Faith Venture

A friend told me something the other day over lunch that struck home. “I hate it when people don’t quote from the Bible accurately.” They pull quotes out that suits their purposes. They quote words out of context.

Another time recently a very smart person referred to a parable of Jesus. He used it to interpret his interpretation of a topic we were discussing. Thing is, that parable really didn’t have anything to do with the topic. It was a story told in response to a question posed by the Pharisees. If you don’t read the parable in the context of the question, then you are swimming into dangerous water.

In the Christian church, we went through a period of time called the Reformation. That was when Luther was moved by a reading of the book of Romans, among other things, and began teaching that the church needed to reduce reliance on tradition and return to reading the source material–the Bible.

Of course, like humans often do, others took that idea and carried it into dangerous areas theologically speaking. The  ideas went so far from the interpretations handed down from the earliest sources, that there was a Counter Reformation among thinkers trying to bring the discussion back.

I just read where there is a similar movement in Islam. There has been a sort of “Reformation” where some scholars have taken the movement of interpreting the Koran and have wound up with the “radical fundamentalist” Islam that many are following today–to the detriment of civil society in many places in the world. According to my sources, a group of scholars in Turkey are trying to reclaim the ancient scriptures and interpretations. A “Counter Reformation”, if you will.

When you study the Bible, or anything non-fiction for that matter, watch for context. Don’t be swayed by the latest fad. Go back to the source and see what it actually says. Think and pray over the passage. Let God talk to you. Read the earliest thinkers up through Augustine (my personal favorite). They are a help because they were closer to the events.

Don’t swim into dangerous theological waters. Keep your wits about you. And you’ll be safe.

This entry was posted on May 24, 2013 at 6:55 am and is filed under Study. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.