The Need For Interpretation

I. OBSERVATION

When you go to church you hear a sermon from the Bible. When you go to Sunday school or Bible study you get another lesson from the Bible. Furthermore, when you go to Wednesday night discipleship classes you get additional instruction from the Bible. While there is nothing intrinsically bad about such a spiritual diet-indeed all three are vitally important-it does tend to promote an unhealthy imbalance within the Christian. What I mean by this is that Christians are receiving a large dose of prearranged, organized, and neatly packaged messages rather than being taught how to study Scripture for themselves.

The danger inherent within such a diet is the tendency towards immaturity, drifting, exploitation and stagnation. Immaturity because they are never taught or challenged to think for themselves; drifting and being tossed about by every changing wind of doctrine due to the lack of a solid biblical anchor; exploitation caused by a lack of education because they are relegated to accepting whatever they are taught as the truth; and stagnation due to disillusionment, monotony, and/or confusion. With this in mind, one of the Church's primary needs today is not necessarily better sermons, more book studies, or evangelism training, which is more of the same, but rather in-depth instruction on the basics of personal Bible study and interpretation with the goal of practical application.

II. ARGUMENTATION

Even though you would be hard pressed to find one or two evangelical pastors and educational ministers who would outright deny the importance of individual Bible study, at the same time you would also be hard pressed to find very many churches actively promoting and teaching even the rudimentary interpretative principles involved in the proper study of Scripture. Unfortunately, this important topic is left largely untouched from the pulpit, untaught in Sunday school and Bible study, and unemphasized in Wednesday discipleship classes. The reason for this disparity is usually due to a gap between a church's actual and aspirational values. In his book, Ministry Nuts and Bolts: What They Don't Teach Pastors in Seminary, Aubrey Malphurs defines each of these values:
Actual values are those that you own and act upon daily in your ministry. At some time in your life you have embraced them and now they are a part of you. They are intuitive and they naturally manifest themselves as you lead your ministry. When you make an organizational decision, they spring into action (whether or not you're aware of them) automatically. Aspirational values are beliefs that you or your ministry don't own but would like to. Therefore, you don't normally act upon them unless you make a concentrated effort to do so. While actual values represent what is true about you, aspirational values represent what might or could be true about you.
To the detriment of its members, a large portion of evangelical churches place more emphasis upon training for personal evangelism than for personal Bible study because the latter is nothing more than an aspirational value.

The term "church growth" can mean many different things depending upon the individual, however, the accent is usually placed upon the corporate growth of a church through the addition of new members. While this is true, perhaps a better equation for church growth is the personal and individual development of each member which in turn contributes to the growth of the church as a whole. Man has God's plan backward when he focuses more upon math (quantity) rather than maturity (quality). If the focus is upon personal spiritual growth within the body then corporate church growth will always result but the opposite is not necessarily true. The reason for this is that evangelism is more an outworking of spiritual maturity than a practice that leads to spiritual maturity. Again, man's understanding is backward from God's and thus the new Christian is often encouraged to participate more in evangelism than spiritual development through principled Bible study. One example of this would be how the evangelical pastor makes sure his congregation realizes that evangelism is not his responsibility alone and thus provides evangelistic training, but this same pastor then fails to set up training in order to teach the rules of biblical interpretation. In some cases several months are spent teaching Christians how to evangelize, witness, and share their faith without fear through memorizing a particular tract but no time is spent on memorizing indispensable rules of Biblical interpretation.

True evangelism is not just conversion. The emphasis of Jesus' Great Commission, as recorded in Matthew 28:19-20, is not on going nor is it on baptizing but rather it is on making disciples. Simply put, what Jesus did to His disciples the disciples were to do to others. Therefore, the ultimate goal of this teaching extends far beyond the initial decision toward spiritual self-sufficiency (or maturity). While this self-sufficiency does not mean that the individual Christian becomes autonomous and no longer needs to fellowship with other Christians (Heb 10:24-25; 1 Cor 12), it does mean that they should be able to feed themselves spiritually without relying upon sources outside of their own study of Scripture. [The preacher may have more formal training than the average layperson but no preacher has any more of the Holy Spirit than any other believer. It is the Spirit's job to reveal truth to the believer (John 14:26).] Again, while this self-sufficiency does not do away with the benefit of the preacher's sermon, the teacher's lesson, or reading Christian literature, it does mean that these sources should not provide the majority or greater part of their spiritual diet. A purely numerical example illustrates why: If a Christian were to go to church, Sunday school, and Bible study 50 out of 52 weeks in the year, it would equal approximately 150 hours of spiritual instruction a year versus the approximately 8600 hours spent outside of the church. This means that only 1.7% of the year is spent in church under another's tutelage! The point I am trying to make is that we are feeding a steady diet of neatly packaged ready-to-eat microwave meals (spiritually speaking) to our congregations rather than taking the time and effort needed to show them how to make a thanksgiving feast for themselves. As a result, if the average Christian today in America were to stop going to church their spiritual body would quickly starve to death.

