Many of our friends were shocked and saddened this past week by the death of their dear friend, a hunter who was killed by a grizzly bear while he was out doing a solo hunt for big horned sheep. He leaves behind a wife and children.
Some of his friends are questioning why such a terrible thing would happen to a disciple of Christ and in grief we often ask such questions. I am sure that the Christians of Syria, Nigeria and other places world wide where horrendous and torturous deaths among God's people have become the norm, are asking the same question at times. Some of the parents of the many Christian students killed in the Columbine school shootings are probably still wondering about a loving God allowing their children to be the ones who were taken.
I think we have to be careful when we read biblical promises. We have to be careful about our own assumptions and presumptions, plus our personal interpretations based on them.
Every so often I have to remind myself of the basics of bible reading:
-who was the author of the particular book or passage and/or what were the author's intentions?
-who was the author writing to/for?
-how would the people who read those writings at that time interpret them?
-what is the context surrounding the particular promise or instruction?
-is the promise/information/instruction meant also for cultures and peoples who would follow the culture and peoples the passage was written for?
ie: was it written specifically for the Hebrews or was it also meant for the following generations of new testament Christians? Some Christians tend to take every old testament promise and automatically bring it into our own context, whether it was originally meant for us or not. We pick and choose old testament ideas as is pleasing to us sometimes. ie: we want to claim every promise in the old testament as universal to all God's people but we disdain following old testament dietary laws and feast days.
In other words, context, context, context.
Sometimes I forget.........
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