Words'nTone

In the years I have been a Christian, I’d say, aside from the reference to John 3:16 and Revelation 3:20 (“Behold I stand at the door and knock”), Mark 1:17 and Matthew 4:19 have been some of the most quoted and referred to verses I have heard from the lips of Christian leaders.  In my research on social action and evangelism, I hear these verses quoted, actually, quite often as people offer definitions of evangelism.  Ranking right up there with Galatians 2:20 (“I have been crucified with Christ”), Jesus’ words about becoming “fishers of men” are staple references to refer to the way one is to be a Christian.  In some measure I agree, but not for the same reasons given by most (e.g., fishers of men = witnessing, catching people for Christ).  (In fact all the popular verses mentioned above will deserve Rough Cut time on this site!) I was struck by the fact that the interpretation of Mark 1:17 that I had posited made it difficult for this popular verse to be applied.  My interpretation didn’t seem practical.  I have always struggled with our fixation with application.  I wrote in the fishers of men Rough Cut:

It can be too easy to resort to popular interpretations because they are, however misleading (away from the text), often easier to grasp.  We shouldn’t exclude difficult to understand allusions just because they are harder to relate to, or are more difficult to apply personally.  I pause to point out that we, in the contemporary American Church, are fixated on application.  There is a tendency to skip and even to eschew the vital step of interpretation (by which I mean exegesis).  Somewhere along the way, we abandoned the discipline of exegesis and biblical interpretation in exchange for American pragmatism.  The Bible often becomes, with each individual part (i.e., each text, each verse, and even sometimes just a word here and there in a verse), a utilitarian tool to give detail instructions and application—specific do’s and don’ts.  Every text has to be practical.  This makes it all the harder to offer interpretations that—on the surface—do not seem practical, or easily applied.  (The fishers of men Rough Cut)

This fixation on application and practicality makes it especially difficult to offer interpretations of popular verses that are hard to understand and difficult to apply.  Such fixation on texts having to always be “practical” can lead us away from what God is actually saying through a text (like “I will make you become fishers of men” or “I have been crucified with Christ”).  As my essay on “fishers of men” points out, we should seek to understand the significance of a text first, then—and only then—can we apply what God has said.  (The fishers of men Rough Cut)

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.