For most of you out there, you read for the fun of it. Some of you also were fortunate to have accepted the reading culture that was inculcated in you as a youngster, so as at now you still enjoy reading. Well, for me, the reading culture was forced in me as a youngster. I was FORCED to read!!!! But due to the fact that there was more wax in my ears than a candle, i threw that culture away. If not for the fact that i am pursuing a four year degree course in ENGLISH in the university, i would probably be blogging in 3w3.
In literature class we read a lot. I mean we read a lot of books that are of no essence to our little Ghanaian lives. One quote from one of my lecturers i will never forget is, ‘in literature, validity is all’. This simply means that,in the analysis of a piece of writing, everybody’s understanding is acceptable provided he/she can support it with evidence from the piece.* Note, i will not tolerate strange or awkward interpretations of any of my blogs because of the aforementioned quote*. The level of validity with regard to the true interpretation of a text however varies. With the most valid interpretation being the one closest to the intended meaning the author wanted to put across. *please bear this in mind as you read on*
It has come to my knowledge, *and i’m sure to yours too*, that there are several interpretations given to some messages the bible puts across. It is not as if these interpretations vary because some of them come in to give us deeper understanding of the actual verse, but the interpretations are totally contradicting ones. They are almost opposed to each other. Due to this quite unfortunate situation *which shouldn’t be*, people have boldly called the bible a contradicting book. How funny?? If you are one of those people, please try and read about the history of the bible and the whole process of canonization. Then you would realize that the bible has stood the tests of time and been through worst arguments, so there is nothing your little argument can do to the authenticity of the bible.
Well, back to what i was saying. Therefore, the most valid interpretation of the bible is the one closest to the intended meaning God wanted to put across. So instead of wasting much time in unfruitful arguments (as the book of TITUS admonishes us not to),let’s rather spend quality time knowing the word of God so that the validity of our interpretation of the word of God can never be questioned.I dare say that there is no confusion in the bible as God (the author), is not the author of confusion. But the confusion in the interpretation of the bible is just due to the different cultural upbringing we have as human beings. The LAW OF DETERMINISM and the LAW OF LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY explain this further. These two laws imply that one’s background comes to play in his quest to interprete any piece of writing. But this shouldn’t be so when it comes to the bible, we should be able to let ourselves go, for the author(the HOLY SPIRIT), to explain HIS word to us.