(~) The Seven Deadly Sins of Bible Study (Part 1 of 7) Jack Kuhatschek for New Man magazine

The Seven Deadly Sins of Bible Study

A few years ago a friend showed me a prayer letter he had received in the mail. Inside were the following instructions: Take the prayer sheet I have sent you and write your name on it, and as you do, lay hands on it. We must have your prayer requests back from you so we can touch them and pray over them for "if any two agree touching anything, it shall be done."

By misunderstanding the portion of Scripture in Matthew 18:19, the well-meaning Christian who wrote this letter hit a new low in biblical interpretation. The word touching, which is so crucial to his viewpoint, does not even occur in the Greek text.

Although a bit extreme, this example illustrates the unusual and sometimes amusing ways the Bible is interpreted and applied. One of my seminary professors, Howard Hendricks, once said, "Many applicational elephants dangle from interpretive threads!"

To interpret and apply Gods Word properly, we must be aware of what I call the "seven deadly sins" of Bible study. In this article well identify these "sins" and discover how to avoid them.

1. Proof-texting When I was a child, our pastor often gave the following benediction at the end of a service: "May the Lord watch between me and thee, while we are absent one from another."

I always assumed that he was asking God to protect us both until the following Sunday, and Im sure that was his intent. It wasnt until years later that I discovered he had taken the verse completely out of context. The verse isnt really as nice as it sounds. Its found in Genesis 31, after Jacob and Laban have settled a heated argument by making a covenant. Because Laban doesnt completely trust Jacob and knows that the two of them will not be together, he asks the Lord to keep an eye on his son-in-law to make sure Jacob doesnt mistreat his daughters. Taken in context, the verse is sort of a pious threat -- hardly a fitting benediction!

In order to avoid proof-texting -- taking a verse out of context -- we need to realize that good Bible study requires more than looking up a string of isolated verses. We would never think of reading a Tom Clancy novel the way we do Scripture -- one sentence from chapter one, another from chapter five and a third from chapter 12. It would result in nonsense, and we would miss the plot entirely! The Bible was written as literary units, such as books, letters and poems, that were meant to be read from beginning to end.

Coming tomorrow ... "Being Too Literal"