Don't believe for a moment that I am against evangelism and those who teach or emphasize it; just the opposite is true. I do believe that evangelism is an essential part of the church but an unhealthy balance on evangelism, to the detriment of interpretational skills, spells disaster just as surely as a scale tipped in favor of interpretation and away from evangelism. There must be a healthy balance of both, along with other ingredients such as prayer and worship, for the individual, as well as the church, to grow properly. Therefore, the majority of my complaint is that through incomplete or negligent instruction the average church member is relegated to studying his or her Bible with whatever tidbits they have been able to glean over the years as observed from a pastor's preaching or teacher's lesson; and some of these "gleanings" are nothing more than the speaker's bad habits! It amazed me that after carrying out several unofficial surveys in various churches I found that the majority of people I talked to, regardless of age (physical and spiritual), were generally unacquainted with any sort of a solid set of rules to follow when studying the Bible (ie: hermeneutics). Most of them recognized that such a thing must exist but what exactly any of those rules might be was completely unknown to them. Worse yet, some of those who were unaware of these interpretational principles were Sunday school and Bible study teachers! While it is perplexing and distressing to see a high school graduate who is still unable to read or write even after 12 years of education, how much more alarming and disconcerting should it be to the spiritual leaders of the church who find their congregation in a similar plight spiritually. Leaders who are ignorant of this plight and the leaders who are aware of it, yet do nothing about it, probably both suffer from the before mentioned aspiriational value system concerning Bible study.

Due to the lack of personal principled Bible study and the stress of its importance many remarkable and completely unbiblical heresies have crept into the church. If you were to study closely the history of the Catholic Church from its inception to the present you would find this as one of their foremost problems. It was not until Luther's "rebellion" against the Catholic tradition that the Bible could be found in the language of the common people so that the common people could read it for themselves. Interpretational power was held centrally in the hands of a very few select men and therefore whatever they claimed the Bible said the people were forced to accept or be charged with blasphemy. Now before I am also accused of being anti-Catholic let me say that there are many wild heretical doctrines and interpretations within the Baptist Church. Be that as it may, the common thread running through both instances of heresy is the disregard for principled personal Bible study; where Scripture is unvalued heresy is free to abound. It breaks my heart to think of the great riches so freely given by God through His Word that most Christians are going to miss here on earth just because they are oblivious as to how to study it correctly.

Besides the weekly sermon and lesson from a quarterly, the extent of many Christian's formal spiritual instruction spans no further than a new believer's class or a new member's class. However, more often than not, such instruction goes no further than stating that church's doctrine, weekly programs, and traditions. Then, after being welcomed into the church, these believers are left to sink or swim on their own and pick up what interpretational scraps they can along the way. If they have a question, and this has been my personal experience as a new believer, their Sunday school teacher might not be able to answer it and when the pastor is asked he usually gives an ambiguitous reply that leaves the person more confused than when he began. It pains me to say that the vast majority of Christians are completely unprepared to face the world due to a lack of poor spiritual education. And if spiritual education is professed as essential by so many pastors in so many churches why am I seeing a dwindling of spiritual maturity among believers? Spiritual "giants" are rare and seen as the exception rather than the rule when just the opposite should be true. Christians settle for a life of spiritual monotony and mediocrity and accept it, more often than not, because all the other Christians around them are exactly the same. As a result they live a quite, dull, drab spiritual life like everyone else. However, as discouraging as it may seem it doesn't really surprise me that the solid biblical foundation that most churches were formed upon is being inextricably eroded. As I have already pointed out, compounding upon the lack of education is the problem of negative examples. For instance, the majority of preachers preach topically the majority of the time. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that the majority of Christians approach Scripture topically in their own personal Bible studies. They end up having no concept of context or the unity and single message of one book. While topical messages have their place a steady diet of them week after week does not foster spiritual maturity especially when there is the danger that the preacher is proof texting and taking verses out of context to fit his sermon.

