Culture and Interpretation

I have a friend who is a prophet, and I believe that she is truly inspired by the Holy Spirit. When she writes down exactly what she receives, then it is accurate—scarily accurate. But when she attempts to interpret it, to put it “in her own words” and thus to put her own understanding into it, then it becomes more difficult to understand, and harder to accept. It just doesn’t seem as “right” somehow. It is still inspired, but there are layers to dig through to understand what the Holy Spirit really says, and we have to ask questions to really figure it out.

Even so with the text of Scripture. It is written in a context, and interpreted for that culture to better understand it. Sometimes, it has the assumptions of that culture which are not explained and occasionally it includes the misconceptions of the culture of the author. This does not mean that God’s word is not there. But we have to sift through the culture to determine the culture. God’s word for us is not on the surface of Scripture—written in Greek or Hebrew, filled with idioms and not explaining the cultural assumptions that come with living in the Ancient world. To understand God’s word, we must work hard to unpack Scripture.