Reading the Bible and Aching for God

You're conservative, aren't you?" The question was about my theology. The questioner was one of my professors at Boston University, where I was studying for a Ph.D. The professor was a world renowned sociologist with a heavy European accent, and he liked to buttonhole grad students in public as a way of testing what we were made of.

"Yes, I am," I said. No use pretending. This is what I'm made of. "Then answer me this question," the professor said. He took a puff from his cigarette, then flicked the ashes in my direction. He was enjoying my discomfort. "Why is it that the louder you conservatives are about the inspiration and authority of Scripture, the sloppier you are when you read it?"

Let me comment first about the assumptions that lay behind my professor's question: the question assumes that not all readings of the Bible are equally right, that reading sloppily is a bad thing, and that if we take the inspiration and authority of Scripture seriously we would want to be sure we were reading it well.

In these assumptions he was actually voicing a position that the New Testament itself voices. When I was a boy, a lot of my friends selected "life-verses." A life-verse is a passage of Scripture that serves as a kind spiritual anchor when life gets stormy. Mine was 2 Peter 3:15-16. The subject of the passage is the letters of Paul:

So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.

I chose this verse because I resonated with the statement that there were some things in the letters of Paul that are hard to understand. I've included it here because of the way v. 16 ends. The writer seems to say that it's not enough to study the Bible. It's possible to study it badly, and when we do that, we "twist the Scriptures to our own destruction." At the very least, it means that not all interpretations of the Bible are equally valid. That in turn suggests that we ought to have some way of measuring validity. But of course, this raises the question to which this book is addressed: what does it mean to read the Scriptures properly?

Moving from What the Scriptures Say to What They Mean

When I was a boy of maybe seven, my family was asked to dinner at the home of a woman in our church who frankly scared me spitless. She was the most refined and elegant woman I knew. She wore Emeraude perfume; she had those high, high shoes with the pointy heels and toes that only refined feet could fit; and she had little diamonds set into the frames of her glasses. I never knew what to say when I was around her, but this time it was worse because we were guests in her home, and it was my very first outing, and my father had warned me to be on my best behavior.

Everything went swimmingly until she served brussels sprouts. I hate brussels sprouts. (No, I loathe brussels sprouts.) I didn't eat the ones my hostess served me.

She noticed. She was sitting right next to me, so how could she miss? "Don't you like brussels sprouts?" she asked.

I glanced at my father. He had that look of fathers-don't-really-care-because-they-know-their-children-will-do-the-right-thing nonchalance, but he and I both knew it was a mask. He was on his best behavior too.

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "I like 'em fine."

"The boy loves brussels sprouts," said my father. He added more to my plate.

I looked hard at my father, hoping he didn't-really-care-after-all. He added more to my plate. I looked for the door. My father gave me his clearest young-man-you-will-sit-there-until-your-plate-is-clean look. I gulped, I swallowed hard, I stared at the plate, I toyed with the brussels sprouts, I stopped eating the food I liked because it had brussels sprout juice on it, I moved the food around on my plate, but as hard as I might have tried, I couldn't bring myself to put fork to plate to mouth. I didn't eat anything after that. The table conversation moved on to other things. I was home free.

At the end of the evening, the hostess began to clear the table to prepare for dessert. She stopped at my plate.

"I thought you said you liked brussels sprouts," she said.

"I lost my appetite," I said, as quietly as I could, hoping my father wouldn't hear.

"A growing boy like you? No appetite? Not even for brussels sprouts?"

What I said next, I intended as a compliment: "Sitting next to a woman like you ..." I said. Then I foundered. How to compliment my hostess? I really said this: "Sitting next to a woman like you would make any man lose his appetite."

I've told this story here because it illustrates a distinction that stands at the center of what we mean when we talk about interpreting the Bible properly. I didn't mean what my father thought I meant. It isn't enough to ask what the Bible says. We also have to ask what it means.

Consider for a moment the kinds of things I had to say to him to back out of the trouble I had gotten myself into. I didn't know the sentence had a double meaning. I had read it somewhere and thought it was nice. I wouldn't intentionally insult our hostess.

But these are the sorts of things we take into consideration all the time, whenever we read or listen to people talk. We ask questions like, "Where did this happen? Who said it, and was he smirking at the time? Does this boy usually insult hostesses? Why did he say it that way, and not some other way?" These are the kinds of questions that ordinarily guide our journey from what is said to what is meant,...