A Matter of Interpretation

We're talking about the idea that the Bible is the inspired Word of God that God has not inspired you to understand and how certain individuals love to spout this argument so that they can become the biblical authority in your life and tell you what you're supposed to believe (because you're too dumb to figure faith out yourself). 

(Scary side point: I'm watching one of these guys right now who has made an entire short film to explain his current pet interpretation and how what the church at large is preaching to you is inaccurate because he found some shred somewhere that suggests otherwise and that better fits his narrative. It's just that easy, folks, when you've convinced the world that God doesn't want them to understand Him and that they need your help.) 

So we're at the point now where we're questioning the path this argument takes - that God hasn't inspired you, but has inspired others at various points of history and has currently inspired certain academics or certain individuals to understand the previously-inspired men (who you are also incapable of understanding without help). And at just the point that you're ready to confidently make this argument, at just the point where you're ready to say, "Wait a minute...," these guys jump in with this: 

Oh, that's the way God has always worked. See? He keeps sending prophets, and the prophets are there to interpret God for the people. They need that. And then in the New Testament, see? He says that whenever someone speaks, like in tongues, there has to be someone there to interpret for them. And what bigger tongue is there than the Holy Spirit Himself? 

The goal here is to change your "Wait a minute..." into a "Whoa...you're right." 

But...it's not quite right. 

Yes, God has sent prophets to His people throughout history. That much, we know because it is in the story that He's given us. Yes, the very story that today's wanna-be "prophets" tell you that you can't understand without them. 

But notice that God never sent a prophet with the prophet to explain to the people what the prophet was trying to tell them. No, the prophet himself did that. Elijah didn't have an interpreter for the people. Elisha didn't have an interpreter for the people. Amos didn't have an interpreter for the people. You get the point. At no point in Scripture is there a guy just standing around so that he can explain to the people what the prophet is doing. 

Why would today be any different? Why would God send us a "prophet" to interpret the prophet He already sent, whose story is already written for us as plainly as it was told to the people of that time? You can see clearly that this is not the way that God operates.

But what about that speaking in tongues thing and always having an interpreter present? 

That, too, is pretty clear. (And we could talk about speaking in tongues in general for awhile, too.) When the people spoke in tongues, they were speaking not in nonsense, but in languages that actually existed. Which is all well and good, unless no one else there speaks that language. Then, you're just babbling, even if you have something really important to say. 

When God talks about needing an interpreter to be present, He's talking not about you having understanding, but about the words themselves having meaning. It's like...if you, as a member of the American church, went to a seminar where a Chinese pastor was talking about the state of the Chinese church. Except he only speaks Chinese and you don't. If there's no one there to interpret what he's saying, the entire talk means nothing to you and you are not encouraged by the global faith. 

That's why we have to have interpreters. But what the argument we're talking about is saying is that the interpreter doesn't just change the language; he tells you what it means. And when is that ever true? A good interpreter puts things in the language you already speak so that you already know what the words mean when you are told them. It would be strange otherwise, wouldn't it? 

"He said that he likes to watch basketball. That means he likes to watch a game whereby individuals convey a round, orange ball up and down a pre-designed court with the goal of throwing the ball through a small hoop elevated in the air." 

No interpreter does this. No, he tells you "basketball" in your native language and assumes you know what that means. 

That's the difference. 

So even though it sounds intimidating when these guys try to tell you that God has always sent prophets and interpreters (because it is true that He has), their definition is very different from God's definition, and it's simply not legitimate. Period. 

Inspired Men

When I raised the question of why God would inspire a Word He doesn't then inspire us to understand, I got a rather interesting reply: 

God inspired men in the time of Jesus and shortly after to understand it, but He no longer inspires us to do the same. 

Thus, we are supposed to rely on those who lived around Jesus's age to tell us not only who Jesus was, but what Jesus means. 

This raises more questions than it answers. 

First, if it was only around the time of Jesus that men were inspired to understand the Scriptures, then that leaves the entire Old Testament un-understood for much of its history. It meant absolutely nothing to anyone. And the truth is, Israel could not possibly have been anticipating a Messiah at all if they never understood the Scriptures promising Him. So anything that we've ever said about God working His story toward Jesus would be a lie because HIs people could not have known that. 

But second, and most importantly, it doesn't get us around the question that we're asking. At all. 

This argument starts with the idea that the Bible is just a bunch of human works put together. Divinely inspired, maybe, but written by human hands. And then given into human hands to translate for us, since we are not divinely inspired. 

The obvious question, then, is: why would God inspire us to understand the humans who interpreted the Scriptures instead of just inspiring us to interpret the Scriptures ourselves? Why the extra step? This, again, takes us to a God who wants to create a measure of distance between us and Him, and that's simply not the God of the Bible. 

And it would require some inspiration for us to understand even the interpreters. Just look at the way that we can read a single news article today and each of us walk away with a different idea about what happened or why. We can't even agree on the things that we see with our own eyes. So we're supposed to just say that these guys have it right? What is right, anyway?

