Redefining Scripture

Some men consider the redefining of scripture as a harmless intellectual exercise and nothing more. They surmise that the mental gymnastics one must perform in order to make the Bible say something it clearly doesn’t, simply exercises the mind…sort of like doing crossword puzzles, or the word jumble in your Sunday paper.

There are stages to reinterpreting the word of God, and trying to make it say something it doesn’t, and the first of these is the ‘what if’ stage. The ‘what if’ stage is also known as the ‘hath God said’ stage, made popular by a serpent in a garden some millennia ago.

The devil is good at sniffing out inconsistency, he is good at sniffing out the flesh’s propensity to find the nonexistent middle of the road wherein it can do what it wants outside, and still enter in when the time comes.

If for an instant the enemy succeeds at pulling us away from the light, or convinces us to look back on the world and its baubles, the first thought that springs to mind is ‘hath God said?’

After the initial seed is planted, the mind begins to play the ‘what if’ game in earnest.

‘What if it was just contextually relevant to the traditions of the Jewish culture and the times they were living in? What if in interpreting the Book from the Hebrew and the Greek, they used a different word for sin? What if Jesus didn’t really mean that?’

Eventually, inevitably, given enough fuel and time to ponder, the mind will come to the question the flesh was attempting to have asked in the first place, ‘what if there really is no such thing as sin, and we’ve been too hard on ourselves all along?’

And this is where it gets tricky. The flesh being the flesh, begins to look not for a contrary viewpoint to its newly seized upon epiphany, but for validation of it. The flesh will never seek out someone who will tell it why it is wrong. It will always seek out those who will tell it why it is right.

We conclude certain things because we reject the notion of obedience and submission, then go about seeking ‘shepherds’ to validate the conclusions we came to due to our rebellion.

Some men just won’t accept the notion that Jesus meant what He said, so they take it upon themselves to soften the blow, dilute the content, and water down the message.

If anyone attempted to do this in real life, they would likely be charged criminally, prosecuted, and even sentenced. Just for a second imagine someone painting over a ‘Danger High Voltage’ sign, and writing, ‘may experience slight tingle if touched’. Or, if someone took the warning label from a bottle of drain cleaner, which clearly spells out that if ingested it may be fatal, and replacing it with, ‘may experience slight tummy ache if ingested’.

I realize this sounds silly, but it is exactly what men have been doing of late when it comes to the Bible’s warnings about sin and rebellion. The warnings are clear, but men have taken it upon themselves to either paint over the warnings, or attempt to minimize them somehow to the point of them being deemed as nothing more than mere suggestions not to partake, or participate, rather than the danger signs they really are.

Men can redefine Scripture to their heart’s content, but try as they might to convince Him, try as they might to convince themselves, God will not bend to the will of men, nor will He accept the newly minted definitions of His eternal Word.

All will stand before Him on that Day of Days, and many will be cast into the outer darkness, because rather than simply obeying and following after Him, they took it upon themselves to tell God what He ought to say, or what He should have meant.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.