interpretation

All posts tagged interpretation

Day 36 of 40…Wrong

Posted by David Ward on 16/03/2016
Posted in: Bible, Communication, Lent, Personal thoughts, Theology. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Snoopy-Theology-Image

I came across this Peanuts cartoon…I hope it’s not a problem my copying it here! It seems to so aptly summarise the conversation between Jesus and the Sadducees, which in turn mirrors some of the controversies going on in parts of the church at present. Of course, admitting you might be wrong requires much humility…it does not imply a lack of assurance or trust in the Bible…but humility says “my interpretation or the interpretation of others that I favour may, just, be wrong”.

Picture1[27] Some of the , who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. [28] “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. [29] Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. [30] The second [31] and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. [32] Finally, the woman died too. [33] Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?” [34] Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. [35] But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, [36] and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. [37] But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ [38] He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” [39] Some of the teachers of the law responded, “Well said, teacher!”

[40] And no one dared to ask him any more questions. [41] Then Jesus said to them, “Why is it said that the Messiah is the son of David? [42] David himself declares in the Book of Psalms: “ ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand [43] until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” ‘ [44] David calls him ‘Lord.’ How then can he be his son?”

[45] While all the people were listening, Jesus said to his disciples, [46] “Beware of the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honour at banquets. [47] They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.”

Luke 20:27-47 NIV

It seems that the Sadducees were:

Blinkered

eyes blinkered13283They only accepted that the first 5 books of the Bible as being the pure and accurate scriptures, so any idea not found there (like the modern heresy of ‘resurrection’ which could only be backed up from dodgy prophets like Daniel) had to be wrong. They also seem to have read a fairly patriarchal view of women as the child-bearing property of men from there as well. They base their theology Luke 20 38on a very small part of scripture, are quite certain that they, alone, have an exclusive, correct view of the truth. Does this sound familiar in a contemporary setting?

Jesus shows that they have failed to read and understand the sweep of even the small part of the OT scriptures that they rely on.

Blinded

Jesus used the focus on limited interpretation based on limited vision to raise another issue .I think that’s what all the stuff about David’s son being David’s Lord is about. It blind_leading_blindseems that Jesus may be suggesting that they had a very limited view of who the Messiah was. The scriptures did indeed speak of him as David’s son (in the sense of being a descendant of King David…which Jesus was) but I think Jesus is keen to point out that the resemblance to David ends there. The Messiah was not only the son of David, but David’s Lord, the son of God, who would not come like a human ruler using power and violence to win his Kingdom.In Matthew’s gospel Jesus call the religious leaders blind guides, leading the blind into a pit…

Bankrupt

Finally, Jesus extends his criticism of the religious leaders to draw in the teachers of the Law as well. They, he says, have a tendency to be morally bankrupt and hypocritical. I am by no means anti-clerical (I’ve been a minister myself), but I can’t help noticing that the picture of the self-important, privilege-seeking teachers going about dressed in a way that makes them ‘stand out’ from the crowd bears a striking resemblance to a stereotype of a certain kind of vicar. Unfortunately, behind the show is a corrupt and greedy heart.

Caution BibleI think that the scriptures should carry a ‘Health Warning’. Just about any position you care to mention can, and probably has, been justified by scripture, from slavery to racism, from oppression to greed.

It just shows what happens if you read the book without having a heart changed by a relationship with the one it sets out to reveal. Unless of course, my interpretation is completely wrong…

Day twenty-one of forty…Puzzling Stories

Posted by David Ward on 01/03/2016
Posted in: Bible, Lent. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

puzzledJesus did a lot of teaching using stories. Stories have several built in problems: the first is that it is a story and not a carefully crafted piece of moral teaching. The second is that depending on your personal situation, you may read or hear the story from the perspective of any one of the characters that it tells about…heroes and villains may very well be very subjective in that scenario.

Finally, (although there are probably many more) the story may well have more than one interpretation…what you hear may not be what the teller intended, unless, of course, the teller left it deliberately vague. Add to this that Jesus also had the incredibly annoying habit of rarely explaining his stories and perhaps parables are not the definitive,wonderfully clear teaching and motivational force preachers often make them out to be.

When we read one of Jesus’ stories we often get a clue from the context of the story…what event caused Jesus to tell the story? It’s probably worth also remembering that the Gospel writers edited the story to give it the particular slant they wanted with the audience to whom they wrote…the stories are not necessarily in a chronological order.

Jesus also made some cryptic comments which suggest he believed that if you needed to understand the message, and were open to the Holy Spirit, you’d probably get it.

 [9] Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

[10] When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. [11] He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables [12] so that,

“ ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,

and ever hearing but never understanding;

otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’”

Mark 4:9 (NIV)

Robert  Farrar Capon, in his book “Kingdom, Grace, Judgement” calls the parable of The Unjust Steward the “hardest parable”.

 [16:1] Jesus told his disciples: “There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. [2] So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.’

[3] “The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg— [4] I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’

[5] “So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’

[6] “ ‘Nine hundred gallons of olive oil,’ he replied.

“The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty.’

[7] “Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do you owe?’

“ ‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’ he replied.

“He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’

[8] “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.

Luke 16:1 (NIV)

I’ve heard many attempts at explaining this parable, many of which forget the reservations which I wrote about at the beginning of this blog post.

A read through any good commentary or book about the parables will enlighten you as to how others read the story…if I’m right, you probably won’t have heard many sermons preached on this passage.

