From Thabiti Anyabwile’s post entitled, ‘What It Means to Me’:
That little sentence has been the death of many well-meaning attempts to understand the Bible. “What it means to me” ruins our understanding because it decapitates the intent of the original author. What matters first and primarily is “what did it mean to John or Paul or Luke or whoever wrote Hebrews.” What did the author intend to communicate. That’s first base in biblical interpretation and its the guard rail that keeps us from driving off into the wilderness of subjectivity and a million swamps of private interpretation.
And, ultimately, we’re concerned to know what the Author–God Himself–intends to communicate with us. If we’re hasty to rewrite the Bible with our own thoughts, we’ll ultimately write God right out of it. A premature “what it means to me” takes the pen out of God’s hand and dips it in the ink of our puny intellectual, emotional, social, psychological and usually idolatrous wells.
Read the whole post.
