Things Christians Should Stop Saying Part 1
“I preach only the bible.”
I want to start a series on things I think Christians should stop saying. In the church, we have our own language. The problem with this, is it can make it hard for the people outside of the church to understand what we’re talking about. And, often, what we really mean is disguised by the way we say it.
Some of the things in this series simply don’t have any useful meaning in the culture today. Others display poor theology. And some, like the topic of this post, are deceptive and betray an arrogance that we as Christians should avoid. So without further adieu, let’s dive in.
The Context
As the subtitle of this post indicates, the first phrase I want to address is, “I preach only the bible.” Now in the interest of full disclosure, I have said this, or something like it in the past. This was before I really knew any better, and when I was still pretty young in my walk and ministry.
Now, the first thing to point out about this phrase, which will give some indication as to why we should stop using it, is the context in which it is used.
Most often, this phrase comes up when preachers are talking together, though I have heard it from the pulpit as well. But, it is always used when comparing one’s own preaching style to that of someone else’s. And, it’s always used to indicate why your preaching is superior to someone else’s.
Now, if this was the only problem with the statement, that would be enough to include it on this list, but it’s actually the least of the problems.
What it is actually saying
So, when you say you “only preach the bible,” what you’re really saying is that your preaching is not an interpretation. In other words, you are saying that you are preaching the truth. And because this phrase is used to compare your preaching to someone else’s, you’re inferring that they are not preaching the truth, but rather their interpretation. And this of course makes your preaching much better.
The problem I have with this is it says that an interpretation is somehow completely wrong and should be avoided at all costs. And this is not true at all. In fact, all pastors preach an interpretation. The moment you stop reading the passage and say, “and this means…” you are interpreting the text.
Not only is it not wrong to interpret scripture, that is precisely what we are supposed to do when we teach it. Think about it, the newest books of the bible were still written over 2,000 years ago. They were written in languages no one speaks anymore, to people who are long dead and were part of cultures that have been relegated to the history books. The only way that we can find any usefulness or relevance from the text is to interpret them. If you were going to “preach only the bible,” then all you could do is stand up and read the text and then set down. And is that really preaching? More importantly, is that beneficial to the church?
But wait, there’s more…
Translations are interpretation
So, for the sake of argument, let’s say that you want to really just preach the bible, so you stop teaching it and just get up, read a passage, and then sit back down. What language are you reading it in?
I am going to assume it’s the same language that you speak natively. For me, that would be English. (And No, I am not going to get into which translation is better than the rest. It’s outside the scope of this post, and really isn’t very useful anyways.) If you are reading the text in anything other than the original languages, then what you are reading is an interpretation.
Now there are different language family groups. For instance, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian are called the “Romance Languages.” They come from Latin. If you hear them spoken, you will hear a lot of similarities. If you see them written, you will find even more. Because they are all part of the same family, they are very similar. My wife’s French teacher said that if you learn French and Spanish, you get Italian for free. But just because languages are part of the same family doesn’t always mean that they are this close.
English is technically a Germanic language, but if you are familiar with German, you will see that it and English really don’t have much in common. This is the result of another important fact about language, it’s constantly evolving. If you were to hear Old English and Old German spoken, you would find that they sound a lot alike. But over time the languages have changed. In the case of English, it has gained a lot of words from other languages such as French.
And while English is spoken in several different countries, it isn’t identical from one to the next either. I love french fries, but in England, they are called chips. And what I call chips, they are crisps. If you finish a game of cricket, you would put your gear in the boot, while when I finish a game of baseball, I would put my gear in the trunk. I think you get the point.
Because of all the differences in languages, translation can be difficult. All languages don’t all have the same words. While when you are dealing with concrete ideas, it is easy enough to work, in many cases you just bring the original word directly over. It’s a whole other story when you are dealing with words describing abstract ideas. It gets really complicated when you don’t have a one-to-one match.
What do you do in these instances? You find the words that will best express the idea that you can. This is the result of an extremely educated guess. At its heart, it is interpretation. You are interpreting what you think the text is trying to say.
Now, it’s one thing to translate between two languages that are still in common use. This is because not only do you have reference for what the words mean, but you also have information on how the words are actually used in normal everyday contexts. When the language you are working with is a dead language (a dead language is one that is no longer spoken and is only studied for academic purposes). This makes things a lot more difficult.
Since the languages the bible was written in are all dead (with possible the exception of Hebrew which has been revived and is the national language of Israel, though what they speak today is not quite the same as Old Testament Hebrew) most groups that translate the bible today have people from two different disciplines. There are the language experts, who can read, write and speak the languages fluently; and there are the cultural experts who have made it their life’s work to understand the cultures of the bible the best they can. This way they can try and figure out what the words mean, not just based on their textbook definitions, but also based on their usage in the culture.
While the people doing this work are all very smart and well educated people, there are times when they are going to have to guess about what the writers were trying to say. And this equals, as I have said, interpretation.
So, even if all you are doing is just reading from the text, unless you are reading it in the original languages, you are still practicing interpretation. So, still not, “preaching only the bible.”
We don’t have the originals
So, you have decided that because you really want to preach only the bible, you’re going to start just reading it in the original language. Aside from the fact that unless you are preaching exclusively to seminary students, no one is going to understand what you are saying, so you really are just wasting your breath. But, guess what, you’re still interpreting.
See, we don’t have any of the original texts. Those are long gone. In fact, the oldest copies of the New Testament that we have are copies made within 100 years of the original writings, but these are only fragments. To get complete texts, you have to go to even newer copies. Luckily for us, when it comes to the New Testament, we have no shortage of copies; over 25,000 in fact.
Now, all these copies are not identical. One estimate says that there are around 400,000 discrepancies between all the copies. This is where literary criticism comes in.
Without getting too deep into the weeds, basically the experts go through all the copies and try to piece together what the originals might have said. There are lots of things that they look for, such as what do the earliest copies say, or what version is the most common among all the copies.
So, they take all the bits and pieces and try to rebuild the original. Today, there are two versions of the New Testament that are accepted to be the closest we can get. But they aren’t identical either.
So, there is interpretation going into how we rebuild the text based on the copies that we have. And since there are more than one accepted versions, the translators have to decide which version they work from. Interpretation within interpretation.
So, as I hope you have seen, there is really no way to “preach only the bible.” Everything that we do when we teach scripture is interpretation. So, why are there people, and pastors, who think interpreting scripture is wrong? Because interpretation is a human act, and therefore not perfect. It is possible, either intentionally or not, for your interpretation to be wrong.
As I said above, this phrase is used to compare your preaching to someone else’s and the implication is that what they teach is an interpretation and it is wrong, while what you are teaching is the truth. You’re not interpreting anything, you are speaking the truth of God as if He was whispering the words for you to say.
I have heard some sermons and teachings that I have no problem saying were guided by God. I know that on more than one occasion I prepared my message or lesson and had a really good idea what I wanted to say, but when the time came to deliver it something else entirely came out. But, I would never say that I have spoken God’s truth perfectly. What’s more, I would never say that any pastor I have known or heard has either. Guess what, no matter how good any of us are, we are still imperfect people and we will get things wrong. Probably more often than we care to admit.
Since, as I have shown, it is impossible to just preach the bible, and since all of us are fallible people, let’s agree to stop using this phrase. In fact, when we are talking about our own teaching, let’s have the humility to reserve the right to be wrong.