How many meanings?

Muslims, Jews, and Christians all consider the Bible to be scripture (although, Jews only consider the Old Testament scripture, and Muslims also consider the Koran scripture). And within each of those groups exist many divisions over how these scriptures should be read and applied.

For example, one of the points of greatest division in how Christians have read the Bible in the past 500 years has been over the passages on communion, in particular, 1 Corinthians 11. Questions that come from this text have produced varied answers. How often should we take it, who is allowed to take it, what are we eating, what happens when we take it, and what does it mean are all disputed. The same could be said on the issue of women in church ministry, a Christian’s responsibility to go to war, etc.

On such controversial issues there is an assumption that there is one correct view and the others are dead wrong. Yet when it comes to less controversial verses Christians in particular seem to have a greater openness to a number of appropriate responses.

Now, I know that it is a contradiction to both go to war and be a conscientious objector, so why do we think we can interpret other parts of the Bible any way we want? There are three basic approaches here. 1. The Bible is an inspirational book that can be interpreted any way. This has led to people killing each other in history, or as it is now, ‘I believe one thing and you believe another and we’re all ok’. 2. There can be a few meanings from one verse, but they don’t contradict each other. For example, 1 Corinthians 12:12 (the body is one and has many members) can refer both to the local church, as is clearly the context, but it can also refer to different church denominations, or members in a family. 3. The Bible has one meaning and we are limited to that. While we may not all agree on that meaning, there is only one. So 1 Corinthians 12:12 refers to the local church and while it may be a helpful concept elsewhere, those analogies only helpful, not scriptural.

Here’s how I see it. God exists and has made himself known to us in the Bible. We have no say in what he is like, how he instructs our life, etc. If we choose to ‘make up our own God’ he is just a part of our imagination. The relationship then is God as our creator, and we as his creation. We can’t create God, he knows us, he tells us who he is. Because I see it this way I think we are forever stuck asking the Bible the question, what does it mean. Our answer cannot be plural.

My whole response to the Bible since I read it in my late teens was to search for this singular meaning. It has been my goal to keep the voices of religions out of my head and let God speak for himself. My path has led me to a lot of study, work in the original languages, church life, hard questions, and at times hard stances, but I feel mostly honest about how I’ve approached the text. The text has shaped me, not the other way around.

My Christian friends don’t like it when I tell them that the context of a verse doesn’t allow them to interpret it they way they did. But is it really Christian to read and interpret however we like? That seems more like each ‘christian’ is developing their own religion, rather than getting to know God for who he is.