INTERPRET

I have a frustration which is increasing of late. I say one thing, and my hearer hears and thus does something totally different. Anyone experience the same? It's like, there have been multiple instances back-to-back where I have left feeling like I didn't communicate myself clearly enough, or feeling like my voice wasn't heard for a variety of reasons. Now, I'm secure in this; I don't need to be heard or understood. God knows my heart.

But it creates headaches, doesn't it? It's like a parent talking to a child. Parents, you'll understand this best: When they're really young, it's like sometimes your babies don't even hear you at all. Then when they're a little older, your toddler hears you but acts like he or she hasn't got any idea what you mean. 'Don't touch that!' and they reach out anyway. Finally, the kid's first mustache hairs appear and he listens, he understands, and willfully does the complete opposite of what you requested because he thinks you're an idiot.

In all three cases, something is being lost in translation. The infant has little command of the English language, knowing perhaps 'mama' and 'dada.' The toddler has much more understanding, but is unable to reason, unable to hold your first words in his or her little mind as your next words come flowing in. They're like little drunks; it's all 'in one ear, out the other' and their experience of your words is so different from adult reasoning. Teens know the language and are able to reason—perhaps sometimes a little too well—but they come to fundamentally different conclusions than you because they live in a fundamentally different world from the one you grew up in. They don't see the immediate relevance in your words so you’re dismissed. Timeless truths are lost on them because, in their adolescent minds, they've got all the time in the world.

Do you ever wonder how bad it must be for God, then? how often God himself must experience such frustration? He is a parent after all—he’s the Father of all the living! If you were created, and he is the Creator, then he is your spiritual Father, having used earthly means—an earthly father and mother—to bring you into being.

Does God speak to us, and then watch as we totally fail to comprehend? Does he speak to us and watch as we too quickly lose our grasp of what he’s saying, like it’s in one ear and out the other? Does he speak and then watch as we willfully, stubbornly do just the opposite of his word of wisdom? Does God have an experience of communication with humanity that he might, too often, describe as getting 'lost in translation?'

He did, after all, send a divine translator in the Holy Spirit, who speaks on our behalf to God 'in groanings which cannot be uttered,' as the Scriptures say. He did, after all, establish intercessors via the priesthood, via a long line of human priests, culminating in the seating of an ultimate, great High Priest, Jesus, who 'ever liveth to make intercession for us' as the Scriptures say. This same God employed prophets to be his mouthpieces on the earth, he called faithful preachers and teachers to interpret the Scriptures wisely, and he exalted great theological minds long into modernity, raising a man or woman from every generation to reimagine his truths in conversation with human progress and innovation, and with world events.

Perhaps most notably, in every generation, God has inspired and encouraged faithful bible-translators to deliver his precious words to all, as they are for all, in all the many languages of humankind. These translators have answered the call, and continue to do so, making bibles available even under conditions of imprisonment, torture, and murder. Praise God for the men and women who translate Scripture in hostile territories!

I want to be the type of person who hears wisdom and follows after what is good, right, and true. I want to be the type of person who hears wise instruction or wise criticism and receives it, and adjusts to it, without fussing or fighting or feeling as though my lil ego is bruised or I've been 'called-out.' I want to hear the voices of the gods, but, in particular I want to hear from this God, the God of the Holy Scriptures, who gave us such wonderful words of life as what I read daily from them. When he instructs me to love my neighbor, when he tells me to follow after what is true and good and beautiful, when he extols the virtues of joy and peace and patience and kindness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control, and as he preserves for us stories of men and women who acted heroically according to such virtues, it plucks at my heart like a guitar and makes even my worst attempts at playing in-tune with these highest-order ideals something musical.

Wisdom makes music out of the mundane, out of the stuff of life. It's the whole that is greater than the sum of it's parts. If you've met a wise older man or woman, you've seen it: He or she is calm, at peace, joyful even, settled and confident. They are all these things because they're wise. They grew in wisdom. Which is to say, they suffered, they lived, they learned a ton of lessons, they figured out what's most important in life and they have tried-and-true angles of approach to further pain or heartbreak, to be able to manage life's trials with relative ease.

