\n

And Being Really Inflexible<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Those\u00a0of us not attending a mega-mammon-church that puts a big focus on giving to the ministry so that members, somehow, can get back, laugh\u00a0off Copeland’s\u00a0rendition of truth, and rightly so. Because of this over-the-top way of looking at things, however, other Christians — I think they’re well meaning — make it their ministry to seek out, identify, find, and shoot into little holes beloved\u00a0verses that have brought great comfort to people in distress.<\/p>\n

One of these verses is Jeremiah 29: 11:<\/p>\n

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.'”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Blossom<\/a>
Knowing that we have some sort of hope for a future, and that God is interested in it, brings light to our lives. Blossom, original oil painting by Steve Henderson, sold; licensed open edition print at Framed Canvas Art.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Recently, I ran into the words of a Christian who took great pains to — actually, seemed to delight in doing so — dismantle this verse, loftily informing the addlepated puddingheads among us that the\u00a0words have\u00a0nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with us today, as they were\u00a0clearly written to the Jews exiled to Babylon, promising them that someday they (or actually their descendants) would return to their land and be blessed (and this is, indeed, the context in which the verse was written).\u00a0His resulting analysis scolded\u00a0readers for\u00a0even thinking that they could apply this verse to their lives,\u00a0much less derive any hope from it. The tone used was condescending, disdainful, supercilious, and patronizing, which is too bad, because the writer’s intentions were good (I think he’s as tired of prosperity preachers as I am), and the rest of the article was more balanced.<\/p>\n

Out of Context<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

While it is true that we Christians have a lamentable habit of pulling verses out of context and using them to further our way of thinking, intelligent readers who encounter this passage in light of its context do not have to reject its potential for\u00a0meaning\u00a0in their lives any more than we discount Jesus’ long speech to his disciples in John chapters 14 – 18 because He was speaking to the apostles, not us. Scripture, we understand, has multi-layers of application, and as we continue to read it, meditate upon it, pray for guidance from the Holy Spirit, and study, we will gain wisdom and discernment in how to apply it.<\/p>\n

I know a woman who is alive today because she took seriously that promise about “a future and a hope.” She wasn’t looking for money or a car; she was looking for a reason to live. Is that such a bad message to derive from that Scripture?<\/p>\n

It’s important to accept that,\u00a0along the way in our reading of\u00a0the Bible, we will make mistakes. We may\u00a0put\u00a0more into a verse than it can bear, or we may pull out of it much less, but the fear of doing so should not hold us back from plunging ahead in our reading, trusting to the Spirit of truth Jesus mentions in John 16: 13, to guide us. There is a subtle, or not so subtle, message out there that the average Christian isn’t educated enough, or steeped enough in Scripture, to read the Word for Himself and rely upon God to direct him in learning.<\/p>\n

If this were true, then there would be universal agreement among the experts as to the meaning of everything in the Bible, because there are certainly enough people out there with the world’s credentials behind them to back up what they say.<\/p>\n

Keep reading, my friend.<\/p>\n

Thank You<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Thank you for joining me at Commonsense Christianity, where I have a special spot in my heart for the hapless, ordinary Christian, because that’s what I am. I don’t know about you, but I sure get tired of people telling me how much I need their expertise.<\/p>\n

Posts similar to this one are<\/p>\n

Are You Qualified to Study the Bible?<\/a><\/p>\n

Is It Enough, Just to Believe?<\/a><\/p>\n

The Misfit Christian<\/a>\u00a0(my book for the believer who, in his or her quest for truth, is out of step with the Christian establishment church crowd.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many Christians — myself included — have looked to various events and stories of the Bible as paralleling our\u00a0own lives. We derive wisdom, teaching, instruction and comfort from the Exodus adventure and subsequent wanderings of the Israelites in the desert, or we see ourselves in the man who called out to Jesus,\u00a0“I do believe; help…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":561,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,88,5,13,2,10,11,58,3,15,7,4,8,6],"tags":[1644,34,19,72,305,585,1157,26,39,1158,62,1159,303,194,457,93,501,345],"class_list":["post-1020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-bible","category-christianity","category-encouragement","category-faith","category-family","category-home","category-hope-2","category-inspiration","category-lifestyle","category-personal-growth","category-prayer","category-spiritual-growth","category-spirituality","tag-bible","tag-christ","tag-christian","tag-church","tag-commonsense","tag-future","tag-gloria-copeland","tag-god","tag-hope","tag-jeremiah-29-11","tag-jesus","tag-out-of-context","tag-pray","tag-prosperity","tag-reading","tag-scripture","tag-verse","tag-word"],"yoast_head":"\nReading the Bible without Supervision - Commonsense Christianity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reading the Bible without Supervision - Commonsense Christianity\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Many Christians — myself included — have looked to various events and stories of the Bible as paralleling our\u00a0own lives. 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