Ancient vs Modern

Look at yesterday's quote again:

Stories are not waiting to be molded to fit our experience.  They are waiting for us to take the risk of entering their world of the story and be changed by it.  (Peter Enns and Jared Byas)

The quote is at the beginning of the book Genesis for Normal People.  The authors are attempting (and doing a good job) to convince us, the reader, that Genesis is an ancient story.  We can't just walk into the story with our own expectations - our modern view of the world - and then twist the story to fit what we know.

What difference does that make? Think for a moment how much difficulty we can have understanding the experiences of someone of a different age: the Millennials vs the Greatest Generation, for example.  They seem to speak different languages, have different life expectations,  approach situations differently.  That doesn't mean that have different values - they love their children, they value generosity, they want to serve.  Their cultures in time are different, though, and that makes stepping into a different generation's story difficult.  

Extend that thought to 3000 or 4000 years.  Why do we ever expect that we can walk into a biblical story and just have it fit our viewpoint?   Look at it through the eyes of those to whom it was written and the meaning changes. The story has a different life transforming effect.  

Why is that so hard for some of us to understand?

Who you talkin' to?

Were you surprised yesterday when I quoted Adam Hamilton:  "The question Revelation raises is, will you worship God or will you give primary allegiance to the state?"

I wonder sometimes if we get so caught up in the "puzzle" that is Revelation and in the futuristic interpretation that some people are prone to adopt in our media that we fail to really read the book for what it says and means.  We forget how important it is to know to whom the letter is being written and in what circumstances the original reader found himself. Why would we ever try to understand a letter without knowing to whom it was written?

Once you know that - once you know why Paul was brusque when he wrote the Galatians or why his letter to the church at Philippi was so full of joy or even why John wrote what he did to the seven churches mentioned in Revelation - then the content of the letter makes much more sense.

God certainly speaks to us through these letters, but the author was not writing to us.  To ignore that fact short changes the interpretation of what was written and leads to dangerous and harmful mistakes.