We know that you don’t it, but we know you’ve seen others do it—taking the text of scripture to mean whatever they think it should mean. It sounds reasonable enough and certainly prevents your home group Bible study from turning into a total fracas, but let’s be honest: if the text has any meaning at all, it means something in and of itself, despite what we would like to think. The Bible has its meaning in spite of our likes or dislikes, preferences and practices. Scripture is not user-friendly. The inspired writers of scripture were not wondering what-in-the-world they were saying and hoping some nice folk might make sense of it all 2-3000 years later.

We are basically nice people; we don’t like disagreements and disputes, especially when we have people over at the house and haven’t even served dessert. Nothing quite spoils a pleasant soiré like two bull theologians locking horns over some unimportant detail. Everybody else freezes solid and waits for the storm to die down. Afterward, no one wants to share. So what good is all the arguing?  Can’t we just all get along? Can’t we agree to disagree and leave it at that?  We wouldn’t have all this fuss if only we could just say: “I think it means whatever each one thinks it means.” That would solve everything, wouldn’t it? Sure, it would.

This is what we might call “going Rorschach” with the text—agreeing that the scriptures can mean very different things to different people. We do have a diversity of people with a wild diversity of opinions about what the Bible says and leads us to believe, but that is a far cry from saying that the Bible means different things to different readers.  Let’s be very, very clear: The Bible does not depend upon us to mean anything—it means something because of what it is—the Word of God written. The good news of this is that scripture is unchanging and completely consistent from age-to-age, culture-to-culture, and person-to-person.  The downside of this is that we must conform ourselves towards  it: what we think, what we believe, and how we live our lives—all are subject to the ordering of God’s Word. This means that there are no unimportant issues in scripture. Those bulls locking horns in your living room? They are exercising the very model of faithfulness in refusing to compromise the text in order to make their own lives a little more convenient. As long as they argue in good form (no broken furniture, anyway), they are participating in the unswerving dedication to Truth that is dependent neither upon group consensus nor the pet assumptions of our host culture.

We can have no “Rorschace Bibles” written to  protect the cherished comfort zones and conveniences of readers. The Bible is the Word of God written, and it is a bull in our china closets.

Our lives and likes are inconvenienced, upset, challenged, and otherwise judged by it.  That is what makes it The Bible, God’s Word written, the only reliable guide for our walk with Christ.