The Holy Bible: New Oversimplified Version

Don't worry, I totally photoshopped that picture. There's no such thing (yet) as an oversimplified version of the Bible. Many of us would probably be appalled or at least highly amused by such a thing, and few of us would buy it except for perhaps the entertainment value.

However, the striking truth is that many of us buy into an oversimplified version of the Bible every single day of our lives. We really want it to be simple, so we project that desire onto our interactions with the text. We have a sense that it should be simple, which can lead us to interpret it to say what we think it ought to say. But is it really simple? Can you read Ecclesiastes and still say that it's simple? Or what if we asked Job, would he say that it's simple? If it's so simple, why was Jesus so troubled and filled with sorrow in the Garden of Gethsemene?

It's not simple, but we pretend it is every time we tell someone "This verse says [x], therefore [y] is true." We don't take time to consider the context, and we ignore the verses that might seem to contradict the proposed claim.

When considering the idea of Scriptural support for our beliefs, the most important question is NOT, "Can I find a verse or passage that supports this idea?" The most important question is, "Does this accord with the Scriptural revelation of God, particularly in regard to the definitive revelation found in the person of Jesus Christ?"

This is how I will filter my beliefs now. It's harder than the "find a verse" method, but it is also the more honest method of the two.