Matters of Interpretation

Who is “We”?

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What’s our approach to Scripture?

Interesting question.

We clearly take it seriously, because we keep reading it, we read it together, we believe God speaks to people through Scripture, we think the Word of God we hear through Scripture has a claim on our lives, we keep trying to hear that more clearly and “follow … more nearly” …

On the other hand, it seems all of us have at one time or another said something like “Well, that’s not right!” about something we’ve read in the Bible. While we don’t just stop there, our willingness to say it in the first place probably says something about the kind of readers we are.

Maybe you could say we …

… are open to a range of methods of reading Scripture;

… bring our life experiences, practical concerns, and critical questions to our reading and into conversation with Scripture;

… try to listen to the text, even when we feel we need to resist or challenge it – and when it resists or challenges us;

… ask a lot of questions, including questioning some of the pre-approved answers to the questions.

We are all learning as we go. Knowing a lot, or anything, about the Bible is not a prerequisite for taking part in this class.

We do not often …

speculate on the psychology of Biblical characters (e.g., “Jesus must have felt …,” “Abraham would have thought …” – mainly because one of us keeps pointing out that we often don’t have that much information about these characters’ psychology, are often just making stuff up out of our 21st century psychology, and the Bible often doesn’t seem to care about its characters’ psychology, anyway);

identify The One Right Answer to What This Text Means (mainly because the text probably means more than just one thing, and because we are interested in what it might have meant to readers long ago and how that might be the same as, or different from, what it means to readers today, and because we are interested in how our different perspectives affect what the text says to us, and …);

end up with a tidy nugget of comfortable spiritual advice that also supports our preferred theology (although we do end up with such nuggets from time to time; but at least as often we find that the insights and spiritual advice are challenging rather than comfortable, or can call our preferred theology into question in some way, or at least push us to think more deeply about it, so that our conclusions are seldom “tidy”).

Whatever this approach is called, we have found it thought-provoking, enjoyable, and worthwhile. We think, or perhaps hope, it is also faithful.

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Our backstory …

Officially, the class is “The Present Word,” the name of the curriculum we use – more or less. It’s based on the National Council of Churches’ Uniform Series International Bible Lessons for Christian Teaching, by the way.

We used to meet at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings, during which time we acquired the nickname “Not-That-Early” thanks to our efforts to convince people that 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning was … well … not that early.

After all, people get up much earlier for a lot of things.

Milking cows. High school swim practice. Getting children to the school bus on time. Beating the rush hour traffic to Louisville.

Granted, 9:00 a.m. could be perceived as early for a Sunday morning.

Still, since it wasn’t that early, we could even sleep in a little, and still make it to class.

Now that we’ve moved to Wednesdays, though, we’re looking for a new nickname …

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A word of warning

Finally, being old is not a requirement for taking part in this group. We have found, however, that if you hang out with us long enough, you will get oldER.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

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