My Death in Life

[Photo credit to Katie Yates @ ofthelowly.blogspot.com]

"Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path"- Psalm 119:105
"For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding."- Proverbs 2:6
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding"- Proverbs 3:5


I don't know where I first heard the idea of interpreting your experiences through scripture. I do not think that I could repeat the arguments fully but to what I do initially think of it, it rings true, not just in reason but from the corners of my memory. I'll try to give you a brief run down of my thinking before I get into the application and the necessity of this.

We are, by nature, subjective beings. Psychology will tell you that people will view life and act in a certain way because of certain factors in their life- their parents, their peers, major traumas or victories in life. When reading any type of literature part of understanding the objective meaning is to understand the writer's point-of-view. The things that influenced the writing- what was happening when they wrote the text, why they were writing the text, the audience they were writing to. The risk though is to interpret things the way we want to interpret things. Because then we feel like we're getting more from the text or we're able to connect better with the writing. But that is doing injustice to the writer. I didn't write this blog entry hoping that you would take any meaning you wanted from it- I wrote this with a specific purpose and intent.

An example of this is the movie vantage point. It's an event that is seen through the eyes of several different people and at the end the audience pieces together what everyone saw to figure out what actually happened. But if they didn't collect their stories together, than each person could have come out with their own story of how it happened. There may be some overlap, but the outcome may be very different.

So what I've been thinking on for the past day is this; what happens when we're dealing with something hard and we don't know how to come at it? How do you be objective and know exactly what to do when you are one of the only people that are actually involved in the incident and know all of the factors?

Because in cases like this- counsel can only go so far. Because counsel is taking the 2nd hand story from one of those involved. They are taking one view point of the event or occurrence. And the counselor can only give the advice based on what they know from the person involved. But in a lot of these areas where we do not know what to do we usually resort to what's socially acceptable or what is socially justifiable. In most cases, even in Christendom, this isn't on the same page with faith living.

We need a source outside even our own society, our own time, for guidance on issues like this. This is where Scripture is our anchor. In this life where we're being tossed and turned by waves of things that we can't control, Paul reminds us to hold fast to what is good, hold fast to what you've been taught. Scripture is how we know how to act in situations. It might not speak literally to your situation but the principles of how to carry yourself, how to interact with people inside and outside The Church, how to pray, how to make it through tough times, how to counsel people.

We must interpret our experiences through the light of scripture. If not, we're just playing with the shadows of spirituality.