The following is based upon a true story:
Recently, someone requested my understanding of a particular passage in the Bible. I found adequate research, but I was limited as the person hardly ever chooses to read anything. I was restricted to either YouTube content or podcasts. Fortunately, I found both.
Incredibly, so much content is freely available online presently. One can do full degrees via the internet! The problem is that there is so much, it is hard to determine which is legitimate and which will lead to poor misunderstandings like that which will follow. One has to be careful in what one chooses to consume.
He seemed to think I was an excellent place to get decent advice. However, like many, I found he only wanted my stamp of approval on his view to add a feather to his cap. He did not like the fact that I would dare disagree with his assumed, correct point of view as the only possible reading of the text. That was absurd! It could not be possible. Then, why did he ask me if he already knew the answer?
What amazed me was this quality scholarship fell upon deaf ears as being relegated to merely “man’s opinion.” In his estimation, it was nice but wrong because I offered something with which he chose not to agree. His “literal” interpretation was far better than the nuance I had presented. He fully believed God would have him continue in a relationship tarnished by sin because the “literal” interpretation was, in his estimation, the only possible reading of the text.
I found his view of God and Jesus to be less convincing myself. He placed God in a box whereby he had become God’s replacement determining what God had said remarkably making God out to be more like him than allowing the text to transform him in to becoming more like God. In other words, his opinion was deemed correct over any scholars’ points of view. He failed to realize he, too, had man’s opinion in his own, for who has a direct line with God?
Later that very same day, he got into a severe argument with another person. The other party brought up the relatively new term “gaslighting” that has gained much traction in today’s vernacular. The spat was bitter enough that, in his opinion, he had to go to the police station and feared for his and his family’s safety. He thought this person suggested he was to be doused with gasoline and would set him and his on fire!
The person played along at his unfortunate expense. In the times in which we presently live, the police must get these cases all the time. Finally calming down, he decided to look the term up online and found out what it meant and the context for which the conversation had gone—hence this post. Without context, anyone might assume that before the recent events that have led to the modern use of the term “gaslighting,” what would one think? This example is an important reminder that without context, words can quickly be taken out of the context and leave one with grave consequences.
He honestly thought “literally” this is what gaslighting meant. Now, if one does not know what the term means, perhaps one should look it up. The fact is, he reads the Bible as if he is an authority on it and its words. He gets the same readings many do, which feeds the fallacies that flood the internet presently. He is not willing to read nor trust those who do to allow him a better understanding of the biblical text.
He chooses never to read. Perhaps, he would have a lot of his thinking changed if he did! He realizes it is too much work; yet he fails to realize the value of those who attend to such work! He disbelieves scholars who spend their lives pouring over the texts to help him have a better understanding all because they proffer merely “man’s opinion,” never realizing that is all he has unless he has yet to reveal, as some try to postulate, having some direct line with God. His view is typical of internet theology done from the armchair that plagues our world today.
Sadly, I used to be just like him and have matured beyond where he is, but I find it most challenging to help him see the error of his ways. He had others believing he and his family were in danger. They got his story from his point of view rather than hearing all sides and understanding that is not what the other person intended. It was merely an example where language failed to communicate in such a short time.
In the Bible, the time between what is being transmitted and to us in the twenty-first century only compounds this immensely as the reader is thousands of years removed from the text. Before one gets the wrong impression of the text, it might be better to consult those reliable resources to help one find common ground before jumping to conclusions. One must remember these texts come from ancient times written in now dead languages and must be carefully handled if one presumes they carry God’s authority before one misuses them. There is much danger in presumptuous readings of the Bible and then blaming God when he fails to live up to that “opinion” of what he meant while refusing to pay attention to the points of view of others who spend their lives wrestling the texts to help bring out its meaning in the context of its day.
The amazing thing is he still wonders, “why God has not resolved his present situation?” However to answer that question, I merely would have to offer him more of “man’s opinion.” So where then does one get God’s? I would say by listening to all parts of God’s body and trying to get as much of a picture as possible before hastily deciding upon one as the only reading of the text and take in as much of the thousands of years the text has been discussed into consideration as one possibly can often sifted through scholarship before deciding one’s won present view has to be the correct one.