Wisdom is the delicious, smoky flavor following the charcoal heat of suffering, it's the salt of the earth which makes a meal from ingredients.

Wisdom is that diploma from the school of hard knocks which gets your foot in any door. As such, the wisest men and women are those who suffered most. The president of the United States wants to meet the 23 year-old war veteran who got his leg blown off. Meet his parents. Pin a medal on him. Why? Because the highest person in human government recognizes there is a level even higher than president, or king. The wounded victor, the suffering servant, the one who descended into that cave and fought bitterly and emerged holding the head of that monster, this man or woman belongs in any room on the planet. He or she is 'boots on the ground,' having first-hand experience invaluable to a competent leader.

Wisdom, then, makes a man or woman into the ultimate interpreter of fact. See, there is fact, and then there is interpretation of that fact. There is reality, but then there are its implications and demands. There is truth, but then, what good is it if there isn't also the application of truth?

'He has no idea what's really going on.' Ever heard that phrase, used of an incompetent leader in the workplace? Or how about, 'She doesn't realize all that this means for us,' like, this is going to change our workflow dramatically and grind production to a halt. Or like, 'He needs to spend a day out on the floor before he tells us how to do our jobs.' Suit up, Big Man, let's see if you can actually deal with what your frontline employees deal with every single day.

And God seems deeply concerned with the translation of heavenly things to earth and earthly things to heaven, so much so that he even talks at length through his prophets about instances where heaven and earth meet, the two overlap, and intimacy between God and man can be best described as oneness or unity. To this end, through Scripture, God himself employs watchers and messengers, called angels, to roam about 'to and fro' on the earth and report back to his council of the gods. This is basic biblical cosmology found throughout the Old Testament, most notably in the book of Job and in several psalms. For a very interesting exploration of the divine council, taking history and cultural context into full account, I would recommend Dr. Michael S. Heiser’s The Unseen Realm. Heiser sadly passed away just last year.

My point in summary is that all truth requires translation, all translation is interpretation, and all interpretation requires diligence and wisdom, such that all truth demands wisdom for the best experiences of that truth.

Here's an example, an irrelevant truth to this discussion, but very serious truth nonetheless: Drinking and driving puts others at harm. That's a truth. Now, ok, we get into the weeds: Drinking what, exactly? Drinking how much of it, exactly? Driving what, exactly? Driving where and among whom, exactly? What should the consequences be for failure to acknowledge this basic truth? Should there be a mandatory minimum punishment under the law for even the slightest of offenses to this truth? What is the full extent of this law? How might this law apply in this situation, or in that? and on and on and on, the reality of every basic truth is that each births a hundred thousand questions requiring diligent and wise interpretation. If we simply say, 'Drinking and driving is wrong,' well, ok, we haven't said what anyone must do about it, we haven't said why it's wrong in the first place or what 'wrong' even is, we haven't warned of the consequences of it but we also haven't put protections in place for its abusers. Like, is the father of the victim of a drunk driver allowed to kidnap and torture the driver and put him or her to death? You get the idea. Just having a truth extant out there does little good.

God's truths are plain to see, they're plainly revealed in the light of his good creation, so that wicked men are without excuse and so that good men might make judgments amongst themselves regarding any offense. The apostle Paul says as much in his letter to the church in Rome, first chapter. He says that all men know the truth but have suppressed it in their hearts in unrighteousness, for what can be known of God, like his divine attributes, are revealed in his creation such that men have a responsibility before him to do what is right and honorable. Why do men still lie, cheat, steal, hate, and murder then? It's because, while they have plainly-revealed truths in the light of all that is, they still need a heck of a lot of help understanding those truths, help in the form of someone saying, 'It should have been so obvious to me back then—it was right there all along—but I missed it, and I don't want others to make the same mistake I did and suffer all that I suffered.'

Men need one wise man who has gone before, to show them the way. Why do you think men are flocking to the preaching and teachings of Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson? These are two men who have suffered (Rogan, in the gym and in the popular media in the forms of his personal development or personal attacks on his character. And Peterson, in the trenches in a liberal school fighting for what he believes is right, and also in the popular media). And I have to toss out the disclaimer, as a Christian: I am not endorsing these figures, though I’ve listened at length and come to greatly respect the two. You get my point. Men search out the David Gogginses of the world, the Jocko Willinks, the Mike Days, the Marcus Luttrells, or the Chris Kyles for this reason. It's because those warriors understand conflict in a way a keyboard-warrior like me never will, and men-in-conflict are desperate for ideas about how to handle themselves in conflict and come away unharmed and unashamed of themselves. We’re desperate for wisdom.