Furthermore, book studies may teach excellent practical application of doctrine and Christian living but the majority of such studies are silent as to how these observations were reached by the teacher, what process he went through, and what resources were utilized during the study. While it would be boring to most, and quite impractical for the preacher to reveal such things during each sermon, some of this material should be shared periodically at least by the Sunday school or Bible study teachers in the off chance that someone might want to pursue a more in-depth study themselves. Small children see the end process of a parent's cooking and this is fine up to a point but in order for that child to one day be self-sufficient he or she must learn how to cook and prepare a meal for themselves. This entails planning a meal, shopping for the right ingredients, following a recipe, and using the right kitchen appliances. To carry the illustration one step further, some Christians think that there is no need to learn such skills because there will always be someone around to cook for them and feed them or they think that they can just heat up another of those already made frozen prepackaged meals. In saying this I am not expecting every single Christian to become a scholar or great theologian with vast and dynamic biblical libraries who sits around composing theological treaties and commentaries. However, every believer should have some basic understanding and general knowledge of how and when to use certain interpretational rules and Bible study resources. It is simply counterproductive to ignore the teaching of biblical interpretation within the church just because the average member is not going into full-time vocational ministry. I would truly question a person's salvation if they had no desire for the Word of God due to the fact that the better someone understands God's Word the better they are able to understand God. However, if you interpret Scripture incorrectly you may unwittingly find yourself in direct opposition to God! Therefore, correctly interpreting Scripture (hearing His voice) becomes a task of vital importance for every believer.

Rare is the pastor, Sunday school teacher, or even educational minister who teaches the average church goer about the rules and methods of proper Bible study and interpretation; which, I might add, is not above their understanding or application if properly explained. I have always heard that the sign of a great communicator is the ability to take a complex subject and explain it in such a way that even a novice could comprehend it, and the sign of great wisdom is the ability to speak simply. Instead even the remotely interested believer is scared away by such unexplained and imposing terms as hermeneutics, homiletics, exegesis, eisegesis, soteriology, ecclesiology, eschatology, etc. Furthermore, most Christians are never told why taking the time and effort to understand such things personally would be beneficial to them. However, even more discouraging than those who would like to learn but remain untutored are those who would rather stay where they are and never move.

Lacking the fundamentally important foundation that interpretational rules provide the Christian ends up with a very limited choice as to what kind of a spiritual structure can be built in their lives. Like the first two little pigs who were more interested in playing than building a solid structure that would provide protection, Christians build houses of straw and sticks and are quite content with them; they throw up something quick so they can get back to what really matters in their life. This is perhaps why the devotional mindset is so prevalent in American Christianity today. However, what these believers don't realize is that when the wolf comes bent on destruction they will not be able to stand against him. If Scripture is seen as nothing more than a quick "fix" to grab on the way out of the door, deep spiritual roots will never grow. In such cases, quality is forgotten in the attempt to be a "good Christian" who can check off his "Bible study" box each day. Rarely is what they read ever thought about again let alone applied to their life. Daily devotions become a meeting with a book that talks about God rather than an encounter with God Himself. It thus becomes just another thing added onto an already busy schedule rather than something integrated, as a vital part, into their lifestyle. While there is nothing wrong with devotions and devotional messages in their place, a steady diet of only devotional interaction with Scripture brings spiritual malnutrition. Devotions are a good place to start as a new believer but should not become a permanent site of residence. Devotions resemble the "milk" spoken of in Hebrews 5:12-14; such a diet is necessary for infant believers, just as a newborn child needs milk rather than steak, but full growth and healthy maturity are impossible without a regular diet of solid food.

Another problem inherent within the devotional mindset is that the many Christians who subscribe to it fail to recognize just how awesome a privilege and task Bible study is. Some, bored with Christianity, ritualistically open their Bibles in order to receive their "daily dose" without a second thought to the fact that they are reading the very words of God; others only open their Bible in order to find some blessing or receive some emotional charge for the day. With this privilege to read God's Word comes the huge responsibility to "rightly divide" what it says (2 Tim 2:15). To misinterpret the Bible is to place something into the mouth of God that didn't originate with God and this is no small thing to be taken lightly (ie: Genesis 3)! Devotional thinking tries hard, perhaps too hard, to have some illusive yet ground shaking "experience" with God each morning. Its practitioners are desperate for Scripture to speak to them in a real and personal way and in their naive eagerness they often fall into the sticky trap of improper interpretation.

