Some Reasons For Differences In Understanding the Bible, etc.

[John317]

The following is from the book about the life and work of Ellen White, Messenger of the Lord, a part of which concerns how we may understand the Bible and touches on the question why people understand the Bible differently. It offers some good insights, I think. It is from about pages 374, 375:

For Ellen White, the Bible is best understood by those who accept it as the Word of God:

I take the Bible just as it is, as the Inspired Word.; When anyone finds it necessary to define that which is inspired and that which is not, they have stepped before Jesus to show Him a better way than He has led us. She believed that the Bible was given for practical purpose and that no

one need be lost for want of knowledge, unless he is willfully blind.

Attitudes Make a Difference

However, she recognized that there are problems in communication. Minds of different education and thought receive different impressions of the same words. Thus it is difficult for one mind to give to one of a different temperament, education, and habits of thought by language exactly the same

idea as that which is clear and distinct in his own mind. Yet to honest men, right-minded men, he [an author] can . . . convey his meaning for all practical purposes. But if the reader is not honest and will not want to see and understand the truth, he will turn his words and language . . . to suit his own

purposes.

Ellen White lamented that some mistreated her writings as they did the Bible:

This is the way my writings are treated by those who wish to misunderstand and pervert them. . . . In the very same way that they treat the writings in my published articles and in my books, so do skeptics and infidels treat the Bible. They read it according to their desire to pervert, to misapply, to willfully wrest the utterances from their true meaning. One problem that Jesus had with the religious leaders of His day was that they misused and abused the Old Testament and thus did not recognize Him as their Messiah. Ellen White noted that these leaders were unaccustomed to accept God‘s word exactly as it reads, or to allow it to be its own interpreter.

The Jewish leaders read the Old Testament in the light of their maxims and

traditions. . . . They turned with aversion from the truth of God to the traditions of men. One‘s attitude in reading the Bible is fundamental to a correct understanding of what the Bible means. This is more important than trained scholarship. The Jewish leaders with their scholarship did not recognize Jesus. On many occasions Ellen White emphasized that selfishness prevents us from beholding God. The self-seeking spirit judges of God as altogether such a one as itself. Until we have renounced this we cannot understand Him who is love. She gave this promise: Everyone who diligently and patiently searches the Scriptures that he may educate others, entering upon the work correctly and with an honest heart, laying his preconceived ideas, whatever they may have been, and his hereditary prejudice at the door of investigation, will gain true knowledge. In summary, Ellen White provided several suggestions as to how to study for truth:

We should invite the Holy Spirit to help us in our study.

We must be willing to obey the truth.

We must be open-minded, even prepared to surrender previously held opinions.

We should expect to discover new truths.

We should expect new light to harmonize with old truth.

An interpretation may be wrong if it is accompanied by an unChristlike spirit.