Is the Holy Spirit Misleading You?

[*Deidre*]

How do you know though, that your interpretation of Scripture is the right one? There are literally over 30,000 denominations of Christianity today, which means every ''church'' is interpreting things its own way, right down to the followers, all interpreting Scripture their own way. Including you. Including me. Including anyone who is a theist or not. I left faith, was an atheist, and returned to faith, and now don't consider myself a Christian per se, anymore. But, I'm at a cross roads with it all, I guess you could say. That said, I've never liked that the Bible creates this chaos and confusion in the mind of its reader. An atheist should be able to read the Bible, and grasp its meaning, and the truth is...most atheists do. (Thus, the need came along for ''apologetics'') The Bible isn't a hard book to understand. The problem is, it's a very straight forward book that many theists feel the need to ''explain'' with ''you're not understanding that passage the right way.'' No, the truth is, there are many horrible passages in the Bible, whereby depraved men wanted to convince the masses, that a god is ordaining all of their own depravity. There are of course beautiful verses and passages too that coexist with those horrible ones, but it's funny...those never need ''explaining.''

First, the fact that there are many different protestant denominations (certainly not 30,000) in no way indicates a doctrinal disagreement. The reasons for denominations include culture, geography, service structure, music, minor doctrinal differences and major doctrinal differences. I would say there are only 3-4 divisions along major doctrinal differences in a narrow band of topics. 

Second, you assume that people can interpret the Bible any way they want and go on your merry way. That is simply not the case. Systematic theology is the study of putting all the doctrines together into cohesive whole. There are only a couple of versions that will stay together (none of which have earth shattering differences). If you personally ignore some doctrine because you disagree, it most likely will affect many other things and your own personal theology is shot full of holes.

Every chapter and verse should be read in the context of the surrounding passage, the purpose of the book, the original audience, the author, the culture, the historical context, etc. To fail to do so is to not understand what the text means. Pulling a couple of verses out of the middle of all of that and say "it's very clear" is simply wrong more often than not. No need to 'explain', just a need to examine it correctly. 

Third, 'apologetics' does not mean what you think it means. It simply means "to give an answer". 

Fourth, difficult passages can be understood in context and with a systematic theology that takes the entirety of scripture and makes sense of the passages. Taking them in isolation is not adequate to a full understanding.

Thanks for the response. Do you believe that the entire Bible is literal?