People are frantic for experiences because they have been told that if they can't write something down under the "what has God told me today" section of their devotional notebooks that somehow they haven't really spoken to God and therefore are substandard Christians. Today's religious culture, especially in America, has sold its depth for the porridge of emotionalism. Everything must be had now and immediate results must be seen. The key to understanding today's thinking can be found in the words "emotion" and "feeling." These have become all important to us and run us rather than the other way around; much like the old saying of the tail wagging the dog. Gone are the simpler days where time was spent doing nothing but sitting quietly thinking, meditating, and reflecting on the events of the day. Now every second must be filled with something, time must be managed, and schedules must be kept. People have become slaves to their day timers and are so busy trying to live life to the fullest that they miss it, or at least the most important things, completely. Adding to the problem is the TV's flashing images and constantly changing scenes, which has people speaking and thinking in "sound bite" shallowness. More time is needed to fathom the deep mysteries of God than a quick 60-second-news-update mindset has patience for. Therefore, emotion rather than intellect is pandered to. While emotions and feelings aren't in and of themselves bad or wrong-God created us with them-it is forever Satan's plan to use them against us. He is guilty of taking many God-given blessings and perverting them through overindulgence, legalistic restriction, or use in the wrong way at the wrong time. Therefore, those who nonchalantly approach the Bible without truly grasping or fully understanding the implications of such a task are falling right into Satan's trap.

Devotionalists and Emotionalists have been erroneously taught since spiritual infancy that they can find some truth that applies to their lives everywhere in Scripture, but this is usually done without any regard to the laws or rules of proper interpretation. Therefore, they are quick to take half-verses out of context in order to declare some kind of personal promise. Unfortunately, many times these "promises" are nothing more than surface level fluff that quickly abandons its owner when even the mildest of problematic winds blows across it. The reason for this is that the Bible is not a self-help book to be cut and pasted together into a list of feel-good doctrines. Often times its message is harsh, demanding, and uncomfortable. This should always be the case when sinful man comes into contact with a holy, perfect, and righteous God. We should fall upon our faces as Isaiah did crying out that we are unclean in the overpowering and awesome presence of the Lord God Almighty rather than standing up from "devotions" unchanged and unimpressed by who God is.

Our society today has spawned an entire batch of immature Christians who aren't even aware of their own plight. Many don't even know the mistakes they are making or the rules of hermeneutics they bend and break because they were never told that they existed. The majority of them are not consciously and maliciously twisting God's Word for their personal gain but the effect of faulty interpretation, even with the sincerest of hearts, is the same. Satan and his demons are delighted by this state of affairs because the Word of God is the only offensive weapon Christians have to attack and destroy the lies that will come their way. Therefore, it would behoove every believer to learn how to use Scripture properly (Matt 4:1-11). However, a large number of younger Christians (physically and spiritually) are so clueless that the enemy is able to walk right into their lives with little difficulty. Unfortunately, so many mistaken and conflicting ways of thinking have been taught, modeled, and observed by believers today that it is hard to correct those who are only doing what they thought they were supposed to be doing. Many naturally and logically assume that they are maturing when the exact opposite is often true. This reality should move every spiritual educator into immediate action.

A large contributing factor to the general lack of education among church members is the lack of a general spiritual education among teachers! How many Sunday school or Bible study teachers do you think are actually qualified to be teaching the Word of God? How many teachers have gone through any sort of formal training in interpretation? Unfortunately, the answer is not very many, which is dreadful considering their job as a teacher is interpretationally intensive! In his book, Teaching To Change Lives, Howard Hendricks writes this:
Years ago, a cartoon showed two frames, each with a Mr. Brown talking with a young woman in his office.

In the first frame he's a public school superintendent, and he says, "I'm awfully sorry, Miss Smith, but after reviewing your application for a teaching position, we've decided we can't use you. We must have someone with at least five year's experience in teaching and preferably with a master's degree in education."

