How NOT to Apply the Bible
After playing in a bluegrass band my first year in Cru’s Music Ministry, there was a massive reorganization and the leadership asked me to become a vocalist in a choral/orchestral group – you know the type where the women wear evening gowns, the guys sport tuxedoes, and everyone on stage does elaborate hand gestures. NOT my style at all. I told them I would rather run sound, carry the equipment, or do anything that would rescue me from that fate. When I mentioned that I had played cello in high school, they agreed to assign me to the orchestra instead of being on stage. What a relief!
Along with playing in the orchestra, I also worked in the Music Ministry national office with about a dozen other people. Our schedule included weekly devotional messages given by one of our fellow musicians.
One particular talk stands out – but not for a good reason. The speaker fit the stereotypical profile of the sensitive, “heart-driven” musician, perhaps a bit lacking in common sense. He focused on the prophet Daniel’s spectacular visions in which he saw tumultuous oceans, grotesque beasts with multiple heads and horns, and numerous angels. In these visions, various heavenly beings also laid out God’s plans for earth’s future.
“Talk about a quiet time!” the speaker exclaimed. “They should all be like that.” He admonished us to never end our devotional time until we had truly had “met with God,” just like Daniel had. One of the other office staff guys – a more practical type – raised his hand and pointed out that just the week before the Music Ministry director had laid down the law and told us we absolutely had to be at our desks by 8:00 a.m. sharp. “What do I do,” he asked, “if it’s 7:30 and I don’t feel like I’ve had a supernatural encounter with God?”
The presenter hadn’t thought of that and, trying to recover, he blubbered a few words out.
He made two errors in urging us to have spectacular encounters with God every day.
Although he didn’t say so, he implied that we can dictate what our interactions with God should look like – a particularly dramatic experience every day. Wrong. I can faithfully present myself to God, but he is the one who determines what our time will look like.
He made a basic error in how to apply the Bible by assuming that an event that is described in the Bible means it’s a pattern always to be followed. There’s a difference between a descriptive passage (simply reporting an event) and prescriptive one (presenting something that is always true for every Christian). Even though the Bible reports something happened at a particular time, it doesn’t necessarily mean it always applies to everyone throughout the ages.
Here’s another example. People who say that every believer should speak in tongues point to Acts 2 where all the believers spoke in tongues. “When the Holy Spirit came,” they say, “everyone spoke in tongues. So we should too.” However, verses 44-45 in the very same chapter report that all the believers had everything in common and sold their property and possessions. My question to those who promote universal tongue-speaking is that if they take the report of everyone speaking in tongues as necessary for all Christians, shouldn’t they say the same about living in communes?
I’m neither speaking for nor against speaking in tongues or living in communes. My point is that just seeing that something happened once is not enough to establish it as a universal requirement. You need other verses that show it always applies to everyone.
So let’s be careful in how we apply events reported in the Bible.
+++++++++++++++
Have you ever heard someone apply a Bible passage in a way that sounded fishy? How did you react?
What steps can you take to make sure you interpret and apply a lesson in the Bible in the way the author intended?
Be diligent to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who doesn’t need to be ashamed, correctly teaching the word of truth – 2 Timothy 2:15