Falling Asleep
How do even devout followers of Christ shut their eyes to truth, falling into a cultural slumber?
In the complex and challenging area of truth, most devout followers of Christ boldly proclaim they ‘stand on truth’ and make confident claims of the validity of their beliefs. Yet, many have yet to even vocalize their core beliefs much less to question them. When faced with the cultural anesthetic of compromise, they dutifully drift off to a proverbial dream world.
When confronted with a splash of cold water on their face in the form of a cantankerous blogger saying the Bible translation they use is full of errors or a podcast of someone outlining the pagan roots of their Christmas tree, they shout at the disturbance of the water, slur a complaint about the Internet, mutter a weak one-liner of rebuttal, and slip off again to a contented and ignorant slumber. Why?
Truth is hard. It tends not to waft in the wind of culture. Truth tends to be more like the velvet-covered brick that just hit the side of your head. Harder still to ferret out truth that you were taught that actually is false. You have to examine, not just the beliefs you hold, but the background of those who originally taught you. Maybe these mentors had it wrong also.
Then there is the ocean of data sloshing freely through our phones and laptops, surging a tide of misinformation into our heads, hearts, and brains. As soon as you read this blog (along with 55 others), a new podcast begins with a catchier title and the promise of ‘secret knowledge’. You can’t keep up. And if you could, most of the data is, at best, tainted and mostly poison.
Satan must be having a field day with all of this frenzy.
So….where do we go from here?
Start with the one source of truth given us: the Bible. If you want to go to the translation closest to the original, go to the New American Standard Bible (NASB). Although often wooden in phrasing and clunky in prose, it follows best the original texts. Not much effort has been given to ‘smoothing out’ the text in an NASB version, and therefore, not much 'interpreting’ has gone into the smoothing. Another blog will examine the reasons the extant texts of the Bible can be trusted, but suffice it here, get a NASB bible to examine what, in fact, God really did say.
Realize the Bible is not a novel (where to start reading)
Know the three phases of understanding any ancient book: Translation, Interpretation, and Application.
Know the first rule of interpretation: “If it makes sense in the normal sense, seek no other sense.” If the text says, “A man went from Point A to Point B”, this means that the man really did walk from one place to another. All works of antiquity follow this same and simple rule. The histories of Josephus follow this same constraint, as does the Bible. You can apply all sorts of things to your personal life and allegorically seek significance to Point A or B or the journey between, but the normal interpretation is that he actually went from Point A to Point B…and that’s it.
Once past Translation and Interpretation, then you can feel free to wander about in the fields of Application, applying the truth to your life…but not the lives of others. It is for you alone. You can freely share your insights to inspire others, but your applications do not qualify as interpretations.