In the second frame Mr. Brown is a Sunday school superintendent, and he says, "You'd make a wonderful teacher, Miss Smith. I realize you haven't been a Christian very long, and you feel you don't know much about the Bible-but there's no finer way to learn the Bible than to teach it. And you say you have no experience working with kids in this age group-but I'm convinced you'll grow to understand and love them. Really, Miss Smith, all we're looking for is a willing heart."

What a sad but true commentary on our low regard for the teaching of God's word. To teach children that two plus two equal four, you need a minimum of four years of higher education. To teach the unreachable riches of Jesus Christ, anything is good enough… and that's why it too often degenerates into a ministry of mediocrity.
It is all too often the case that someone expressing a desire to teach is teaching the very next week but without any kind of instruction, periodic inspection, or verification as to whether they are the right person for the job or not. Another common scenario is the pastor declaring the need for teachers from the pulpit and anyone who volunteers is automatically made a teacher in the area needed regardless of strengths, weaknesses, training, or giftedness. While this would never be the case with a church calling the executive pastor, music minister, education minister, youth minister, etc. this haphazard method seems to be all to common in the teaching department of churches. Many educational ministers are so desperate for teachers that they will take anyone who volunteers; along with a few more they have been able to coerce and guilt-trip into taking a class.

While it should be a well known principle, the following statement is often disregarded: a need does not constitute a call. Just because there is a need for children, youth, or adult teachers in your church doesn't automatically mean that anyone who volunteers is the best person for the position. It is true that availability and willingness are huge factors in looking for teachers but they should not be the only ones considered. And while it is true that a willing person can be taught, more often than not, any real instruction is left wanting. Therefore, in children, youth, and even adult classes teachers are often "thrown to the wolves" with little or no help from anyone. The emphasis on proper training is essential because teaching consists of more than just showing up each week and reading out of a quarterly. You would hope that the person counseling you on how to raise your children, how to have a happy marriage, or where to invest your money knows something about the field in which they are giving advice. Why, then, should it not be the same with Sunday school and Bible study teachers? If my car broke down my first instinct would not be to call the nearest baker and ask him to come look at my engine. I would call an auto mechanic because fixing cars is his specialty. Likewise, teachers are expected to be "authorities" on Scripture, but with no formal training they are often only authorities on their own opinions of Scripture.

Most Christians know and will readily attest to the fact that the Bible is important to their lives. Nevertheless, how exactly the majority of its contents pertain to them personally is usually unknown. Bridging the gap between Scripture's actual relevance and functional relevance is the challenge facing Sunday school and Bible study teachers all across America. It has often been said concerning pastors and preaching that a light mist in the pulpit is a heavy fog in the pew but the same is also true of a teacher standing in front of a class. If the teacher doesn't understand something clearly there is no hope for the listener to grasp it clearly either. However, with proper understanding, the teacher is able to take the Bible-an ancient collection of various kinds of literature written to people living at a different time, with a different language, with a different culture, in a different part of the world-and turn it into an exciting relevant word from God for their audience's problems today. Due to the sheer number of possible complications when attempting to interpret and apply Scripture there must be some sort of required, structured, and in-depth teacher training. Not only would this produce better qualified teachers but it would also slow down the attrition rate of teachers and members alike.

III. SOLUTION

A headache is often a symptom or telltale sign of some other underlying problem in the body. If only the symptom is dealt with the real issue may never be solved but rather allowed to grow worse and worse until what would have been a relatively simple solution becomes major surgery. Much of the spiritual immaturity described above is only a symptom of the underlying cancer of biblical illiteracy that, again, better preaching, more book studies, and longer evangelism training will not fix; though it may cover it up for awhile. There must be a proactive educational program set up for teachers that will instruct them in the basic principles of correct biblical interpretation. These properly trained and qualified teachers would then be able to share their knowledge with those in their classes, which would begin fighting biblical illiteracy at the lowest and most entrenched levels. However, without such an educational program, error will be free to abound and grow increasingly stronger throughout all of Christianity till only a hollow shell is left. By focusing on the principles of proper biblical interpretation we will be fulfilling the command and avoiding the chastisement spoken of by Paul in 2 Timothy 2:15; "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth."

Most Christians fall into one of the following four categories:
Starving for something but they don't realize it's the Word of God
Starving for the Word of God but don't know how to feed themselves
Starving to death through malnutrition because of faulty interpretation
Starved to death waiting to be shown and now no longer care to learn
We must help every believer into a fifth category:
Flourishing in their relationship with God based on a fuller understanding of His Word