#proof-texting

Sometimes it seems like people are reading from different Bibles.

I don’t mean different translations.

Depending on who it is, listening to what they say about the Bible. And the way they talk about what it means. It’s more like they’re reading radically different books.

It’s always made me uneasy. Still does. But I never understood what was going on until I was studying to become a deacon.

When one of my instructors started explaining all of the different ways that people read the Bible. Going over my notes after class, it occurred to me that (except for the ones designed to reduce the Bible to dreary academic trivia) all of them were really just different ways of doing one of two things.

Either they were a way for me to impose my ideas onto the Bible.

To make the Bible say what I wanted. So I could pretend that God agreed with me.

Or they were a way for me to get God’s ideas out of the Bible.

For God to cut through the clutter and speak to my heart. Even if it isn’t what I wanted to hear.

Especially if it isn’t what I wanted to hear.

This is what the debate in today’s Gospel speaks to.

Do we accept the truth from the words of God? Even if it’s not what we want? So that we can gain the eternal, even if it comes at a price in this present?

Or do we try to pretend that it means something else? So we can get what we want in this passing moment? At the price of losing the eternal?

If we’re honest, we already know the answer to this one. We just don’t want to admit it.

Because it threatens our feeble and increasingly desperate efforts to pretend that we’ve got this.

It grates against our unspoken sense of entitlement. That God owes us something for being the wonderful people that we are.

And it lays bare who we’re really worshipping.

“They measure God by themselves, and not themselves by God.” – St. John of the Cross

A Moment before the 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

One of the most effective ways to misunderstand the Bible?

Take a verse or phrase in isolation. Ignore the verses around it. Don’t ask about the original audience. Then apply that quote to…whatever. Preferably something completely unrelated to its original context.

When I learned how to do it growing up, we called it proof-texting.

What I figured out later is that proof-texting is a way to make the Bible say whatever you want. So you can pretend that your idea is actually God’s.

The verse that this gets done with the most?

“Judge ye not, lest ye be judged.” And it shows up in this Sunday’s Gospel.

People take “judge ye not” out of context.

All. The. Time.

To prove all kinds of points. Usually so they can go after someone else.

Which is the other problem with proof-texting (besides missing what God is really saying). It’s an easy way to abuse the Bible. As a weapon.

So what’s the context for “judge ye not?”

Jesus has just finished the Beatitudes. All the “blessed are the…” statements, and all the “woe unto you…” statements.   

The next thing He says is this Sunday’s Gospel. Where Jesus takes the Beatitudes from proverbs into practice. It’s all about living the Beatitudes.

Understood in its context, the meaning of “judge ye not, lest ye be judged” becomes clear.

It’s a condition of God’s mercy.

Just like the condition of God’s forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer (“…as we forgive those who trespass against us”).

I can’t expect God’s mercy, if I don’t give others my mercy.

Which means?

When I see the guy with the cardboard sign, I should buy him breakfast.

Not ask whether he’s worthy of breakfast.

A text without context is a pretext. A proof-texter looks for isolated verses (isolated: because they’ve been ripped out of their rightful context) to support certain (erroneous) belief/s. An examples of proof-texting ⬇️ Isolating 2 Corinthians 5:19 not only from the context of the entire chapter, but also from verse 18 with which it forms an entire sentence – done to back up the proof-texters…

There are some within the religious world who do not condone the practice of using the Scriptures as the foundation of what one believes, or “proof-texting” as it is sometimes called.  Granted, isolating Bible verses and using them apart from their context is not “rightly dividing” God’s Word (2 Timothy 2:15).  To could say, “The Bible says in Matthew 2:16 that a king said to kill babies!  That…

The Case for Biblical Interpretation

I spend too much time on Facebook following a conservative United Methodist page. I often post articles which I know will elicit strong responses, and I have to laugh at some of the mental gymnastics some of these people (many clergy) go through to justify their “Bible-believing” positions. A recent exchange serves as a good example of why we can’t take the Bible literal, and why discernment is…

If you remove the context of a quote to line up with an ideological opinion you have, it’s called eisegesis, sometimes called “proof-texting”. 

If you do this repeatedly, it’s called “quote mining”.

A quote is never “out of context” simply because you don’t like or understand its implications. 

Proof-Texting is a Bad Habit that we Need to Break (Part 5 of 10 ways we must read the Bible differently)

#5.  Proof-texting is a bad habit that we need to break ourselves of. Simply citing chapter and verse does not end any theological/biblical argument!

I will define proof-texting as the idea that if we can cite a single verse from the Bible whichsupports the point that we are trying to make, then no “Bible believing” Christian can disagree with us, because the word of God is on our side. Did you…