My soul clings to you,Your right hand upholds me.
The original sin was reinterpreting God’s word, rebelling against God’s word, and putting our interpretation of the world, wisdom, good and evil above God’s word. We tend to do this as we read the scriptures. Often we don’t know we are doing this for we misinterpret scripture naturally do to our fallen nature. Here are some common fallacies when interpreting the scriptures:
• Interpreting the scriptures through your own morality or truth, determining what is good and evil and what wisdom is and then manipulating the scriptures to fit your standard of morality and truth.
• Stating that the scripture or the writer is inconsistent and fitting that into an argument around your determination of truth. This is a pretty sure test that the person has poor scholarship and hermeneutics, is not open minded, and is trying to fit their interpretation into the text, instead of allowing the scripture to speak for itself.
• The facts are ignored either do to laziness or because they don’t like the truth and prefer to be closed minded.
• Ignoring the fact the scripture is God breathed and written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
• Ignoring the marriage of Biblical Theology and Systematic Theology.
• Ignoring the Gospel.
• Proof texting, taking scriptures out of context.
• Not being open minded and using and having poor scholarship. Good scholarship is not quoting “experts” and “papers” that in reality are horrible and have poor scholarship or do much of what is written here. A degree or paper does not make one a good scholar or open minded.
• Being a wooden literalist – both liberal and conservatives do this.
• Changing the original language definitions of words to fit their perspective.
• Ignoring the perspective of proven and tested godly men throughout history.
• Thinking in extremes or in the middle. Scripture is holy, totally other; it does not fit on a scale.
• Taking the text out of the whole of the Bible.
Since, true interpretation of the scripture is against our fallen nature, we must die to ourselves, lay our bodies down as living sacrifices, turning away from comfortably to this world and our own interpretations, and instead look to the only true God, so that we come to understand and discern the goodness, beauty, and truth of God’s will, through the testing of His word.
