This past week, a man brought a gun to President Obama's Town Hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He was wearing a shirt which contained the same quote from Thomas Jefferson that Timothy McVeigh wore on the day he blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Many admirers of Jefferson would cringe thinking that his words might be used for such purposes.
This anecdote does highlight the fact that the same words are often used for different purposes. I think of the old adage that 'even the devil can quote Scripture' and think of how it applies to so many documents, including Scripture! In my view, this highlights the seriousness of the task of interpretation......What was the original INTENT of the writer? What was the CONTEXT in which these words were spoken? Where do these words fit into the framework of other words from the same author?
When we neglect the task of interpretation, we end up using the words we want to use to reflect the opinions we want to express......
Kind of makes you understand why some skeptics are pretty cynical about religion.......You just take your own prejudices and use a 'sacred source' to justify them....
IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY!!
PB
8 comments:
Our manufacturer was thoughtful enough to provide us with an operating manual and much like the manuals that commonly come with machinery and other purchased goods, if we don't use the instructions as they were intended the product won't work as intended and someone may get hurt. It is true that the Satan can quote scripture, but lets not forget what Jesus quoted when Satan dared tempt Him.
David
If we misinterpret the operating manual for a car and apply the gas when we need to apply the brakes the results can be disasterous. The same thing for scripture. Things taken out or context or without understanding the intent of the speaker can be just as disastrerous. Scripture has been used to justify exploitation,slavery injustice throughout history. We must be exceedingly careful not to take the word of GOD and use it to justify our own ends and means.
I agree that we must be extremely careful....
One of the most important factos in spiritual discernment is honest examination of whether one is using God's Word to rubberstamp personal opinion...
PB
TWELVE GUNS in the crowd in Phoenix when the President came for a Town Hall meeting....
That's just not good!
PB
Have you read "23 Minutes in Hell" yet? A real eye opener!
I did a lot of reading ABOUT this...Researched it online....
To be honest, I get suspicious about taking private experiences and generalizing from them....
What is interesting is that Protestantism has been really solid around the idea that you can't really ADD to the Word of god, yet somehow those of a fundamentalist leaning often place considerable credence on what is a very private experience...
There is a parallel to the extremism attached to many apparitions to which some Catholics have attached credence....
Moderate voices within the Catholic Church have urged caution with respect to those....
I don't mean to downgrade anyone's experience of faith. I'm just trying to put this in perspective---
PB
ADDENDUM:
One has to take into consideration the imagery ABOUT HELL to which he has been exposed throughout his life and the fact that this imagery can function on unconscious levels.....
There is a lot of imagery out there about what happens in BOTH heaven and hell.....This all operates very powerfully on some very deep levels....
Am I saying this is all delusional? No..I'm not saying that...What i AM saying is that it does not ipso facto necessarily describe what hell is or is notand at the very least can not be taken as on par with biblical teaching or evidence to 'prove' such teaching...
PB
I read 23 Minutes in Hell as well as 90 Minutes in heaven, the experience of a Baptist pastor, Donj Piper, who was killed in a head-on collision with an 18 wheeler, went to heaven, then returned. Both encounters appear to be legitimate, but I found the heaven encounter to be more compelling. I found it interesting how the author in the hell encounter parallels his encounter with scripture.
David
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