Reading the Bible is somewhat like looking into Harry Potter’s Mirror of Erised. That is, the actual meaning of the content aside, people tend to see in it what they want to see.
I don’t mean to suggest that it’s a magical book, designed to yield up a different content to each reader or listener. Rather, I’m talking about a phenomenon of the human mind itself, and not of the texts―a phenomenon that the reader brings with him to the text, and through which his interpretation and/or understanding of the text is influenced.
What I’m suggesting is nothing new. Nor is it profound. Nor should it be surprising, as people tend to do the same with any text they read or movie they see or conversation they hear. They tend to interpret it more in terms of themselves than in an objective way that’s intent on understanding fully whatever the author meant to convey.
So really, the way I see it, what a person is going to get out of reading the Bible is a question of both his or her willingness and skill. Do we want to understand what the authors and speakers intended to convey? Or do we want to find in it what we want to find in it? And if we do want to understand it as it was intended, do we know how to do that? Do we have the skill to decouple from our own assumptions and attitudes and biases and desires, in order to see the text for what it meant to the authors and speakers?
Or, alternately, are we the sort who want to see in it what we want to see in it, and who are willing to fudge on the interpretive work, in order to make it turn out to our liking?
Indeed! How could it be that there are very many people at all in this world who are fully honest, rational, and responsible with the Bible, and are willing and skilled to understand it as it was intended?
Dan Ariely’s most relevant and useful book, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How we lie to everyone―especially ourselves, paints a troubling (to me) picture of how dishonest we tend to be, whether we’re aware of it or not. He demonstrates (through experiments in the field) how people self-regulate their dishonesty when it grows too large for them to keep feeling good about themselves.
One fascinating finding is that even when they’re able to cheat without getting caught, very few will cheat completely and in every possible way, because if they did that, they wouldn’t be able to keep feeling good about themselves as people. So they cheat “a little”―and are somewhat careful not to do it “too much”. And when they find it’s getting too hard to feel good about themselves, based on what they’ve been doing, they’ll cut back a bit, and do less of it.
And you should know, he points out a common occurrence, where this kind of dishonesty seems to be much easier to “justify” if it can be considered to be “for a good cause”―such as with lying to spare a loved one’s feelings, or cheating the rules because it was “for the kids”. Apparently, having a nice-sounding excuse like that (does that sound nice?) goes a long way in greasing the skids of our common dishonesty.
And it’s not at all uncommon to find people cheating with the Bible in this way. I wrote earlier this week about an example of this very thing, whereby a great many churchers, claiming obedience to Jesus, will refuse to put hypocrites out of their fellowships (even though Jesus commands it), citing as their reasoning that it seems “unloving” to do so. They will spin the whole thing such that “it’s for a good cause” that they disobey Jesus, rather than understanding the whole subject the way Jesus understood it. That is, they don’t want to see it Jesus’ way
For whatever reasons, whether it’s favoritism or a fear of conflict―or whether kicking people out for unrepented sin is too scary, considering they have unrepented sin of their own―they’d rather not do it. So they cheat, and come up with fine-sounding (to them) reasons for disobeying Jesus.
And who among them is going to discern this cheat? Who in their camps is going to figure out, “Hey, guys, aren’t we cheating here?”
Very few will figure it out, because very few are the sort who would want to figure out that sort of thing if it were true. If it were true, they’d rather not know.
What Kind of Person Would WANT to Understand It All Correctly?
When Harry Potter discovered the Mirror of Erised―an enchanted mirror that displays the deepest desires of the person looking into it―he saw himself reunited with his parents, who had been murdered by “he who must not be named”. This was what he most wanted. This was his fundamental disposition of desire. There was nothing stronger in all his desires, so this is what showed as he looked into the Mirror of Erised.
And this raises an excellent question about us as we peer into the Bible. What is our deepest desire for that experience? What do we want the outcome of our reading to be? Do we want to see in the Bible that we are perfect people? Do we want to see in the Bible that we have a lot of work to do? Do we want to see in the Bible that we’ve got it made already? Do we want to see that we’re off the hook? Do we want to see that we’re in trouble? Do we want to see a happy story in the Bible? A sad one? Do we want the Bible to show us “positive” things? “Negative” things? Angry things?
What kind of people are we?
When we read, do we want to see ourselves, or do we want to see God? Do we want the Bible to be a book about us, or a book from which we can learn what God thinks and feels and wants?
