The reason for the series is that there are so many people who either don't know anything about the Bible or they've been Christians for a long time and have essentially been taught to misuse the Bible. Now, I believe God can work even through misinterpretation, but it can also be very dangerous. So what are some ways people misuse the Bible?
I can remember friends telling me how that book was passed around their workplace and people started praying that prayer as some kind of magical incantation that would make them rich and happy. Most of them never cracked open their Bible. But I think all of us at one point or another have gone to Scripture to try to justify something we already believe. That's why having an understanding of the whole of the Bible is very important as we live out our faith.
Taking verses out of context. This is probably the most common misuse of the Bible. We find individual verses and apply them in ways they were never intended to be taken. I can remember a few years ago, a book called the Prayer of Jabez. The prayer was from 1 Chronicles 4:10, "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.”
I can remember a friend telling me this book was being passed around his workplace and people were using the prayer of Jabez as a sort of magical incantation to bring them success and influence, which is not really the point of the prayer at all. In fact, the prayer is such a small and abrupt mention in the passage, that I'm not sure we can make much theology of it. But people do this all the time with individual passages of Scripture.
Not understanding the type of literature. Some people don't realize it, but the Bible was not just dropped out of the sky as a whole, but it was written-inspired by God-over the course of thousands of years by many different authors, using a number of genre (narrative, poetry, correspondence, philosophical argument, etc) to communicate God's interaction with humans. As we read scripture, we have to understand the intent of the particular passage, rather than always taking the words at face value.
Don't misunderstand, I'm not saying the Bible is completely symbolic. There are some words that are meant to be taken at face value. For instance, while the parable of the Good Samaritan or other parables are analogies, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that "if Christ has not been raised (actually, physically raised) our preaching is useless and so is your faith."
Even in the gospels, though, we should understand that ancient historians didn't do history exactly the same way we do today. Today, we're only concerned about the objective facts and it's a virtue to try to keep any interpretation out of it (though, many would argue that's impossible). Ancient historians were more concerned with the meaning than the details. This is not to say they didn't think what actually happened was important, but it wasn't their primary focus. The gospel writer Luke set out to write "an orderly account" of the life of Jesus. The facts were important to him, but the highest value for Luke was to communicate who Jesus was, what he taught, and what he did. So sometimes when we nitpick about who really went to the tomb on Easter morning or what were the exact words said, we kind of miss the point.
The same thing happens with the book of Revelation. We can get very distracted by Revelation if we don't understand that it was written as a kind of "Old Testament prophecy" in New Testament times. At the very beginning of the book of Revelation, John himself writes that it's written to encourage the believers in the first century that are going through times of persecution. Now, we can still learn from it, but I think we misread it when we become preoccupied trying to determine the date of Jesus' coming or what exactly the "mark of the beast is." That's not really the point.
Using Scripture as a weapon. How many times have people sat in church and thought, "I wish my sister could hear this?" Probably more than anyone would care to admit. Well, this is often what we do with Scripture when we quote verses to condemn other people. We use passages like in the book of Hebrews, "For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart."
Well, too often we treat the Bible as though it judges the everyone else's thoughts and attitudes and we're happy to point that out, while ignoring the thoughts and attitudes it judges in ourselves.
Really, the point of the Bible is to show us who God is and what's our place in the world. He's our loving creator who gave us the freedom and the responsibility to partner with him as co-creators. We mess up and he doesn't give up. The world is going somewhere and the best thing we can do is to align ourselves with God's purpose in the world. The series "Puzzled by the Bible" will give us the big picture of the Bible so we can know where to put the little pieces!
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