How do you read the bible?

How do you teach — train — help others to read the bible?

In our second session with author, pastor and activist Brian McLaren, he led us in thinking about how differently we might read (understand — and consequently live out) the scriptures when we strip off many of the presuppositions that we bring to the text.

Really, it was a good lesson on solid biblical exegesis.  The bible can never mean what it was never intended to mean.  And before we can jump to the 2nd step of good biblical interpretation — hermeneutics — discerning what the biblical text might mean for us TODAY, we must first attempt to understand what the original intended meaning for the text was — exegesis. What was the original communicator/author– and/or God — wanting to communicate to the original recipients — hearers and/or readers — of  the message.

McLaren, in wanting to help us better reach towards that original understanding of the text, suggested that we need to be students of our own language — and able to recognize how certain words and/or phrases may have meant something very different back in biblical times than they do today! To help us understand his point he focused our attention on Acts 16 (and for the sake of space I will pull out a couple of key verses and look at one of the examples he mentioned):

16 Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spiritby which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. 17 This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.

and later

26 Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody’s chains came loose. 27 The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped.28 But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself ! We are all here!” 29 The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

As McLaren helped us to understand the context of this story (the time of the Roman Empire, issues of slavery, prophecy, the early ministry of Paul, etc.) he then drew our attention to the word “saved,” used twice in this story.  He asked us to consider first, our 21st century understanding of the word “saved.”

He then asked the question: what do you think the slave girl (and Roman guard) meant by this word?  Because it’s probably NOT what we would think based on our 21st C. understanding of the word…

He helped us to see how often (and how easily) we quickly breeze through biblical stories — “fully clothed” — with our 21st C. understanding of different words and/or ideas.  If we can teach ourselves (and/or our students) to read the bible “naked,” in its most pure form, we might find something there that we’ve never seen or understood before.

Great, great stuff.  And a good challenge.  Again, I will post a link to this session here when we have it live — online.

If you want to read my thoughts on Brian’s first session on Inherited Faith vs. the Faith That We Will Live you can find them by clicking here.

My questions for you (and me) are:

• How good are we at reading the bible “naked”? (no seriously)
• Are we teaching/training/modeling this for our students?
• Do you see any issues with taking this approach to reading (and living out) the biblical story?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!