I remember the first time in my life I sat down to study the Bible under my own volition. I was in seventh grade. I was excited to read. But then a question popped into my head: Where do I start? I could go with the beginning — a logical choice. I could move straight to Jesus in the New Testament. After all, many Christians treat that as the real Bible. I decided on a different route: I would begin with the book that shares my name, Daniel.
I jumped right in. I came quickly to the stories I had known since I was younger — the fiery furnace, the lions’ den, the ginormous hand writing on the wall. (At least, I always assumed it was ginormous. Maybe it was a tiny Donald Trump-sized hand.)
But then I got to the weird stuff. the book of Daniel is sort of like the Beatles’ canon — there’s a clear difference between the pre-LSD material and the during-LSD stuff. Chapters 1–6 of Daniel are “All You Need Is Love”; chapters 7–12, “Bungalow Bill.” I came to weird creatures covered in eyes, multiple horns growing out of animals, etc. The question I asked was, What does it all mean?
If you’ve read the Bible for long at all, you’ve inevitably stumbled onto confusing or difficult details. You’ve asked yourself, What does it mean?This is an important question when reading the Bible. We want to get better understanding of what is being communicated.
This is not the only, or most important, way we can ask that same question, though. In a class I teach, we spend a few weeks talking about the role of readers in the process of making meaning. We talk about how, despite what many people assume, texts — including the Bible — are not containers of meaning.
We in the church sometimes think that the Bible is like a cookie jar, full of little cookies of meaning. Our goal, then, is to open up the jar, put our hand inside, and take out the cookie. “What does this passage mean?”, we ask, by which we intend something like, “What sort of teaching or principle does this text offer?”
The problem with thinking of the text as a container of meaning in this sense is that our question cannot be answered. We cannot answer it until we ask, “Well, who is reading it?”
Let me give an example. In Luke 1, Mary responds in praise to God for what God has done for her. In her response, she says such things as:
“[The Lord] shows mercy to everyone . . . who honors him as God” (v. 50)
“He has scattered those with arrogant thoughts and proud inclinations” (v. 51)
“He has pulled the powerful down from their thrones and lifted up the lowly” (v. 52)
So if we read these statements, and we ask, “What does it mean?” The response I would give is, “Well, it depends. Are you, as the reader, one who honors God as God, or not? Are you one with arrogant thoughts and proud inclinations, or not? Are you sitting on a throne in power as you read this, or are you lowly?
Because whether this passage is good news depends on which of these groups you belong to.
The Bible invites us to see the world from God’s perspective. When we do so, our own life will be put under the microscope. What the Bible — as a whole and in its parts — “means” will depend on how much your perspective currently aligns with God’s perspective.