Why we should read and interpret the Bible for ourselves
From WhyNotWiki
I don't believe that we should ever simply believe someone else's second-hand interpretations of Scripture. Instead we should read the Bible first-hand, discover for ourselves what it has to say, rest our faith and belief on the Bible alone, and test anything said about the Bible with the Bible itself.
I hope that anything said about the Bible will make you all the more eager to check out the primary source yourself to see if it is true.
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[edit] Historical basis: The Protestant Reformation
Relying on others to interpret the Bible for us is exactly the kind of dangerous thinking that led to the necessity of the Protestant Reformation.
Before the Reformation, many people didn't have the Bible available to them in their own language so they couldn't read it for themselves! The only languages in which the Bible was available were Latin, Greek, and Hebrew [I could be wrong about the details here]. The "language of the Church" was Latin, which the common people of the day could not read. Thus they were at the mercy of the Church to interpret the Bible for them.
Because the common man couldn't search the Scriptures for himself, he either had to trust what the church leaders taught him or choose to live in ignorance. The Church of the day became corrupt, teaching things that not only had no biblical basis (were based solely on tradition) but were actually contrary to what the Bible teaches.
Without access to the Bible, it is difficult to know what is a false doctrine and what is the truth.
So my point is that the church—and others who might interpret the Bible for us—are fallible (the Church has been wrong before); the Bible, however, is basically infallible. Not that our personal interpretation of the Bible cannot be incorrect! But the teachings and doctrines of the church should be tested by the Word of God.
Read more: (wikipedia:Sola scriptura)
[edit] The Bible is freely available today
God never desired his Word to be only accessible to church leaders, Latin scholars, and other "elite" groups. He wants his Word to be available to every man and woman on the planet. So it is truly a good thing that the printing press, the Internet, the International Bible Society, and other developments came along to help make the Bible available to everyone in their own language.
How privileged we are today to have such easy access to the Bible! (It was not always that way!)
[edit] It's all about a personal relationship with God!
Having a personal relationship with God is the only way you or I will be saved. One way we achieve that personal relationship is by spending time in God's Word.
[edit] Someone else can't eat your bread for you
Just like your pastor can't eat your meals for you and have it benefit you, so too can someone else's Bible study never be a substitute for eating the Living Bread—the Bible!
- "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
- In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
- Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
[edit] Get pure undiluted milk, not processed milk!
In a presentation I attended called "Experiencing God Through the Holy Bible" (at 2006-06-18 14:30 in the Walla Walla College Church for Camp Meeting 2006), Pastor Lloyd Perrin compared the Bible to milk.
- Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.
- Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.
Pastor Perrin made it very clear that there is a difference between natural milk (from a mother's breasts) and the processed cow's milk sold in the store. He described how dairy farms feed their cows hormones (like 50 different kinds of hormones!) so that the cows will produce more milk (6 gallons per cow per day!). Their udders end becoming huge and dragging on the ground either. They bring the cows in to milk them several times a day ("at least twice", according to [1]). Inside, they attach a machine to each of their nipples so that they can be as efficient as possible (a person can only milk 6 cows in an hour by hand; a machine can milk 100 cows/hour!). Theoretically, they "start" each of the nipples by hand, to get the pus and stuff out so it doesn't get into the milk supply; but Perrin claims that they don't actually do that. In summary, they treat the cows like machines. And as a result, we end up with things like trace amounts of many different hormones in the milk that we drink (if we drink milk at all, which I don't). Then they also have to homogenize and pasteurize the milk, probably to kill all the bad stuff that was allowed to get into the milk. In the end, it's very processed. The human milk that comes straight from the mother is a lot more pure and healthy for a baby. It was designed by God himself to be nourishment for the baby.
So, too, we should go for the pure "milk"—straight from the Source!
Pastor Perrin urged us to not let devotional books—as good as those books are (he admitted to liking many of them himself)!—be a substitute for reading directly from the Bible.
The viewpoints and interpretations of the Bible given in the devotional books are not bad, but they are the viewpoints and interpretations of the book's author—and so they are "second-hand". Perrin questioned his audience, ~ "Why settle for second-hand milk when you can get it first-hand?"
