Memory and Interpretation

I think that one of the most annoying experiences a person can have is to watch a movie with someone who has already seen it numerous times and who likes to recite lines from the movie before they even happen.  This person knows the movie. He sees the film playing through his mind in advance. He has viewed the move so many times that he knows he is frontward, backward, inside-out. Nothing catches him off-guard.

After you see a movie so many times, you might become so familiar with the film that it no longer conveys new meaning. The same thing is sadly true for the way many Christians read the Bible, I think. This semester I am taking an advanced Greek class, and each week our assignment is to translate a chunk of Pauline material from the ancient Greek text into English. Several weeks ago, my professor pointed out that a danger in such translation is to do more remembering than actual translating. These passages that we translate are not especially new to any of us. We are seminary students who have read the New Testament multiple times, and it can become easy to allow my memory of the English versions of a given text to dictate the way in which I translate it. Sometimes I might come across an unfamiliar Greek word or grammatical structure, and I think, "Well, it looks like it says this, but that can't be right, because I know it must say something more like that." This isn't translating. It's remembering.

This same thing happens, not only in translation, but also in interpretation. I've been a Christian for a while now, and I've spent a lot of time reading and studying the Bible. Because of this, I think I know what the Bible says. So each morning, when I flip open my Bible and pick up wherever I left off the day before, I already have an expectation for what I should find. Even just by looking at the book and chapter number, or the headings on the page, I begin with a notion of what my reading that day will tell me. The conclusions I'm going to reach are often decided before I even start to read. Because I have already read the passage so many times before, I remember what I have already been taught the passage means rather than truly interpreting it afresh.

Christians like to be told what they already believe. Pretty early on, we tend to develop a set of beliefs, and we hold to those beliefs pretty stringently. And so when we read the Bible or hear a sermon, we expect those beliefs to simply be reaffirmed.

You can become so familiar with a text or an idea that you stop really listening.

Do you ever really expect to find something new when you approach God's Word? Do you ever anticipate that one of your long-held beliefs will be challenged? Are you ever open to gaining a new understanding of God and of what his design is for your life?

I don't think Bible-study is meant to just be an exercise in remembering. We should seek to interpret. We should seek every day to come to God's Word anew, with ears and hearts open to what he has to say to us. If we only remember what the passage says and use it to pat ourselves on our back, we never grow or mature. We just stay the same.

That's not to say that this is easy, or even entirely possible. We always read the Bible through the filter of theological frameworks, personal history, and cultural paradigms. But as much as we are able, we must still ask each new day, "God, what are you saying in this passage today?" And then be ready to be surprised. Be open to a new way of thinking. Because sometimes, God isn't saying what we've always thought he is.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear. That's where growth happens.

He who's sure he's already heard all there is to hear.....that's where maturation ends.