Stand By Night

Just humor me, I’m going to start with a Bible verse:

“Give strong drink to him [. . .] and wine to him whose life is bitter. Let him drink and forget his poverty and remember his trouble no more.” Proverbs 31:6-7

OK, now just put that in the back of your mind for a few minutes. I’ll get back to it. (I know, I know, just keep reading. You’re humoring me, remember?)

I love clear communication, and often have the satisfaction of seeing a listener’s face light up with understanding as I speak. I try to choose my words carefully, as I believe words mean things; anyone close to me can attest to that fact. I have not always acted this way, and anyone close to me would probably confirm that as well. Accurately using words is of the utmost importance when communicating anything, and people often communicate ineffectively due to a poor choice of just one word. Each word in a sentence has a specific purpose, and therefore it is important to understand exactly what each word means.

Unfortunately, there are people that–for one reason or another–don’t want to understand. People that have either already decided that their prejudice is irrefutable, or have just decided not to accept what you say and find it easier to disregard what they don’t understand. These people don’t bother me for the most part. If what you are saying is true, they will probably come around (given time and experience). Even if they don’t, they are not typically argumentative and will not be likely to harm anyone but themselves in their lack of understanding. It’s the people who misunderstand that are harmful. Misunderstanding is different from not understanding. Misunderstanding is understanding wrongly, or in simpler terms: you think you know, but you don’t.

Anyone could tell you that if you only read 12 words in the middle of a 500 word news article, you will probably not catch the full meaning behind what is said. So why do we treat the Bible differently? We take a dozen words out of a 783,137-word (in NKJV) book and then have the gall to presume understanding of the words by themselves. The entire Bible builds upon itself.

Take the verse at the top of this post for example. Taken alone it seems to say “Get drunk when you’re depressed.” If you just go back to the beginning of the chapter though, you would see that Proverbs 31 is King Lemuel remembering what his mother taught him as a child preparing him to be king. She told him that he would have to maintain a clear head and righteous judgment at all times and would therefore have to endure the stress of the throne without alcohol, unlike someone without responsibility who could just get drunk.

Now look at this verse:

“Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.” Jonah 1:2

I once heard an hour long message about how God saw the potential in Nineveh and called them “great” even though they were wicked, all based on this verse. There’s just one problem: that’s not what this verse says. The word “great” here means exactly what it probably seemed to mean the first time you read it: “really big”. (Ironically God did love Nineveh and saw what they could become even when they were wicked, but we know that because of the nature and emotions of God shown in other verses, not this one.) Most of the Bible was written to uneducated people and is actually not difficult to understand if you just read what is written, without presuming that there is some “hidden” meaning that only really spiritual people see. If you think a word means something other than what it says, use a concordance to look it up. I use Blue Letter Bible all the time. Don’t rack your brain trying to make something up; given that you’re confused already, you’d be wrong as likely as not, so it’s really a waste of time.

Whew! Longer post than I thought it would be. Let’s sum up:

Point #1: Read the Bible at least a whole chapter at a time; one book at a time is even better.

Point #2: Read what’s written on the page. There are parts that are figurative and/or poetic (like Psalms and Song of Solomon), but the vast majority of the Bible says exactly what it means.

-J