The question I propose is this, should we just accept that the average American Christian doesn’t have the intellectual ability to read a passage of scripture and understand it and therefore spoon feed them the understanding, whether through a paraphrased Bible or from the pulpit, or should we push them to understand the Bible by teaching them to read a passage of scripture and understand it on their own?
The problems with the former are numerous. Here are three off the top of my head:
1. It gives power to the translator and the pastor and away from the people. Wasn’t that one of the problems of Rome during the reformation?
2. It doesn’t prepare them to defend against heresy, as they could be easily led astray by another.
3. It doesn’t prepare for the future but accepts the present. Someone might struggle to interpret scripture on their own, but to therefore just accept it and not pursue understanding will hurt the next generation as they will not have such a drive to understand scripture either.
Agree? Disagree?
I agree. I think that preparing the future generation to interpret and use scripture for the glory of God is huge. I’ve been reading this book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer called Life Together, which I would encourage you to read it’s amazing! In that book he talks about how the word of a brother’s heart is uncertain yet when we have fellowship the word of the other brother is truer. This is true for me at least. There are times where I read the bible and I do not understand, or I have doubts. Yet when I meet with a brother, or sister, I am left more encourages sometimes than if I were by myself. So I think that while the interpretation of scripture is huge so is fellowship, which I know you weren’t saying that it isn’t huge. I just think that when we read we should seek other brothers and sisters to shoot what we read and our ideas off of each other. You know?