Our Subjectivity and the Bible
Our subjectivity and the Bible is on the table today. Reading 1 Corinthians 16 with my wife we had to laugh.
13 Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. 14 Do everything in love.
I read “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything thing in love???”
We both laughed as I was reading like a freight train and serious. Then, the sudden shift to love caught me by surprise. God loves to do that to me.
My dear wife then read it aloud in Chinese, but it was her tone that was so soft from start to end that it seemed completely changed.
We Should Be Aware of Our Subjectivity and the Bible
Our subjectivity in reading the Bible is unavoidable. We cannot help but carry our personality and life experiences into reading the Bible. The result can be that we are reading the same text and getting something quite different. It is still God’s truth, but its taste can be altered. Also, we cannot know for sure that Paul’s tone was when he wrote the above words.
We need to carry some humility when we say we know the tone of a Bible passage. Sometimes, we can imagine that Moses is furious when he talks. Sometimes the passage may note the tone. Usually, we are adding tone to the passage when that may not be the case.
Most of us feel Paul the Apostle is a confident serious rule thinking guy. However, it is unfair to always read him as serious. He clearly is more mature than just being serious all the time. I cannot say if my wife’s or my tone reading were the tone God intends.
However, the meaning of the text is quite clear. We must be courageous and strong and stand firm. We must do this with love in all cases, but is that soft love or tough love. I cannot be sure, but guess it is rather soft such that we will not feel judged by Paul’s exhortations. BUT, I could be wrong, so I should not be dogmatic about how I guess it to be.
You may also want to read Christians and Bias or Seeing the Bible Differently.
