the Bible as silly putty (part 1)

One thing I've noticed in recent years is how many people read into the Bible things it doesn't say, thinking they're obtaining a "deeper meaning" from it. I'm sure most of it is done with good intentions, but nevertheless, it's a practice that treats the Bible's meaning as something we can be creative with, molding it into new shapes, so to speak.

I used to go to a church where the leadership felt at liberty to interpret historical accounts in the Bible as parables. As an example, I was in a Sunday school class taught by one of the elders that covered the historical account of Nehemiah directing the reconstruction of the wall around Jerusalem. The Biblical text describes some of the volunteers doing work on the sections of the wall near their homes.

So our teacher asked the class, "What's the significance of this?"

He got blank stares, and I said, "What do you mean?"

He replied, "What's the significance of Nehemiah assigning tasks to people close to their homes?"

I said, "Well, the text doesn't say, but I imagine it could have been for convenience."

He said, "Well, I think it's deeper than that."

He went on to explain that, in his reasoning, a person would be more passionate about working on the wall if it were close to his home because that part of the wall would be providing him direct protection.

Now, that’s a possible explanation, but it’s really speculation; the passage doesn’t contain that information.

But the teacher went on. He concluded that this passage teaches the principle that, in a church body, we should get people involved in ministries they "have a passion for."

Now, in and of itself, that might actually be a good principle. (It might not be, as well. You could imagine a strong case being made that ministry should be aimed toward areas of actual need more so than what could actually amount to nothing more than a narcissistic pursuit of one's personal passions.)

But regardless, this teaching of personal passions and ministry opportunities does not follow from this particular Bible passage. This teacher was reading something into the passage that simply wasn't there, as if the story were akin to one of Aesop's Fables or one of Jesus' parables. If the literary context was figurative writing, that might have been appropriate. But this is a historical account.

I asked the teacher about this after class, and he defended his interpretive method by saying that, since he believes all Scripture is given to us by God, each part of it must contain material we can apply to our lives. It was unthinkable to him that God would include any detail in a passage if there weren't some nugget of wisdom we could extract from it. (I would ague, historical accounts provide valuable context information for other writings, as well as serve to preserve Israel's history. Not every bit of the Bible is suited, nor intended, to be "devotional "material.)

But this, in my evaluation, really displays a low view of Scripture.

Here’s a guy who says, if he can't find a "deep" meaning in a part of the Bible, he just uses the text as a springboard for a meaning he makes up himself. In a very real sense, by adding meaning to the text, he's actually adding to Scripture. Yet he says he does this because he has the Holy Spirit working within him. Never mind the fact that this is not the kind of work Scripture says the Holy Spirit does.

The episode really concerned me. By his example, this elder was teaching the people in his church a faulty way of interpreting Scripture. The implication was that the mature Christian should embrace speculative teachings as if they are inspired, Biblical truth. In fact, one could even argue the message being sent was that speculative teachings are actually superior to the direct meaning of Biblical texts because, as was stated, they contain "deeper" meanings (presumably, as opposed to shallow meanings).

It seems to me, if this sort of "interpretation" were indeed the work of the Holy Spirit, one might wonder why we need the text of Scripture at all. Why can’t we just pick up any old writing and have the Holy Spirit read into it some "deeper meaning" for us that He wants to convey? If "the deeper meanings" aren’t contained in the actual meanings of the Biblical words, why even keep the Biblical words? Just listen to the Holy Spirit!

As I'll cover in a future post, this is actually where some contemporary Christian teachers (within otherwise orthodox circles!) have gone with this thinking.

[to be continued]

[Note: I think Greg Koukl at Stand to Reason may have been inspired by this post. His September/October 2005 edition of Solid Ground is titled: Silly Putty Bible]