Video
The Habit of Open-Mindedness: Process Series
In our latest video from our Process series, we talk about how important it is to set aside our assumptions about the world when reading the Bible and instead work to understand what the biblical authors were actually trying to communicate. When we cultivate a habit of open-mindedness when studying the Scriptures, there is endless discovery over a lifetime of reading available to all of us.
Resume
Åbenhed over for nye perspektiver er afgørende for at forstå Bibelen korrekt. Mange troende har en tendens til at lade deres egne forudindtagede opfattelser styre, hvordan de læser og fortolker de bibelske tekster. Det er vigtigt at erkende, at ens nuværende forståelse af sandheden om Gud og verden ofte er begrænset og bør udvikles. En af de største udfordringer ved bibellæsning er at høre, hvad de bibelske forfattere faktisk ønsker at kommunikere, i stedet for blot at projicere egne ideer ind i teksten. Mange læsere nærmer sig Bibelen med antagelsen om, at den fungerer som en moralsk håndbog, der præsenterer eksempler på adfærd, man bør efterligne. Imidlertid viser fortællingerne om bibelske personer ofte, at de er komplekse og fejlagtige, hvilket kan være en kilde til selvrefleksion snarere end moralsk vejledning. Det er derfor vigtigt at forstå, at disse karakterer ikke nødvendigvis er forbilleder, men snarere spejle, der hjælper læseren med at konfrontere egne fejl og kompleksiteter. At være en efterfølger af Jesus og en studerende af skrifterne indebærer at udvikle en vane med åbenhed, så man kan opdage nye indsigter og lære af både Bibelen og verden omkring sig. Denne livslange læringsrejse er en spændende proces, der åbner op for dybere forståelse og indsigt i troen.
Læs transskription
[Music] i vlogged a lot of hours in sunday school listening to sermons and reading the bible for myself but with all my familiarity with the bible i found that i have certain paradigms that actually keep me from hearing what the biblical authors want me to hear so how do we decide which paradigms are helpful and which ones we need to get rid of and along the way how do we keep an open mind this is bible project our process [Music] for people who have the conviction that the truth about the world and about god and ourselves is revealed in jesus and through the scriptures it’s very easy for us to confuse uh the whole truth with my current understanding of that truth but the opposite is the case i should assume that my grasp of the real truth about the world is just very small and needs to grow and expand [Music] one of the biggest challenges that all of us have in reading and trying to understand the bible is the challenge to actually hear what the biblical authors are trying to say and not just importing my own ideas into the bible it’s we don’t realize how much our unexamined assumptions actually determine what the bible can and cannot say to us it’s a lot like i have little boys and i still remember how um when they first went into the tool shed and saw my hammer one of my sons was convinced it was a shovel and so he spent about a week using the hammer to dig out in the dirt and then of course i found all of this out by discovering it resting in the mud and then it was a process of re-educating him to discover what it’s actually for and i have gone through that process with the bible so many times over a good example is the assumption we often bring to the bible that it’s somehow like a moral rule book of divinely approved behavior and so when we turn to all the stories about characters in the bible what we expect to find are moral examples of like people that you should be like to make god happy or something like that um but the problem of course is when you actually read the stories about the people in the bible almost all of them are involved in murder and sex scandals you know i mean they’re not people you actually want to be like most of the time and again that’s our assumption that the bible’s a moral handbook driving that when in fact the biblical authors put these characters in front of us as like mirrors for self-learning and self-critique to help us learn about just how complicated and screwed up and amazing we are and so that’s the biggest risk that all of us have in reading and trying to understand the bible is to make sure we’re actually hearing what the authors are communicating not just what i want to hear being a follower of jesus and a student of the scriptures is actually about having the habit of open-mindedness to hear the scriptures say things i’ve never even thought to think before and to learn new things from the world around me and to me that’s the most exciting thing about becoming a lifelong learner and student of the scriptures is that that process of discovery of a lifetime that lay before all of us it’s awesome you