It’s the same with women who seek out instruction from innovative women in the workplace who came before, who suffered all the trials a woman suffers in her career. Or from mothers whose kids are grown. Or from older wives with much more experience in the dramas of marriage and family. Other single mothers holding the weight of the world on their shoulders. Or, like young men, women are also seeking out experts and teachers and thoughtleaders who have emerged from the pain of suffering with hard lessons in the truth. We go to the experts because the experts are the ones with exper-ience.

We need an expert when it comes to biblical truth, just as much as any other truth. You can read the bible for yourself, yes, and praise God for the men and women who died for the right to read in vulgar tongues. You can interpret the bible for yourself, and it doesn't take much, because the text often interprets itself for you. Like in Revelation, the whole time, the apostle John is making statements like this:

'The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches' (Revelation 1:20 KJV).

Now, Revelation is full of rich imagery and wonderful metaphors, all driving at a point John's trying to make to first-century believers, employing tons and tons of contextual Greek and historical, religious Hebrew symbolic overtones and themes. It draws magnificently from the Old Testament and quotes from it directly, but it also cleverly weaves in many references to first-century cultural realities under Roman rule and the advances of its hellenism and hedonism. But the entire way through, John makes interpretive statements like the one above, where he tells you directly how to read the symbols in his book. 'Understand the mystery of the seven lampstands. The seven lampstands are the seven churches to whom I’m writing.' Like, Jesus is walking among you, he's keeping you lit, he's anointing you with more oil to burn brighter and longer, and his own face is showing through you to the world. The 'you' being readers from among those seven early churches.

Not only that, but this simple metaphor would have had deep, deep religious meaning specifically to Jewish Christians as, pulling from the Exodus account where the Israelites were given detailed instructions concerning the crafting of lampstands for the tabernacle, they would have heard this and immediately understood what was central to late first-century Christianity, the idea that in the absence of a temple (emperor Domitian destroyed the Jewish temple in AD 70), they were now the temple of God, as in the phrase, 'your body is a temple.'

John packs so much meaning into every single sentence, but also gives you the later reader (as pastor Robbie Gallaty recently put it in his current and spectacular teaching series on Revelation, which he’s giving all year), a kind of decoder ring with which to read and interpret his words in our day.

That’s just one example of biblical interpretation, a field known by technicians as hermeneutics. In other words, any interpretive method concerning the truth of 'candlesticks' in the book of Revelation needs to be filtered through what John said he meant by the use of candlestick imagery. Does that make sense?

Let me wrap this up now. The reason I'm writing is because in the coming weeks and months, I want to explore interpretive methods with regard to bible reading. I want to read the bible and pull from clear passages of Scripture specific highlights which help us interpret less clear, more complex passages. I want to develop eyes to see the symbolic nature of Holy Scripture, to connect the dots between each biblical author, and I want to develop wisdom with regard to the application of the bible’s truths to my post-postmodern, metamodern if you will, life. My life as a modern man in 2024. But I also want to come to a greater understanding of the historical context of each book of the bible and come to value the bible as it exists in conversation with other worldviews and statements, other documents in antiquity.

I've created a curriculum for biblical hermeneutics and I'm enrolling myself as its first student. I think I'm going to make this into a book club of sorts. I'm going to read several really incredible books on biblical interpretation and biblical interpretive methods, and I'm going to write as I read, to write about them here. I'm going to read ancient wisdom and write about it here. I'm going to become a better interpreter of timeless truths, and I'm going to become a better listener to the voice of the Father, the voice of clear wisdom. And I'm inviting you along.

Stay tuned. The first book on my list is very interesting. I'm going to write about it tomorrow and share an excerpt from it which will help you understand the reason this is so important to me as a modern reader. The first book in our reading is The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes by Dr. Louis Markos, humanities chair of Houston Baptist University.