Interpreting the Bible

Once you start reading the Bible, you realize that you also have to interpret it. What does it mean? You read a passage and decide it means one thing. Your neighbor reads the same passage and decide it means something else. And then the fight begins. How do you determine who is right. Here are some ideas about interpretation.

1. Jesus is at the center of the Bible. Everything revolves around Jesus. (Of course, this is only true for Jesus Followers.) Therefore, our interpretation of what we read in the Bible should flow through Jesus. A question we might ask as we begin interpreting any scripture is, "How does the Good News about Jesus relate to this scripture?" Let's take an extreme example. Psalm 137:9 talks about the babies of Babylon, "Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!" Most people when they read this are repelled. What an awful thought. A few when they read this say it proves that God is going to bring an awful punishment on His enemies. 

I would say, you have to consider this passage in the light of Jesus and His Good News. Can you imagine Jesus saying something like this? Neither can I. 

2. Consider Jesus' words. When I think of Psalm 137, I immediately think of Jesus' rebuking his disciples when they tried to shoo the loud children away from him. “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” (Matthew 19:14) Jesus loved children. Jesus speaks of God as a loving father. Can you imagine a loving father who is not repelled by the words of Psalm 137.

3. Consider Jesus' actions. We should not stop with Jesus' words. We also must look at what Jesus did. In the previous example Jesus confirms what he says about children by acting,  "And he laid his hands on them and went on his way." How often do we ignore Jesus' actions in order to arrive at an interpretation that is more culturally comfortable to us.

I read yesterday that John Paul II (who I believe did many admirable things) ordered that women could never be considered for ordained ministry because all of the apostles were men. Of course, you could argue that Jesus never said, "Let women be ordained." And you would be right. You could point to the Apostle Paul's restrictive words on women's ministy. But of course you would have to overlook the prominent place that women played as Followers of Jesus--first at the tomb, first to anoint Jesus with oil, part of the company of people who followed Jesus wherever He went. Jesus seemed to go out of his way to elevate the place of women in His work. He even met privately with a woman, which would have been a scandalous thing for a rabbi to do (woman at the well, John 4:4). 

How do the actions of Jesus inform our understanding of the place of women in the Bible. And, don't forget that Paul is not Jesus Christ.

What I am suggesting here is that there is an interpretive hierarchy in the Bible. All scripture is not equal. Jesus is the King of scripture, and in order to understand scripture properly we must bring it to the King for interpretation.