The Sunday school teacher stands before his class and reads a text of Scripture, several verses right out of the Bible. He points out a particular verse and asks each person, "What do you think this verse means, that is, what does this verse mean to you?" The verse was not particularly ambiguous, in fact, it was perfectly clear.
But dutifully, the people in the room begin to give their opinions on what the verse means to them. The explanation offered by Mr. Jones contradicted that of Mrs. Smith. Ralph Johnson opines that the verse doesn't say anything of the kind to him and puts a different viewpoint on the buffet of ideas.
The group waits to see what the Bible study leader will do with these contradictions and how he will handle the three conflicting ideas.
The teacher simply says that all three opinions sound good and tells the group that they must find out for themselves what the text means. Then the teacher proceeded to the next verse and the same process began again. Various people expressed varying opinions, each contradicting the other.
The teacher, unfortunately, has no idea the damage he's doing. His method of teaching (using the word loosely) is changing the absolute truth of the Bible into a relativistic miasma. Such relativism is dangerous. Under his leadership, the Bible has become putty in the hands of each reader; each reader makes the Bible say what he or she wants it to say. Subjectivity and relativism rule the day. We don't operate this way in the real world--in the real world, when a person says, "It's going to rain today," we aren't free to interpret that statement as "I'm going to pay back the money I owe you at 3 PM."
If you were to receive a letter from the IRS to submit your records for an audit, you're not free to interpret the letter to mean, "Your refund has been credited to your account." If you did that, either a padded room or a concrete cell will be your new home.
Such a teaching method defies all logic--two statements which contradict each other cannot both be OK. Both may be wrong. The teacher is promoting the idea that we can contradict one another and all is fine and dandy. We must not subject God's Word to our opinions. Instead, we should ask ourselves, "What does the text say?" We should work hard at trying to discover the best single possible meaning to the text is. We do this by employing the method of biblical interpretation called the literal, grammatical, historical method because that's the method Jesus and the Apostles used to interpret the Old Testament which was their Bible at the time.
This method of Jesus and the Apostles means that we take the words of the Bible literally (unless we're in a section that's poetry) or unless we're reading a metaphorical statement such as "I am the door." This method means that we use the rules of grammar and the historical (cultural) setting in which the authors wrote to arrive at the author's meaning.
Another danger of the what-does-this-verse-mean-to-you-method is that communication breaks down. The person who holds to that erroneous view takes himself out of the discussion--he believes that he can make the Bible say what he wants it to say and everyone else can do the same. Meaningful discussion becomes impossible because his viewpoint is corrupting language.
If you're in such a class, the odds are you're not going to be able to be a change agent or a "light in a dark place." You and I aren't to pretend that all's well in such a situation. Nor are we to go with the flow. The Christian, walking by means of the Spirit, will find that the Christian life is not one of "let's pretend" that such a method is, as the teacher said, "fine." It's destructive to the Bible.
Shake the dust off your feet and take as many as you can out of such a situation.
No comments:
Post a Comment