We run into the same problems of human interpretation when we're interpreting divinely-inspired interpreters as we do when we're interpreting divinely-inspired writers. The only thing it really does is to create a buffer for us where we can claim that we're no good at human history, rather than being no good at divine history. Where we can say we struggle to understand ourselves, not that we struggle to understand God. When we make an error, it is because we suck at human interpretation, not because we're not good at God's things. 

Do you see what we're doing? We're just passing the buck. 

Except that's not what the guy who makes this argument is actually saying. What he's actually saying is that our failure to even understand what the human interpreters have left us, the divinely-inspired human interpreters, means that we have absolutely no business trying to say anything at all about the Scriptures. If we don't understand what's been plainly given to us, how can we ever understand God's mysterious Word?

Again, it's a way to get you to shut up and sit down so that some "expert" can step in and tell you what it means, all while claiming that he doesn't really know either but that he only understands what someone else has said (so that he doesn't have to take responsibility for his interpretations, either). 

It's bunk. Pure bunk. And simply does not accurately reflect the heart, or the Word, of God. 

Divine Inspiration

Recently, I saw a comment (okay, it was on Twitter) to the effect that "you should absolutely believe that God inspired the Word" but "your interpretation of it? Not so much." In other words, God wrote the Bible through divine inspiration, but anything you think you understand about it is limited and finite because you are an ignorant human being with no special ability to actually know what God was trying to say. 

As you can imagine, I have so many issues with this. 

Where do we even start?

First and most importantly, this establishes that there is a God who is sovereign over all, divine, inspired, and full of the kinds of things that He would put in His Word but that also, He doesn't want you to know Him. He hasn't given you what you need to understand Him. He has created a distance between you and Him because He has made you too limited and finite, too ignorant, to understand Him. 

This seems hard to believe, given that we have a God who walked in the garden in the cool of the day with Adam and Eve. A God who crossed heaven and earth to dwell among us as Immanuel. A God who spends His entire story trying to get back to us. 

A God who wants intimacy, whose entire story is told in intimacy, cannot also be a God who gives you purposely a Word that you will never understand. That's ridiculous. 

Second, this is set up to create a theological authority. The person who said this then comes along behind it and starts filling in all of this complicated Bible-related language and essentially can say anything he wants and tell you to believe it because *he* has the educational background, experience, etc. to understand the Word of God in a way that you never can. 

This is how Scripture gets twisted. This is how pastors abuse their authority. This is how they convince you that they are special, that they are better than you, that God loves them more, that they are endowed with special divine ability. They tell you that you can't understand God, then offer to interpret for you - and once they've convinced you that you need that service, they can say anything they want.

Third, this puts a massive emphasis on human understanding. If God has inspired His Word, but you are too dumb to understand it, then you need other humans to understand it for you. Thus, these guys always end up appealing to either figures in church history or academics in ivory towers. 

Do you see the fallacy here? If human interpretation is untrustworthy, why are history and academia - both written and practiced by human beings - any more trustworthy than anything you might understand on your own?

A bizarre deconstruction starts to happen here, usually. And the person who posted this tweet demonstrated it quite well - he went on to talk about how the Bible is a book written by a certain number of humans over a certain number of years in a certain number of places and languages, breaking down all of the content of the Bible in human terms. Then explaining that certain humans - educated humans throughout history (academics, ancient theologians) - are the ones best suited to explain this human book to you by nature of everything they have studied and understood about human history, the kind of human history in this very book. 

So we've gone from a divinely-inspired word humans cannot possibly understand to a very human work that only certain educated humans are qualified to explain to you and...wait. Where did divine inspiration go? Where did God go? 

We went from a God who is so foreign you can't possibly understand Him to a God you no longer even need because what was once divinely inspired is so thoroughly human that we could spend our lives getting lost in its languages and locations. 

Like I said, there is so much here that I take issue with. So much that is just so wrong about a statement like this. 

So much to talk about! 

Swapping Mercies

As we wrap up our discussion of Paul and Silas in prison and the difference that our praise can make in our witness and in the lives of those around us, there's one other aspect of this story that we need to talk about, and it centers around mercies. 

After the chains fell off all of the prisoners, the guard realized what was happening and panicked. He knew it was his head on the line, and he was pretty sure he was about to lose it (his head, I mean). To be in charge of a prison in which all of the prisoners are suddenly freed is not a good look, and it's running through his heart that he's better off just taking his own life than letting his superiors get their hands on him. He might as well just take the honest, humble way out and save everyone else the trouble. 

Then, a voice. "Stop. Wait. We're all here." Every one of the prisoners is still standing there, still sitting in that prison. 

Of course, Paul and Silas could have let the guard just kill himself. After all, if you're a prisoner planning an escape, there's no better cover than the fact that there wasn't even a guard at all. If he's dead, you're probably less guilty of leaving than if you push past the guy, right? Not that Paul and Silas were planning an escape, but some of their fellow prisoners most definitely had it on their mind (were they not listening to the men who set them free). It just tidies up a lot of loose ends if you let the guard kill himself. 

But it wouldn't have been truth. And if it's not truth, then it has no place in the testimony that Paul and Silas are building. 

