Testing our views

Continuing on from the last post I just want to make a few last comments about using the bible to make verses and passages understandable.

Testing views and ideas
Often these ideas have been inherited from other people’s views, or books, or things we’ve heard, but never taken the time to look in scripture to find out if they are true.
This is one of the biggest problems that we all face; we’re hungry to know and to learn and that means the need for answers and fast answers at that, but so often we don’t take the care or the time to check those answers against the bible itself. It’s a trap we all fall into and it affects our bible reading and understanding because it means that we can come to lots of passages with preconceived ideas about the meaning; ideas which might not be biblical. This is where un-biblical views can become folklore amongst true believers and because we’re not trained at really studying our bibles we can carry these ideas around with us for years and years.
What does this all mean?
This subject is so important that whole systems of theology have been falsely based on traditional views about the way that the bible fits together. So, for example, one view is that the central theme of the bible is the nation of Israel, this view is called dispensationalism and it has led to a completely obscure view of God’s plans and purposes. It all started out with a particular view which when we measure it up against the bible, can’t be verified. There are other examples, but there’s not enough space here.
The point is we have to get all our views about the bible from the bible itself or we need to test views we’ve heard from other places by the bible. To put it bluntly it takes hard work and commitment of our time to check that we are reading the bible properly, but we have to do it if we really care that our views about the Lord, his purposes and all his work are true and correct. As Christians, not caring is not an option.

Hope this post has been useful. Keep an eye out this week for the next point: God and the Holy Trinity.