A QUESTION OF INTERPRETATION

This story shows that interpreting the scripture according to present day thinking and practice is dangerous.

A 1973 Supreme Court decision in the USA known as Roe versus Wade legalized abortion on the basis that a woman has a right to privacy under the 14th Amendment to the US constitution.

The founders of the American Colony were Christians who were fleeing persecution by the English State Church. When the constitution was drawn up, the right to privacy under the 14th amendment to allow for abortion would not even have been on the horizon as it was virtually unknown when written.

To say that this amendment allows for abortion is patently untrue. That hasn’t stopped the social reformers from using it to get their pro-death agenda accepted as a right.

Fast forward to the church and scripture, we have a tendency to interpret what the scripture says in the light of what we want to achieve in the now and choose to ignore what it means in the light of when it was written.

A classic example is one major denomination that says if you want to be a paid pastor who runs a church and is shunted from place to place depending on your credibility and results, you have to fulfill the qualification for elders set out in Timothy.

It is as clear as day that this passage has nothing whatsoever to do with appointing a paid pastor who lauds’s it over the congregation which this denomination does and in most cases, the church is used to facilitate the ministry of the one man so they become his cheer squad.

Despite this fact, it doesn’t stop them from claiming scriptural authority for their actions based on this passage. They have chosen to interpret something that was written in the past to give authority for something in the present that was never intended.

In other words, they are no different to pro-abortionists who do the same.

The fact is unless you know the context you cannot know the content and all too often the church and its leaders completely ignore the context.

If we take just one statement from Timothy, it is obvious that the elders were chosen from men who lived in the town where they were appointed. In verse seven of chapter three it says that he must have a good reputation with outsiders.

How can a man brought in from a town 200ks away have a good reputation with outsiders? I rest my case.

Come to think of it God may have allowed the church to be pushed back inside the four walls of a building and become a private activity because it is not his church and he doesn’t want people to be contaminated by an apostate organisation.

Maybe that is why the true church is leaving apostate Christianity in vast numbers so they can be…the true church.