So the first mercy is that Paul tells the jailer the truth - there's no reason to panic, no reason to fret; all of the prisoners are still here and God, the God of all glory and grace, has not put this jailer's life on the line when He set the prisoners free. (Man, this is so important. We could talk for awhile about how God's freedom doesn't make more captives. But I digress. Or do I?)

Having heard the truth, the jailer looks around and sees for himself. And then, he returns the mercy - by washing Paul and Silas's wounds. 

We can't overlook this. Paul and Silas have been sitting in jail with this jailer for hours by now, and at no point did this jailer offer, apparently, to even let them clean their own wounds. They're just sitting there, covered in blood and stinging in the raw places where their flesh has been ripped open, and this jailer has absolutely zero concern about this. Until he hears truth. Until he's offered mercy. Then, he offers mercy in return. 

And in a twist that is so God, as the jailer is washing Paul and Silas's wounds, he asks them about being saved and the answer is...that God must wash his. God must wash the stinging flesh of the jailer if he wants to be saved. So, the mercy turns once more and Paul and Silas, whose wounds have just been washed, wash the wounds of the jailer - the last man in the prison to be set free. 

This story is so deep, so wonderful. So amazing. It's got so many layers if you just follow the mercies through it, starting with truth and ending with grace, and we know that this is only the beginning of this story - we don't know what happens next. 

This is the kind of story we ought to be writing in the world ourselves. This is the way that grace works itself out - through mercy. This kind of thing can absolutely happen today, and it should be. 

It's like this: we tell the world the truth. The world sees that what we say is actually true and responds to us with tender mercy, a mercy it never had before. In the midst of that tender mercy, we start talking about grace. And bam, here we are - so-called prisoners setting the jailer free. 

And it all started with a simple hymn of praise.  

Let Us Praise

As we're talking about this story, about Paul and Silas in prison and the chains falling off not just them, but every single prisoner in the place, there's something I've hinted at a bit but never really latched onto, yet, it deserves a conversation. In fact, I was starting to just write the next part of the story that I wanted to be telling, and I noticed that I was mentioning it again, so I decided to stop and, well, let's just talk about it. 

It's the fact that Paul and Silas were not praying in that prison. 

See, this idea is so foreign to us. We are a people of faith who think that the absolute best thing we can do for another person is to pray for them. We think, perhaps, that the least offensive thing we can do for someone is to pray for them. We think that if we want the power and presence of God to show up in a meaningful way, then it's definitely prayer that will make that happen. 

We have spent our lives being taught how to talk to God, the importance of talking to God, the power of talking to God, and on and on and on. We've had a major emphasis in most of our teaching, at least in many mainstream churches, on prayer as the avenue to connection with God. 

Strange, then, isn't it? that in the Bible, it's most often praise that is emphasized. 

This is true back in the Old Testament when Israel came to offer sacrifices. This was true in the wilderness when Miriam started dancing. This was true when David sat down and wrote, through the course of his life, dozens of psalms - these are songs, folks, not prayers. Even though we today often read them as prayers and use them in our own prayer life. 

In the Gospels, we don't see many persons approaching Jesus with prayer. They cry out, and we tell ourselves this is prayer, but look at how much praise is happening around Jesus, too. It's incredible when you really start reading with an eye for this. 

And now, here we are with two young believers in prison, just as the movement is getting off the ground, and they aren't praying for God's divine intervention. They aren't praying for God's goodness. They are praising His goodness. And that is when the chains fall off. 

It raises an interesting question: what if the world wasn't the object of our prayer, but the witness of our praise? How would it change the way the world sees God?

Let's face it - prayer has gotten kind of a bad reputation. We use it as an opportunity for gossip. It's become passive-aggressive in some cases, as we say snidely, "I'll pray for you." It's too often an empty promise - we say we will pray for someone, but we're really just trying to end the conversation and move on; too many of us don't pray the prayers we promise. It can sound rude to someone who doesn't believe, like we're not actually doing anything at all. And it's extremely (it seems) hands-off; it feels like the very thing the Bible tells us not to do, telling someone to keep warm when we have a coat to offer them. In prayer, too often, we tell someone we'll ask God to keep them warm while our extra coat is right there, draped over our own shoulder. 

Praise is...it's just different. It is. Praise isn't a fingers-crossed hope; it's a confident assurance. It comes flowing out of this place that just knows that God is good and isn't waiting on Him to prove it. 

Do you see the difference? Paul and Silas could sit in that prison and pray, even pray out loud, and everyone's going to be holding their breath, waiting to see if God is as good as they say He is. Waiting to see if He's good enough to answer. But they don't do that. No, they sing about how good they know He is, and that's far more real in that moment. That's far more relevant to the rest of those prisoners. They don't have to wait to see if God is good; they already know it. After all, what other god has prisoners singing praises in a dark place? 

Praise changes things, and our world needs our praise as our witness. Yes, they need our prayer, too, but they need our praise. They need to hear us singing the goodness of God.

There's just something about it. 

If you don't believe me, try it.