Right Thought, Wrong Verse.
The Modern Mirage Vol. II
I got some pretty positive feedback about the last “mirage” post… So thinking I may do a string of these if they keep resonating.
Today, I taught a crash course webinar on “Exegesis” to a local Christian organization and I think some points I have will be of value here, too.
Exegesis is a fancy word that simply means, “the process of drawing meaning out of the text through careful study and using proper tools.”
Most of the time, when reading our Bibles, we’re just lazy. Let’s be honest. We’d rather rely on feeling and emotion about a biblical text than whip out concordances, Bible dictionaries, commentaries, etc.,
Afterall, due to our modern mindset that puts “me” at the center of everything, I don’t really need to know what the Bible is actually saying. I just need to know what it “means to me”.
Sure, we may google something from time to time - or now, ChatGPT is a surefire way of getting a correct interpretation. Right? RIGHT?!
The problem is, if we don’t learn to use the correct tools, we never learn to correctly interpret. Google and AI can help you catch a fish, but they’ll never teach you how to fish.
YouTube can tell you what tools you need for a home project, and even show you how to do it, but sooner or later you’re gonna have to get your hands dirty if you want to actually learn it for yourself.
Most of the time, if we haven’t learned methodology - the “how” we get to a correct interpretation - we’ll never do actual Exegesis, and always end up with Eisegesis. In simpler terms, this is the opposite of drawing the meaning “out” of the text. Eisegesis is importing meaning “onto” the text.
This is a bad habit we picked up one day in English class. Our teachers and professors were big liberal arts thinkers, and being true to form, they thought that the author’s intended meaning held considerably less weight and importance than a reader’s interpretation.
For a lot of us, English class was a snooze fest, but this thinking shows up in different ways, too. Pop artists rarely explain the “meaning” behind a song these days because they want it to mean “whatever it means to you”. It’s better for their success I suppose, but it also goes with the flow of the modern mind.
Next time, if there is one, I’ll talk through some helpful exegesis tools and methodologies to help keep you on track with interpreting texts.
For now, let’s look at one of the most misused verses in the modern church… Matthew 18:20 “Where two or more are gathered"…