I submit that only a very few people are highly intent on finding the latter in the Bible, and most are substantially influenced by wanting the Bible to mirror their own pre-existing view of things. Most, it seems, are not very willing to have their own understanding of this world rocked by the Bible, and will cheat instead to walk away from a reading feeling more secure and confident than we should.
Remember, God’s ways and thoughts and higher than our own (Isaiah 55:9), and it should not surprise us when we have to wrestle to grasp what he says. Nor should it surprise us to find ourselves surprised at it! We should expect to be surprised by it. We should expect to be corrected often―to have our understanding adjusted by further discovery, by longer and better reflection, and by comparing passages and connecting the dots and such.
But who signs up for that kind of experience when he decides to read the Bible? Who among us is like that? Who among us would even enjoy that?
Hermione would! She loved being a student. She loved it so much―the study and the learning―that she was crushed when the year-end examinations were canceled one year. Most all the others were elated, but she was very sad about it, for she had fully embraced the role of the learner, and welcomed the opportunity to be examined―to have her learning tested.
She was the one most likely to read a text, and to remember the important details in it. She was the most likely to catch the errors others made, and to tell them about it. She was the most likely to go looking things up―and to know where to look.
But when it comes to reading the Bible, who among us is like Hermione? And who even wants to be?
Who among us can decouple from our own thoughts and attitudes and desires in order to sit for even ten minutes wondering about what God was thinking when he said this or that, or when he inspired a prophet to write this or that passage?
I think the number is very low. I think it’s a rare thing.
And if we’re not like that, can we even be trusted to interact with the Bible without cheating about what it means? Can we even be trusted to discern a fact in its pages, or to perceive a literary image being used by the authors? Or are we so disinterested that we’re apt to miss such details in the texts?
Of course, he knows!
Doesn’t God know the Bible is like this? Doesn’t he know that there’s no guarantee we’re all going to understand what he intended it to convey? Doesn’t he know that of one hundred readers, there will be one hundred differing impressions of what the Bible means on this or that topic, or in this or that passage?
Of course, he knows!
Yet even so, it would seem that he has had these writings delivered safely to our generation, for our consumption. And we would do well to ponder this for quite some time.
Why is God willing to be misunderstood? Why did he not design the Bible such that it’s impossible to misunderstand it? Why not just zap us all with instant understanding, rather than to design it where so much is dependent upon the attitudes and skills we have acquired?
In a way, it seems quite true that “You get out of it what you put into it.” It’s an imperfect way to say it, I think, but there’s definitely a correlation between the kind of effort and intent and skill we put into our Bible study, and the quality of the understanding we get as a result. And I do think it comes down to what is our fundamental desire in reading. If we most want to know what God thinks, and if we are skilled in the business of reading and of decoupling, we’re going to walk away with treasures we would not have seen had we had any other desire instead.
Why, then, does so much bad Bible work permeate our culture?
Why doesn’t God make us do better? Why doesn’t he knock some sense into us, or grab us by the lapels to make us reason things out better?
I think it’s because the whole thing is designed to be voluntary. The one who wants to turn himself in, so to speak―who wants to submit himself to whatever God had in mind―is the one most likely to understand the scriptures, whether the others are the most likely to be misled by their own cheating-and/or-ignorant interpretations.
And I think this is all a matter of degrees, for none of us has a perfect heart and mind from which to approach the Bible. Something like a human culture is quite complicated, and I see no indication in the Bible that there was ever going to be a time on Earth when everybody was going to be thinking straight.
No, I think that we swim at our own risk down here. That is, I think we reason at our own risk―that we can do our best work or not, and that even our best may not be perfect, and may be in need of correction, which we can (maybe) discern through testing our ideas alongside other passages of scripture, and through extended periods of reflection and discussion and such. And to me, this seems quite the humble position to be in. It seems to test us, that we are put here with no guarantee that we will get it right, and yet, we have the option to keep at it anyway, if we like.
And so it seems to come down to love. That is, how much do we love God and his scriptures? How much do we want to understand what he meant? How much do we love to please him and to understand?
In one way, we could say that “The Bible is for everybody”, but in another way, we can see that it’s not going to yield up its treasures for just anybody. In this way, it’s quite a special book, and for a special audience. And it’s from this angle that I have argued elsewhere that “The Bible is not for everybody”―that it’s not for the dishonest, irrational, and irresponsible, except inasmuch as they might choose to change their ways in response to it. Then it’s for them all day long!
