Thus says the Lord: "Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.
But they said, 'We will not walk in it.'" --Jeremiah 6:16

 

19 March, 2007   comments: (0) Back To The Bible   Do Your Feelings Have Veto-Power Over Scripture? There is no shortage of people today who refuse to believe something in the bible because it goes against their feelings or against some tradition that they were brought up with. We could nickname this error of Subjective Interpretation "if it feels good - interpret it". Those who succumb to it are sometimes heard to say "my God would never do that!" as they skip-over or explain-away passages that they don't personally prefer. And when we think of "small-groups", especially in those large churches that downplay (or even mock) theology, doctrine, and deep sermons, this is what often takes place; it's a pooling of ignorance in which everybody takes their best guess at what the bible is saying. My own mother recently said to me "what you are saying about the bible makes sense but I'm going to keep believing my way because I was brought up Catholic". She is however, willing to embrace bible passages that she thinks speak about Peter being the first pope. I have a Universalist friend who isn't willing to believe the passages in the bible about eternal destruction, saying of them "a good God would never keep somebody in hell". He does however, believe other parts of the bible. While some pick and choose which verses to believe, others give assent to them all, but interpret them according to "what feels right". One well known bible expositor had this warning against that practice: Avoid superficial interpretation. One of the common problems in interpreting the Bible is this little phrase, "This verse means to me...." so forth and so forth and so forth. Let me tell you something. It doesn't matter what it means to you, the question is what would it mean if you weren't alive? What would it mean if you didn't exist? What does it mean PERIOD is the issue, not what does it mean to you. Sometimes you'll hear people get together and supposedly have a Bible study which is little-more than a pooling of ignorance. People say, "Well, I look at this verse and I feel this verse is saying..." It doesn't matter what you feel. That has nothing to do with it. It's not a matter of how you feel about the verse, it's not a matter of what you think it means to you. Avoid ad-libbing in Bible interpretation. Avoid free wheeling in Bible interpretation. It's haphazard handling of God's Word. [More, John MacArthur] This is one of the things you will learn in the CrossTV Workman videos that are dedicated to showing Christians how to rightly interpret God's word. Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.636   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism