Confessions 2 -- Try reading the verse before your favorite verse.

Number 2 in my new series, Confessions of a Bible Know-It-All: 25 Ways I Changed My Mind.

1. I am not the "you" of the Bible. 
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Confessions #2: Try reading the verse before your favorite verse.
1. I grew up with memory verses. Love them. Was taught them in Sunday School. Still quote them regularly.

I realized something as I started taking Bible classes in college. I didn't pay much attention to the verses that came before and after them. Sometimes I still caught the right general sense. Other times, I realized I didn't have a clue what those verses actually meant in context.

Again, by "in context" I mean hearing what the words actually meant. I'll get there eventually, but words are always locked in a context when someone reads them. It's true when someone utters words--the words are a function of what words mean in their context. 

And it's true when I hear or read words. When I read them, I'm the one that assigns the meaning to the words, inevitably. Once an author utters words, he or she loses control over what someone hears in them... unless they're still around to correct the misinterpreter.

I grew up on the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. I have a family member who tried the New King James (NKJV) for a short while. But he ended up going back to the KJV because he didn't like the paragraphs of the NKJV. In other words, he preferred to read each verse individually.

2. But, of course, the words before and after a verse help you know what the verse was actually saying. So, you're less likely to know what the verse means if you don't read what comes before and after it. We saw this in the first article. Jeremiah 29:11 was not a verse about me or you. It was a verse to a specific group of people in Babylon in the early 500s BC.

Read the verse right before it: "When seventy years are completed in Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill for you my good word to return you to this place" (Jer. 29:10). 

Why do we think 29:11 is about us? Only because we've been taught to memorize the verse that way. The Bible as a whole does indicate God has good plans for those who love him (Rom. 8:28), but that doesn't mean your life won't be rough now. It's not a promise that you won't be murdered or martyred. And it's certainly not a promise for serial killers or dictators.

What I changed my mind on was about just ripping verses out of context. It's not that God doesn't still "zap me" from time to time. But now I know I'm not hearing the words for what they actually meant. What they really meant is locked up in the context when they were first written.

3. While we're talking about Romans 8:28, it's another one that people tend to rip out of its context. "We know that, to those who love God, all things are working together for good to those who are called according to [his] purpose." There's a tendency to translate this into the slogan, "Everything happens for a reason."

But what do the verses before and after it say?

From Romans 8:18 on, Paul is talking about the glory that we all can look forward to when Christ returns. Not only will our bodies be transformed but the creation itself. Currently, the creation is in bondage to the power of Sin, so that our flesh prevents us from doing the good even when we want to (that is, unless we have the Spirit to help us).

So, we are awaiting the redemption of our bodies (8:23). We are awaiting either the resurrection if we die or our transformation if we are still alive when Christ returns. 1 Corinthians 15 gives us a good deal more detail about these events to come.

Meanwhile, the Spirit helps us as we wait (8:26). This is the context of Romans 8:28. It's all going to work out for good. It is not a statement focused on individuals, although of course as Western individualists we are bound to read it that way. And it seems to point to the end when all the things Paul has been talking about take place.

What were these things again? They were our resurrection and the transformation of our bodies.

In other words, the verse is not saying that your infected toe will work out for the better. It's not saying that everything happens for a reason. It's not saying God will not let you suffer. It's saying that no matter what "groanings" we may undergo now, we will eventually find ourselves transformed in the kingdom of God.

4. I started out not being programmed to read verses in context. I had a family member who had a verse jump out at her that made her think God wanted us to move to Florida. Maybe he did! But I guarantee you that is not what Judges 1:15 meant originally.

I would later read a philosopher who called this a "first naivete." I didn't know what I didn't know.

So, I learned to read the verses before and after. I began to hear verses differently. I could see that some of my readings of Scripture had been wrong--at least as far as context is concerned. I changed my mind on their meanings.

But you know, that same philosopher talked about a second naivete. That's when you know it isn't what the verse meant but you can see a truth in the first way you read it.

My grandfather used to preach a sermon from the KJV of Isaiah 35:8 from the line, "though fools shall not err therein." His sermon preached that you didn't have to be smart to be holy.

He was right of course. It's just not what that verse meant. A fool in Hebrew is not a person who isn't smart. It's a wicked person. And to err in older English is to wander. The verse is saying that wicked people won't accidentally find their way onto the holy highway.

I suspect the Spirit speaks this way all the time. He spoke originally with what the words actually meant in context. And yes, because we are all fools in the modern sense, he meets us in the words still today, however we are able to understand them.