Truth and Meaning

by Aaron

I try very hard to look at the Bible objectively, to teach you as best as I can so you will see the Scriptures as they were meant to be seen, but I also know that is somewhat impossible. I don’t say that to diminish your trust in my teaching or your trust in the Bible; I say it because we must be careful to read OUT of the Bible what God wants said, and not IN to the Bible what we want it to say.

I recently had an experience of running into someone I haven’t seen in a couple of years. They had become “hyper-spiritual,” and I do not mean that in a good way. They had begun to look for numerical patterns in the Bible (we call this numerology). They took pictures of the clouds to look for signs from God, and they believed that when everyone “really” trusted Jesus they would all agree with him. It’s easy to dismiss someone like this as crazy, because they talk crazy, ask questions they don’t want a response to, talk over you, and become very adversarial, but I know my calling as being a witness for Jesus is to always steer people back to Him.

The Bible’s focus isn’t about numerology; the Bible’s focus is Jesus. When we get caught thinking God has hidden messages in the Bible, we miss the main point of why we have the scriptures at all. 

As I said, our experiences shape how we read and interpret the Scriptures, that is why we must always come back to prayer and listening to God’s Spirit. Christopher Hall wrote a great article about this when he wrote a review of Randolph Richard’s book: Misreading the Scriptures with Western Eyes. Our culture will help us see some things very clearly, but can also distort other things altogether.

In the article, they point out that even simple details in the parable of the prodigal son can be overlooked. “When 100 North American students were asked to read the parable and retell it, only six mentioned the famine the prodigal experiences away from home.” Americans forgot the famine and the hardship that pushed the young man to return home because, as the author suggests, “Most Americans simply have not experienced terrible famine.” When they had 50 Russians read the parable, “42 out of 50 mentioned the famine.” In Russia’s cultural history, World War II brought famine and starvation that rooted itself deeply in their collective consciousness. Both of our cultural contexts determine what stands out to us in a passage of scripture.

I used to go to a Bible study where the leader would have us all read through a passage from the Bible and then ask, “What does this mean to you?” If I was in an ornery mood (which was often), I would start right in by being a loud-mouthed sarcastic participant, but if I wasn’t “in a mood” most of the room would stay quiet for a few minutes before someone would eventually say, “To me, this passage is saying _____.” People would start to answer, but not out of any source of knowledge from the actual scripture; they would answer out of their heart’s emotional response (which usually resulted in less learning and more ignorance).

Don’t misunderstand me, I think it is great to talk about how Scripture impacts our hearts. It is great to ask what a passage means, but as Hall says, “To make the individual Christian the starting point for interpretation and the center of a text's meaning—the Western pattern—is problematic.” In the book Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, they point out two main dangers in this approach:

  • If we, as a people, make ourselves the center of the search for truth in a passage of the Bible, we will skew things in our own direction and miss what the text is actually saying. The passage may very well be challenging us! We will, as I said earlier, read in to the text the things we want instead of allowing the text to examine and change us. The author says, “This…leaves us basing our Christian life on less than the full counsel of God."
  • The me or “I” centered approach to looking at the Scriptures confuses two words: application and meaning. We must understand that we are not the focus of Biblical texts—Jesus is. Yes, we are made in the image of God, Jesus did come to save us, and the story of redemption includes us as God’s people, but we must always first ask how a passage reveals Jesus. If our first question is “How can I apply this to my life?”, we will skip the meaning and be self-centered on application (not that application is a bad thing).

A major problem with how the Church in America has taught the Scriptures is that it is a very man-centered view. We tend to make people the point, and not God—who made people, revealed Himself, and calls us into relationship with Him. When we make the Scriptures man-centered, we will assume there are hidden messages, secret codes, and the ability to “unlock” all we have ever dreamed. But if the Scriptures are about God being first, they will change our whole view and we will begin to realize that Jesus is the author and finisher of not just our faith, but the Scriptures as well.


Let’s not forget Jesus’ words in John 5:39-40 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.