What Does The Bible Say

You may have never read it or even watched the movie, so here is a 60-second message about The Message.

The Problem Of Interpretation

We should treat the Bible as we would any other book by taking the words to mean what they say. Christians have become too accustomed to interpreting the Bible. Imagine that your little boy comes home from school with a test paper with a failing grade. You ask Johnny what happened, and he explains he had to answer ten questions based on a chapter in his textbook. “Why did you get eight out of ten wrong?” you ask. Johnny explains, “They’re not wrong; I just interpret the textbook differently than my teacher.” The moral of the story is the Bible isn’t meant to mean whatever we interpret it to mean. God inspired a true meaning and meant it to be understood.

Simple Is good

There is a principle in reasoning referred to as Ockham's Razor (from William of Ockham). It is a principle of succinctness used in logic and problem-solving. The razor principle states that one should use the simplest theories until the evidence requires that simplicity be traded for complex theories having greater explanatory power. As a mature Christian, I applied Ockham's Razor to Genesis and decided to take Genesis to mean what the words express, that God created everything in short order and culminated his creative acts with the making of the first man. As a scientific investigator, I used this understanding of Genesis as an anchor to generate a scientific model. Through my investigations, I never encountered reasons to abandon the simplicity of the straightforward, non-interpretive understanding of the words of Genesis.