The Bible says...WHAT?!

First, let me apologize for being lax on blog postings. It was part my fault, and part technical difficulty -- our Blogger site insisted for several days that they were "unable to upload new posts at this time."



Now, onto the question at hand. Today's question is this: When have you experienced the conflict between the different ways that people read and interpret the Bible?



If you were in church a couple of weeks ago for my first sermon in this series, then you've heard this story. But it bears repeating because it addresses this question so completely.



When I first discerned my call to ministry at age 17, excitedly, I shared my revelation with my friends. Everyone was positive, except for one friend who said the following to me:



"It's really great that you've figured out that God has placed a call on your life. But I doubt God would be calling you to be a pastor because, you know, in the Bible it says "women should not speak in church"...so maybe, God is calling you to be a Christian Educator, or maybe..."



...he said the following with great enthusiasm...



"...a Pastor's Wife."



So, if you ask me whether or not I have experienced conflict in the different ways people read the Bible, undoubtedly, my answer is, "YES, yes, I have!" It took me a long time, a lot of prayer, conversation, and learning to get past this one.



What became critical for me and my relationship to the Bible was to learn about the history an context of Biblical texts as I read them. Take the passage my friend referred to, for instance. In context, this text doesn't say anything about women preaching. It's referring to women who were interrupting worship with their questions. Without understanding the history related to and context of the passage, it would be easy to misinterpret.



You should know that I am still friends with the person who said that to me. That may seem unfathomable to you. But, I really believe in the Unity of the Body of Christ. Maintaining relationship with people who are different from me expands my worldview and enables me to better understand what I, personally, believe. It also allows me to experience the grace of God in profound ways. There's a lot of grace involved when you are in relationship with people who are diametrically opposed to who you are. That grace is real and so is the relationship that follows even if we disagree on how we read our Bibles.