The Eight Ways Christians Have Been Taught to Approach the Bible:
- You look for verses that inspire you. Upon finding such verses, you either highlight, memorize, meditate upon, or put them on your refrigerator door.
- You look for verses that tell you what God has promised so that you can confess it in faith and thereby obligate the Lord to do what you want.
- You look for verses that tell you what God commands you to do.
- You look for verses that you can quote to scare the devil out of his wits or resist him in the hour of temptation.
- You look for verses that will prove your particular doctrine so that you can slice-and-dice your theological sparring partner into biblical ribbons. (Because of the proof-texting method, a vast wasteland of Christianity behaves as if the mere citation of some random, decontextualized verse of Scripture ends all discussion on virtually any subject.)
- You look for verses in the Bible to control and/or correct others.
- You look for verses that "preach" well and make good sermon material. (This is an ongoing addiction for many who preach and teach.)
- You sometimes close your eyes, flip open the Bible randomly, stick your finger on a page, read what the text says, and then take what you have read as a personal "word" from the Lord.
The Seven Common Sense Principles of Scripture Interpretation:
- Principle #1: To find truth, you must begin with a blank slate. We all have preconceived ideas. We have all been conditioned to see Scripture through a certain lens. When you have no theological system to defend, when you have no prior conclusions to which Scripture must be moulded, then, and only then, are you reading Scripture with a blank slate. If you were raised in a pagan society and had never read the Bible before, what would this verse or passage be communicating to you?
- Principle #2: Start at the beginning of the New Testament, with the teachings of Jesus. "A disciple is not above his teacher" (Matt. 20:24). Our systems of theology tend to make Paul, the disciple, greater than Jesus, the Teacher. Jesus, and Jesus alone, is the author of Christianity—not Paul.
- Principle #3: Give each verse its literal meaning. Give each sentence in Scripture its most natural, literal meaning. Forget what you think a verse says or means; how does it naturally read? If it reads differently than what you have been conditioned to believe about it, then your belief is incorrect and you must unlearn and relearn, reforming and conforming yourself to the truth of Scripture. Not to do so is disobedience and rebellion.
- Principle #4: Consider every Scripture that relates, or could relate, to the subject. Are there any passages of Scripture that relate, or might relate, to the subject under consideration? Carefully compare contexts. If the context of one statement (verse) in one letter does not agree with the context of another statement (verse) in another letter, then they are not related in any way, shape, or form, even if they sound similar. To use them as if they were is proof text methodology (making Scripture say what you want it to say).
- Principle #5: Reject any interpretation that would render some of the Scriptures void or unreasonable. When we write, we intend for everything to have meaning. We do not intend for some of our statements to be totally ignored. Neither do we intend for part of what we write to be interpreted in such a way as to totally nullify the other things we have written. The belief that Scripture is like this is utterly nonsensical. "Let the clear passages interpret the unclear," "Let the many interpret the few," and "Go to the root of the words" are systems that do not work. They render some of the Scriptures void or unreasonable, telling us to completely ignore them. Does Jesus want us to ignore statements He made, or to understand what they truly meant?
- Principle #6: When Scripture is ambiguous, look at the "course of performance": how did the first several generations of Christians understand the Scripture. Since we cannot ask Paul or the Corinthians what 1 Corinthians means, we must look at their "course of performance" (their practices). We can find out how they interpreted Paul's letter by looking at their practices. Where do we get the evidence of their practices?
- Principle #7: To determine the "course of performance," always go to the primary sources. When searching for the truth about any subject, you always go to the primary sources! These are the sources from which all other material is derived. Do not trust someone else's word for it, where they can selectively cite the original source, check it for yourself. Especially if ellipses are used. (You do not know if they are forcing the text to agree with them by cutting out key parts of it.)