Why Don’t We All Read the Bible the Same Way?

If you at all pay attention to the world of Christendom, you are aware of the fact that a lot of people who claim to follow the teachings of the same book (the Bible) come to vastly different conclusions about what that book teaches. Why is that?

I think there are a lot of reasons: sometimes people read the Bible with less than pure intentions, and that can certainly affect the way it is interpreted. Other times people simply haven’t been trained very well, and this can warp their understandings as well.

But I think one of the biggest reasons that there is such a wide variety in the way the Bible is interpreted stems from the fact that people are very different from one another: we come from different ethnic, social, economic, and geographical backgrounds, and we also have significantly different personal experiences. All of these things combine to make us unique people who look at the world (and Scripture) in unique ways. It just makes sense that we would see some things differently. I recently read an example which illustrates this profound influence that our different backgrounds can have on the way we read and interpret Scripture.¹ 

Using the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15.11-32), one scholar had readers from different cultures read the story silently and then recount it to someone else. The results were surprising:

• Only 6 percent of American readers mentioned the famine that came upon the land while the prodigal was in the far country (15.14). In contrast, 100 percent of the recounted the way the prodigal wasted his estate (15.13).
• When the same exercise was used with residents of St. Petersburg, Russia, 84 percent mentioned the famine while only 34 percent mentioned the squandering.

So what’s the point?

In 1941, the army of Nazi Germany besieged St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) for about 2 1/2 years, leading to the death of 670,000 people (the picture above shows destitute citizens fetching water from a busted water line). The Russians polled in the exercise were survivors of the famine or descendants who had heard of the horrors of it throughout their lives, and thus it was only natural that they would be quick to hear of the problem of famine in the prodigal’s misadventures.

On the other hand, American readers had never experienced famine, but they definitely were familiar with wasteful and excessive lifestyles. It makes sense that they would seize upon these aspects of the parable.

While these differences don’t mean that the two groups would necessarily come to irreconcilably different interpretations of Jesus’ story, the example does illustrate how differences in our backgrounds and experiences can cause us to read the Bible differently, and can impact our interpretations accordingly.

To me, there are at least three implications of this point:

1. We need to be humble about our interpretations, realizing that they are at least in part influenced by our own personal experiences and backgrounds and thus, subject to bias. 
2. Since Scripture does not have an unlimited number of valid interpretations (if it did, it would be meaningless), it follows that the backgrounds and experiences of some people help them to arrive at valid interpretations, while those of others hinder them from doing so.
3. The solution is for us to study more and seek God’s guidance in understanding His word! This enables us to learn from each other, discovering the blind spots in our own perspectives and helping others to do the same. God doesn’t intend that His will for our lives be unintelligible, but that doesn’t mean that discerning it through Scripture won’t require time, effort, and practice.

● ● ●

¹ Croy, N. Clayton. Prima Scriptura: An Introduction to New Testament Interpretation (Baker Academic: Grand Rapids, 2011), 5-6.

Dwight D. Eisenhower on D-Day

Today marks the 68th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied Armies’ invasion of Europe in World War II.

Giving the order to the troops on June 6, 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower said,

“You will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely. The free men of the world are marching together to victory. I have full confidence in your courage, your devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory. Good luck, and let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.”

Today, I am thankful to all those who did not shrink from the difficult task that lay before them.

Book Review: Biggest Brother

I recently finished reading Biggest Brother: The Life of Major Dick Winters, the Man who Led the Band of Brothers by Larry Alexander.

Winters is a main character in the Band of Brothers book written by Stephen E. Ambrose and the HBO miniseries of the same name produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, and in Biggest Brother, Alexander goes beyond Winters’ time in WWII and gives a biographic account of his life.

All in all, I thought Biggest Brother was good but I didn’t love it. First, the account of the most exciting part of Winters’ life—his time with Easy Company of the 101st Army Airborne—is fairly redundant if you have already read or seen Band of Brothers. Also, in Biggest Brother Winters loses a bit of his virtuous luster, holding old grudges and giving frank and sometimes very negative evaluations of his fellow soldiers and friends. It is certainly true that becoming aware of some of Winters’s faults and shortcomings makes him more human, but it was nice seeing him as the idyllic American hero.

Of course, Winters still was a hero, and I think my favorite parts of the book were quotations from his own writing which underscore how dutiful and responsible he was:

“In three years, I’ve aged a great deal. It seems as if the college days and the days of civilian life when I did as I pleased are long gone. It must have been a dream, a small, short, but beautiful part of my life. All I do is work to improve myself as an officer, and them as fighters and as men, make them work to improve themselves. As a result, I am old before my time. Not old physically, but hardened to the point where I can make the rest of them look like undeveloped high school boys. Old to the extent where I can keep going after my men fall over and go to sleep from exhaustion, and I can keep going like a mother who works on after her sick and exhausted child has fallen asleep. Old to the extent where if it's a decision or advice needed, my decisions are taken as if the wisdom behind them was infallible. Yes, I feel old and tired from training these men to the point where they are efficient fighters. I hope it means some will return to that girl back home.”

