Re: When does biblical interpretation become misinterpretation?

Description: If you come up with an easy solution to the text, you’re probably close to the wrong thing.

Question: When does interpretation become misinterpretation?

Transcript: That’s a very good question, and I deal with that in my preaching course when I say, “We must remember that it’s not about me. It’s not about you.” And therefore you have to ask this question: “What does the text permit me to say? What are the options available here? How may I . . . How may I . . .” and that’s the operative word. “How may I proceed?” Not, “How can I twist this into something that I wish to say?” Or, “How can I make this fit the agenda of the moment?” And there’s a certain humility – which may not seem to be one of my chief characteristics – but one actually facing the text, the longer one studies, one actually says, “What is here that I am allowed to . . . to deal with?” Which is very different from editorializing or expanding on a particular given point of an argument. You are really looking to see, “What is the subtext here? What is the life that is waiting to be called into being here? And how will it use me, instead of how will I manipulate it or manufacture it to do my bidding?” That’s the hardest thing in preaching, being what an old English _________ used to call “servant of the Word”. We preachers who take our task seriously are literally servants of the Word. The Word is there. We are in the business of trying to find what it wants us, permits us, wills us to say. Which is why preachers at their best are always dependent upon that third, most mysterious member of the blessed and undivided Trinity, the Holy Spirit. And we’re supposed to be listening, and we’re not supposed to speak until we have heard what the . . . what it is we are meant to say.

Question: How do you know when you’ve crossed the line?

Transcript: Well sometimes you don’t know, and that’s the risk of this business. The terrible risk is that you will do some harm because you have the authority, the experience and the capacity to change people’s minds. The prayer I say every Sunday before I enter the pulpit is the same prayer that they say in the medical school. “Lord, let me do no harm.” Let me not use my mind, or my rhetorical skills, or my talent, or my intimacy with the scripture to do something that I shouldn’t be doing. And you always live in the terrible fear that your talents will be misused, particularly by you. That you will . . . because you have the capacity to influence people. There’s a prayer that says, “God help those who speak when many listen.” And I take that very seriously. I speak when many listen. And I could do a tremendous amount of mischief and harm because people will listen to me. So I’m always praying that I do as close to the right thing – at least that I don’t do the wrong thing with this process. I tell some of my preaching students that if it’s easy . . . that if you come up with an easy solution to this text, you’re probably close to the wrong thing. Because the texts are wonderfully ambiguous and difficult and opaque, they don’t leap off the page. And if it suddenly leaps off the page and happens to agree with your most profound prejudice and that of your people, you can almost begin to think, “There’s something wrong here.” And you should be very cautious about proceeding.

Recorded on: 6/12/07