7. Beginner Bible Course: Why readers interpret texts so differently

EPISODE 7  The simple Bible overview of…WHY DO PEOPLE INTERPRET IT SO DIFFERENTLY?

In the middle of the fourth grade, my grades began to suffer and I began experiencing headaches. My fourth grade teacher was pretty sharp. She figured that that squinting boy in the back, struggling with his grades probably needed to get his eyes checked. You've been there. The optometrist stick your face in that little machine. She asks you what's the lowest row. You can read this letter of clearer than this letter. Tell me if you see any numbers or letters in these colored dots, inner diagnosis, she said, Tim your eyeballs have become footballs. What you used to be able to see for 200 feet. You can now only see in 20 you're very near-sighted.

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And while we're on the subject, you're also colorblind. When I walked out of her office a week later with my new glasses, I suddenly realized that the streetlights and headlights were not supposed to look like fuzzy, dandelion balls. When it comes to opening up the Bible, we all need vision. Correction. What we think is normal is really often very near or far sighted. I'd like to give you at least three reasons for that one. What we're reading is very difficult. I'll get to that in our next podcast, too. We have cultural blind spots. Our culture deeply impacts how we read what we read.

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And third, we have poor peripheral vision by this. I mean, we need to understand what's around everything we read so we can focus on what we're reading and get it right. We need vision correction as readers of the text, but I'd like to encourage you here. If this is God's message to us, his kids, as we'll see it claims to be, God gives us a little help. First of all, we need to agree up front that we're messed up. That our vision isn't exactly clear on everything. Second, we need to ask God to be the optometrist and help correct our vision problems. Third, as I've mentioned before, we need to understand the big picture so that we can understand more accurately how each piece fits into it.

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And the fourth thing I would strongly encourage is ask others what they see study in community. Whether that's literally in a room with a group of believers, whether live or in chat or it's using the books or information of others, who've hovered over this text for a long time. Please take this encouragement. Seriously. I often ask my students what's more dangerous, never cracking open the Bible at all, or opening it up and misreading it. I tell them the story of split rock lighthouse on Lake superior in the 18 hundreds, sometime a number of crashed on Lake superior on calm, dark moonless nights.

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They couldn't figure out why they commissioned a group to investigate. And that group came up with the answer there on that calm Lake. On those moonless nights, ship captains were following their compass. There was just one problem. The INR in the granite walls lining Lake superior were drawing their compass off a few degrees. These captains trusting their campuses. We're crashing their ships in to the shore that can happen. When we view our ability to read and understand the text as normal. We need corrective lenses. The big word for that is illumination.

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We need help understanding the text. And since we're on the subject, I need help understanding the text as your guide. I can be off. So it's very important. Even in this podcast information, you realize that I still have vision problems that need to be corrected. So study these things for yourself in community with others. Make sure I'm not sending you towards shipwreck because my compass is off. So as we open the text, what should be our attitude as readers? I'd like to answer that in our next wordpicture