For me it has many echoes of the parable of the lost sons, which precede it in Luke’s account. Themes of wasting of possessions, being at rock bottom and alone, a moment of clarity, and grace from an authority figure (a father and a rich man) appear in both stories. That’s how I start to try to make sense of what’s going on.

I don’t think I can say any more…it seems to go against the spirit of not explaining! (assuming I’ve understand it!)

What do you think…how does it make sense to you?

 

 

Polyphonic Pilgrim…

Posted by David Ward on 14/08/2014
Posted in: Books/Articles, Communication, Personal thoughts, Relationships. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment
Head to Head

The constant need to be right is not only incredibly annoying, it is also terminally divisive.

Perhaps I find an interesting article online. I read on into the comments section to see what others thought of it. The world of reason and opinion are rapidly left behind and I find myself on trial in a judgemental world of dualistic thinking.

It doesn't take long to realise that there are people out there who not only disagree with my interpretation of events but also think I am some sort of deviant thinker, who needs to toe their line or face the consequences. Unless I think the way they do I am clearly a lesser, maybe even a dangerous individual. The 'discussion' often turns to name-calling, threats and worse.

I am a lover of social media, but it presents a double curse:

  • that we can criticise another without responsibility, displaying a total disregard for the opinions, intelligence and personhood of all those people we decide are 'wrong' simply because they don't think like us.
  • that by being very selective about the online company we keep we can live in a very narrow virtual world where everyone thinks like us and we never have to face the challenge of opinions that differ to ours.

I was recently introduced to the idea of polyphony in music when reading Ian Adam's book of reflections “Running Over Rocks”. As I understand it, polyphony is about many voices, rather than monophony, which is 'one voice'; everyone singing the same melody at the same time would be monophonic, whereas two or more voices singing slightly different, but complimentary, melodies all together at the same time would be polyphonic…a simple example would be a round, like 'Frère Jacque” ('Are you sleeping?'). Composers like Giovanni Palestrina have turned this into an art form of multi-layered contrasting melodies making up a beautiful auditory experience.

Somehow, the many voices, interpreting the theme in many different ways, make the experience of listening to the music richer, bigger, more fulfilling, than everybody singing the same melody. There are many obvious parallels to our modern obsession with everybody having to sing 'my song, my way' and the dangerous, yet enriching possibility of many voices enlarging the horizons of our opinions.

I have always believed that the ability to live with things in tension is a mark of maturity, as is the ability to assert one's own views while maintaining the humility to be open to the idea that I might just be wrong. I struggle with this dualistic, black and white, right or wrong way of thinking; it disturbs me as I see all too clearly why our world is increasingly a dangerous place, with individuals, nations and cultures unable to reason and discuss or even to countenance the views or the culture of another. Worse, this face-off and disempowerment is all too frequently the catalyst for the perceived need to resort to violence.

Any opinion inevitably involves the interpretation of the data available, and our interpretations may vary wildly. Culture, age, life experience, social and political ideology, religious belief, world view…all these contribute to the screening process that goes on with every new piece of information we receive. Even those who share, say, a faith background sometimes disagree over the way that faith is lived and worked out in relation to others in the world.

A key idea in Celtic Christian thought, and in the Rule of St Benedict, is that Christ is often encountered in the stranger, in the one who's not 'like me'. I wonder how often I've missed out in meeting Jesus, or hearing him speak, because I've felt myself to be better than someone else.

Accepting that my way of seeing may not be the only way may not only bring me closer to another person or group of people, but may just enlarge my vision and make life richer. Dualistic thinking is narrow,competitive, rejecting, self-promoting and divisive. Polyphonic thinking, by contrast, is enlarging, co-operative, accepting, humble and unifying.

I'm not naïve enough to think that “all opinions are of equal merit”, and for certain views and opinions there is a global consensus that a thing is morally unacceptable…the pitfalls of libertinism, anarchy and syncretism have not escaped my notice. However, it seems to me that a judgemental dualism of those who are different to 'me' is rapidly spilling into every part of life…fundamentalism is by no mean restricted to the religious!

I think it would be true to say that my faith journey has been one of learning to love and accept voices speaking ideas and lives lived very differently to my own. It has enriched and enlarged my life…along with setting me up as a target to those who prefer the certainties of dualistic thinking.

“There's a famous story told of Jesus' opponents trying to trap him into giving the wrong answer to a question. It's a legal issue with political, religious and cultural undertones – and carries potentially dangerous implications for Jesus. It's about paying taxes, and whichever way he answers – with a yes or with a no – the Pharisees know he will be trapped…Jesus answers his dualistic critics with a clever and delightful song of polyphony. Give to the emperor what is rightfully his, and to God what is rightfully God's.” (Ian Adams Running Over Rocks page 49.)

Adams comments that not only does Jesus recognise the conflicting claims, but asks a further question of his own about where true worth belongs…allowing the listeners to add their own voices to the 'tune'.

How we respond to situations where views are polarised is vital. We need to try to step outside the situation and view the thought processes on both sides that have brought the issue to this point. Is there a bigger picture? Do both sides offer an element of truth that brings a broader perspective?

I'll let Ian Adams have the last word:

“Dualistic thinking is deeply ingrained within us. We can think dualistically about almost anything! Politics and religion might be obvious candidates, but it's just as prevalent in sport, food, music, art and culture. Seeing how far divisive thinking has shaped us can be a sobering experience. But we can and must learn a better way.”