After Germany surrendered, Japan continued to fight on, and Winters tried to explain to his mother why he felt like it was his duty to continue to fight, despite all of the work he had already done:

“I feel that God has been good enough to let me get through this war. As a result I am combat wise and ins a position to do some good to help a lot of men. I know I can do the job, better than or as well as any of the rest. How can I sit back and watch others take men out and get them killed because they don’t know; they don’t have it? Maybe I’ll get hurt or killed for my trouble, but so what if I can make it possible for many others to go home. Their mothers want them too, the same as mine. So what else can I do and still hold my own self respect as an officer and a man?”

Especially in comparison to today’s society, where words like duty and responsibility are almost entirely foreign concepts, Winters’ character shines as an example to emulate.

• • •

While reading Biggest Brother, I was struck (somehow, for the first time) how young these guys were who went out and basically saved the world. For those who have seen Band of Brothers, here are the ages of some of the major characters on June 6, 1944 (D Day).

• Colonel Robert Sink–39 (who seemed so incredibly old in the movie)
• Major Dick Winters–26
• Captain Lewis Nixon–25
• First Lieutenant Harry Welsh–25
• Captain Ronald Speirs–24
• Second Lieutenant Carwood Lipton–24
• Staff Sergeant Denver “Bull” Randleman–23
• First Lieutenant Lynn “Buck” Compton–22
• Sergeant Donald Malarkey–22
• Staff Sergeant Bill Guarnere–21
• Staff Sergeant Darrell “Shifty” Powers–21

Ordinary Men

Sometime last month I finished reading Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by
Christopher Browning, and the experience was disturbing enough that it sent me running to the comforts of Star Wars books for the next couple of weeks.

Ordinary Men is an in-depth study of German Reserve Police Battalion 101, and the way it was used to massacre and round up Jews for deportation to death camps in Poland during World War II.

It isn’t exactly an easy read—long sections of (necessary) background information explaining Nazi policy and wartime police organization plagued by unfathomably long German words are juxtaposed with matter-of-fact accounts of the commission of unspeakable atrocities. But Ordinary Men succeeds in making its point.

That point—that ordinary people placed in unusual circumstances are capable of doing terrible things—is not an unusual one (think Lord of the Flies or Heart of Darkness), but it’s a point that is driven home with more force than usual because this time, it clearly is rooted in historical fact.

Browning argues that the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 weren’t your stereotypical uber-Nazis. For the most part, they were middle-aged men, rejected by the army and without Nazi party affiliation who were old enough to remember when Nazis weren’t in power and Nazi ideals weren’t the norm. As a whole, they weren’t especially racist, they hadn’t been thoroughly indoctrinated with Nazi propaganda, and they weren’t battle-hardened. They were just ordinary men.

And yet, the vast majority of them found it easier to kill Jews than to stand out from the group.

As Browning concludes:

“…The collective behavior of Reserve Police Battalion 101 has deeply disturbing implications.

There are many societies afflicted by traditions of racism and caught in the siege mentality of war or threat of war. Everywhere society conditions people to respect and defer to authority, and indeed could scarcely function otherwise. Everywhere people seek career advancement. In every modern society, the complexity of life and the resulting bureaucratization and specialization attenuate the sense of personal responsibility of those implementing official policy. Within virtually every social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms.

If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?”

It’s a chilling question to consider. After all, I’ve always considered myself to be fairly ordinary.

“The Most Noble And Benevolent Instincts Of The Human Heart”

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Neville Chamberlain, maybe because, not unlike Fred Merkle, he is another example of a historical figure who is remembered primarily for his biggest mistake.

Of course, in Chamberlain’s case, his mistake was more significant than losing the National League Pennant.

Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of Britain from 1937-1940, is (in)famous for his “policy of appeasement”—an attempt to deal with the rising threat of Nazi Germany through diplomatic channels rather than military action.

This policy led to his being duped by Adolf Hitler into signing the Munich Agreement in 1938 in hopes of maintaining peace in Europe, but in reality, it just allowed Hitler to overrun Czechoslovakia without interference from Britain and France.

Chamberlain returned to Britain among cheers, declaring that “peace for our time” had been accomplished. But then, as it became clear that Hitler was less interested in freeing Germans from the Sudetenland and more interested in taking over the world, the cheers ceased and Chamberlain’s popularity plummeted.

He lost his Prime Minister position by May 1940, and would be dead by November of that same year.

Winston Churchill, a great critic of Chamberlain and his eventual successor as British Prime Minister, eulogized him in the House of Commons in this way:

“It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart—the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour. Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned.”

People who are filled with hope and idealism are often disappointed in life and taken advantage of by others, but I don’t think that makes them any less admirable.