As a living word, the Bible can and does mean different things to different people. This does not mean that “anything goes” in biblical interpretation. Obviously, the Bible can be misinterpreted in ways that get it terribly wrong. One advantage of belonging to a church and studying the Bible in a group is that others can put some limits on our tendencies to read into Scripture whatever we want to find there.
To help unpack the riches of biblical stories, I encourage Bible readers to employ a strategy I call casting the Scriptures. I mean casting in the sense of a dramatic production.
First, read the biblical story, ask yourself what the story means and then consciously identify the character with whom you have identified – either realistically and idealistically. If this story were being performed on the stage of your life (so to speak), this is the character you would most naturally seek to play. Then, read the story again, trying out for a different role. Cast the story differently and force yourself to empathize with a different character. Inevitably, this game leads to new perceptions, ones I might have missed.
This message is excerpted from the Bible study “Multiple meanings: Learning from other interpretations” by Mark Allan Powell in the January/February 2018 Gather magazine.
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