I never want to stop learning. The moment I do, that is when my mind has closed off and I come to the belief that I know all I need to know. That is wrong today, was wrong years ago and will remain wrong until my dying breath.
In my quest to continue to learn I listen to a number of podcasts. I've talked about this before, but what Apple has done with iTunes is make this sharing of a simple mp3 file into this great viral thing called podcasting. There are a number of universities who have made their curriculum available via podcast without having to pay to attend the class and I subscribe to several of their feeds. I was very excited this morning to start a new class.
I had high hopes for this class. It was titled
Biblical Exegesis and the first lesson was
Colossians Chapter 3 so I was prepared to dig into the text. Now if you aren't aware, the word
exegesis is referring to interpretation of the text of the bible. This is the nice $1 word you get from attending bible college or seminary. So with great expectations I began the podcast...
And I was rapidly disappointed. You see, I figured a seminary class would be helping their students with the ideas behind Biblical exegesis. Maybe some talk about the steps one takes when exegeting a text. Some time spent on how the professor came to his or her conclusions the text presented and give us some ideas of external reference material came in useful. None of that occurred. Instead this "class" was a professor telling us what Paul meant when he wrote this letter to the church at Colossae. No discussion on how to go about exegeting the text. No discussion on what methods were applied and why those methods were chosen for this portion of the text. Basically no discussion whatsoever. Just the professor telling all within the sound of his voice what Paul meant in the letter.
Now that may be well and good. I may very well agree with the conslusions he came to about the text. But unless I am allowed to go through the process myself. Unless I am encouraged to think...it remains the
professor's opinion and not my own. I know people say just tell the truth of the Bible, but if there were really only one way to look at a text and understand it there would be only one set of Christians. Instead there is denomination after denomination with subtle differences (and sometimes not so subtle) in interpreting the text. And we argue amongst one another about what is the
right way of interpreting a text and what is the
right conclusion to come to. If there were really only one right, why so many different groups of people calling themselves Christian?
There wouldn't be. Instead we all have our own beliefs, our own ideas on what the Scriptures are revealing to us about this God we follow. And reading the same passage of scripture again and again speaks to us in different ways as we approach scripture with different stuff going on in our lives at the time. Different things to apply the Scripture to in our own lives.
When we went through the book of Proverbs and read one a day every day so we went through the book every month, then the next month choose another translation and begin again...when we went through that process, I understood the text better sometimes. Some months a certain proverb would be so relevant to my circumstances at the time that its meaning was clear to me while other months a completely different Proverb would strike me the same way.
So with all of that said, I am going to have to unfortunately delete that podcast. I don't want to
learn about how to interpret a passage of scripture the way the professor interprets it, I want to learn
how the professor got to that conclusion and the tools he used so I can interpret it for myself.
