Why people misinterpret the bible
Everyone has a worldview, whether we take it into consideration or not. We become caught or lost in some train of thought because our worldviews are often hidden as a result of. CS Lewis takes a journey with his faith and he begins to notice his own worldview made a turn for the best.
Lewis left his childhood Christian faith to spend years as a determined atheist. God is an unachievable status that is manifested within human existence. Religion and its Gods are controversial due to differences in beliefs; yet, there is still a certain basis at which God can be discussed. In analyzing a figure such as God, many key characteristics can be identified in numerous books of both the old and new Christian testaments.
God, as the highest order of ontological theory, has the power to create life and serves to be the supreme guide to his creations. In a somewhat aligning interest, Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, studies and utilizes natural philosophy, or chemistry, to resurrect inanimate body parts into a towering creature, creating a life form who is then isolated and victimized as a murderous.
According to Nicholi Jr. The biggest strength of a worldview is that it enables an individual to form a theory of his or her own reality. The individual then utilizes this concept of reality and its ideals to understand the world in which they live in.
For this reason, our moral compass when based on a biblical worldview should influence how we approach making decisions as it pertains to business ethics Porter, To what extent do your personal religious or non-religious beliefs about life impact your sense of business ethics and personal decision-making? Every decision that I reach. What would happen if we all did not know how to properly interpret what people say or what we read? Would we all get offended, confused or bewildered?
That is exactly what happens with the Bible on a daily basis. People will pick up the Bible, read a part of it, and then take it out of context and not get the full understanding of what it means. One of the main reasons that people misinterpret the Bible is because they do not know how to properly read it.
Sometimes they simply go with a foggy memory of something they thought they heard or read years before. Either way the result is the same: misunderstanding and misinterpretation.
People misinterpret the Bible because they rely on their memory of something that a pastor may or may not have said about a verse or passage one time. Usually one of several things will happen. Other times, the hearer connects facts or conclusions that you never intended to be connected. Sometimes someone will mistake an idea you were criticizing for an idea you espouse like the time when I was a child and my pastor mentioned purgatory in a sermon, a handful of people thought that he was teaching that as doctrine; what was frightening was not the ones who misunderstood and got mad, but the ones who simply accepted it and thought that was what we were supposed to believe.
Sproul has an interesting story about once when this happened to him, thankfully, they were taping the lesson that day. Either way, either you or another preacher will end up slandered or painted with the brush of false teaching and the person will persist in false belief. Because of this, I try to cut other guys slack when I hear things told about them and I try to do the same. People misinterpret the Bible because they read the Bible, but only small portions at a time and they interpret the verses in isolation.
This is especially prevalent among those who read devotional books like Our Daily Bread and who use study Bibles like the Thompson Chain-Reference Bible, which depend so much on using single verses or proof texts to communicate their points. People misinterpret the Bible because they allow the culture to interpret the Bible for them. They read a verse and instead of thinking about its meaning in context or in light of the rest of the Bible, they think of how that verse relates to something they read in a magazine or the latest self-help book or heard on Oprah or watching Joel Osteen.
People misinterpret the Bible because they allow their own presuppositions and ideas to cloud their interpretation of verses and passages. They interpret passages not according to the rest of the Bible, but according to their own preconceived ideas of what is right and wrong, true or false.
In this case, the Bible does not speak for itself, but instead is made to say what the reader wants it to say. People misinterpret the Bible because they allow theological systems or denominational distinctives to color their interpretation. Instead of letting their theology be guided and dictated by the teachings of Scripture, the Scriptures are made to adhere to the standard already established.
This is often done by appealing to passages that do not really support a particular doctrine. One of the purposes for preaching is to guide the believer in the proper understanding and application of Scripture.
If you attend a church where the pastor does preach the Word then be faithful to attend when the Word is preached. Understanding the cultural, historical, and grammatical issues that go into biblical interpretation can be challenging at times.
But we should never abandon the literal plain sense meaning of Scripture, following the rules of grammar with specific attention given to the style or genre of the literature we are seeking to interpret.
But it is often the case that these principles are ignored or set aside due to ignorance or modern-day tendencies to read or use the Bible for modern-day agendas. We should be on our guard against the following list of errors that could steer us in the wrong direction.
Ignoring the context. This is perhaps the most common mistake when it comes to misused or misinterpreted verses or stories. Taking anything out of context is almost always going to give us a false interpretation of the truths God intends for us to understand and apply to our lives. Misunderstanding the main point. Many preachers, for the sake of seeking to connect emotionally or pragmatically with their audience, put the main emphasis of a Bible story in the wrong place, essentially eclipsing the main point of any given text.
Reading modern-day biases into the text. All of us are biased. We all come to the interpretive task with baggage and preconceived notions of reality. The trick is to know what our biases actually are, and with the best of intentions seek to put our modern-day tendencies aside in an effort to enter into the biblical worldview of the time these documents were written. Dismissing discovered truth that goes against what we already believe or think.