On Interpretation...

A little light reading before going to sleep...

Romans 14:
1 As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. 2 One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. 3 Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. 4 Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

I thought I understood this passage. It seems clear enough, right? He starts out by telling the recipients of the letter to welcome the weak. And then he explains how it goes both ways, how each side shouldn't judge the other, and assuming that the recipients are not the weak ones, verse four says, "Who are you...?" so I read that as telling the strong not to judge the weak because only God judges. Only God decides who is righteous and who isn't, if any of us are at all.

And then Romans 14 goes on to say:

5 One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

So I took that as saying whatever we do, whether we do stuff or don't do stuff, whatever our reasons, as long as our heart is for God and as long as we live to honor God, then our lives are for God. Because Christ died for how our actions fail. Christ died because we never get the actions right. Christ died so having a heart for the Lord would be enough. He died so it is enough.

Like I said, I thought I understood the passage. It seemed pretty clear. But since I was too lazy to hold up my 4,000 page ESV study bible and my new toy is lighter, I decided to read it online, where the study part is more accessible in the right side bar... so I couldn't help but read it, even though I thought I understood the passage.

This explanation caught my eye:

"Rom. 14:4 This verse is likely directed to the weak. It is not their place as fellow servants to pass judgment on the strong. The strong stand or fall before God, and they will stand righteous before God on the last day because God will give them grace to keep them from falling away."

After reading it the way I did, the way I explained above, and then reading that... it just burned me up.

What happened to Matthew 5:5's “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth"? Or Colossians 3:12:

12 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

In that Romans passage above, I thought the strong and weak were just being contrasted. Some need more rules than others to feel like they know God. Some don't. But the idea is that both are trying to be good with God in their own way.

"Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind."

That's what bothers me about pastors relying on commentaries and analysis outside of their own grasp of the Bible: it seems possible that all this Bible study could be similar to a chain of laboratory research that has detrimental flaws in some of the steps. That's not to say commentaries aren't important. No, from what I know, they save a lot of time and provide important insight to better informed Christians like the sermons do for lesser informed Christians like me. They are important.

But the Bible is the Living Word. It's the Word of God. If you're a Christian, you supposedly believe that, because if you don't, then you don't believe what John said, and if you don't believe what John said, then how do you believe the rest of the Bible is true and if you don't believe the rest of the Bible is true, how do you believe ANY of the Bible is true?

And John said in chapter 1:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Then again, maybe I've misread and misunderstood that too.

Probably.

But God loves us. God loves us individually and wholly. God wants a relationship with us. God wants us to worship Him and what that means is God wants us to live in the wholeness and spiritual completeness that is only in Him which, when we really begin to understand what that means, we have no choice but to talk about His awesomeness to those around us. Right? In a nutshell?

And so, the Word is God. And here is the Word communicating to us. Like, today, a random Tuesday (my favorite of the random days), God suggested I read before bed. Read what? Romans 14. So I did. I read it with an open heart and open mind, ready for God to say something to my soul. And He did. He provided me with a passage that says, "Live for Me. That's all I want. Don't worry about the p's and q's about it. Just Me. I'm the only thing that matters." And if you read this blog, or even my other blog sometimes, you'll know that I feel like a crap Christian. I don't fit in. And God pulled me aside before I went to sleep tonight, on a night when I read an email from a church telling its members (and other subscribers) to pray for a girl because since she can't stand church, she obviously hasn't found Jesus and we (the subscribers) should be worried about that. So God gave me Romans 14. And every day, the words on those pages are the same. They don't change. But every day, every time God shows them to us, they're different. They're alive.

If God is God, then He can get His word to say anything He wants it to.

And the stuff in the side bar?

It just kind of kills it. Yes, we should know the historical context. We should know what they were talking about and use that to help us interpret the text. Yes.

But we should also just read it sometimes. Just let it affect us. Just let God make the Living Word come alive for us and for us alone. Let God talk through the Word.

Reading the Bible isn't like a textbook for exactly that reason- it's a book you have to read with your heart, not just with your mind.

And yes, it's a risky endeavor because what if you read something a certain way and it's not a godly interpretation? Well, then like they say, it's only from God if it fits His message. You do have to know the message to determine the difference. So you have to do both.

But, when I read a "scholar's" interpretation that just rubs me as being blatantly self-righteous, I'm going to side with my heart.

*shrugs*