"Christians have never been able to establish any hermeneutic that can be independently verified...There is literally nothing to stop a Christian from interpreting the Bible in whatever way suites their biases"
The most amusing, is when people listen to a preacher teach a blatant falsehood, straight to their faces about the simplest verse or concepts. People are so brainwashed, they do not believe they can trust their own brain to comprehend a reading of "the Holy Bible". As if there's something so sacred, spirit daddy alone can understand and explain it. People won't read the scripture them self using critical reasoning and attention to detail. Much less, an original opinion, that goes against "what we've always heard it means".They are dependent on spirit-daddy who stands behind the pulpit to explain a simple sentence. People shake their heads in agreement, as though under some kind of hypnotic trance. And from that point on, they continue to cite that misinterpreted verse, generation after generation, never questioning. They can open their Bible, and see the verse with their own two eyes and yet they still read it through the filter of misinterpretation because that's how they heard it read once in church, or how their neighbor interprets it... but if you actually read the verse, it says something entirely different. Things like this, will test your sanity! All because a preacher in the past read it that way. How many times have people repeated, "Spare the Rod. Spoil the Child"? as though it were holy writ from the Bible? The phrase “spare the rod, spoil the child” comes from Proverbs 13:24, “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.”
Discipline does not mean beating the crap out of your kids. The verse in the Bible emphasizes to correct and teach in a loving manner. Fundamentalist thumpers (with an agenda) misinterpreted out of their own prejudice, and extrapolated it to mean, regularly beat your kids senseless. And from time forward the lie became the truth. The way theists interpret, as well as outside systems of belief.
Preachers are infamous for taking a verse from the bible, reading it within the context of their peculiar doctrines, and then the incorrect verse becomes the accepted version. Nobody reads with new eyes, open mind, free from doctrinal rhetoric. In that hypnotic state, induced by mainstream preacher-speak, it is impossible for people to read plain English. "But nobody is saying that." Ha, do I need approval to call a spade, a spade?!
They stumble over the greatest simplicities in this manner. And the funny thing is, as many times as preachers have mislead people in this way, to the point of widespread misinterpretation of the most simple scriptures, people STILL continue to believe and teach the lie, that it is impossible to understand the Bible, without a spirit-daddy at the pulpit, reading scripture for you.
Romans 10:14 "...and how shall they hear without a preacher?"
How can they trust a preacher?! You can't trust preachers. I trust ME and me only to correctly read English, Hebrew, or whatever for myself.
I read the Bible (past tense) and when I did I came away realizing that 75% of the things I was taught about what the Bible said was a lie. I've seen so many times, controversies would erupt on television or elsewhere on theology.. and when I went back to the Bible, to the verses in dispute, I learned the Bible didn't even say what they're saying it does.
Matthew 15:13 "if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit."
CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG, BUT...
even the verse Romans 10:14 "...and how shall they hear without a preacher?"
Has often been construed, by religionists, to convince people of the importance that they *must* attend a church, as well as discouraging personal study by reassuring them that they can not properly read, comprehend or correctly interpret scripture on their own for lack of some intermediator, "for only he knows the will of God." Therefore, they need a preacher, mediator, an interpreter.
I had that very thing said to me, again and again, by those seeking to convert me to their religion or church, when my own conscience was telling me, "I do not want to attend a church which teaches false doctrines.". When they looked at my library of theology books, disparagingly they pursed their lips and sneered, "You cannot learn without a preacher." and citing Romans 10:14 as the authority by which they speak.
But that is NOT what the verse is conveying in its true context. You could not walk into a Barnes & Nobles bookstore in AD 56 and purchase a Bible. Romans was written in a period when people didn't have access to modern printing presses or books. So, logically, how would people hear without a preacher?
Today, in our modern day, with millions of Bibles readily available what excuse remains for the continuation of this evil lie.. this false teaching which sprang up from simply "mis-reading scripture," and since it served the pulpit very profitably, this lie was spread far and wide. Purposely taken out of context and used as an excuse to badger, berate, manipulate and otherwise shackle people into attendance of their church. A lie which has been perpetuated, generation after generation after generation and until people start speaking the truth, such a lie will continue to be propagated in churches, around the world.
When do people learn to read what is written in such plain language, in black and white? and question EVERY THING the church has taught them?
In light of the obvious, are Christians, in modern time with availability of a public education system, ILLITERATE, and need a tutor to read to them?
This makes me question not only the lack of availability to printing presses and books, but the question of literacy of the "Hearers" during the era in which Romans was written.
Literacy and Culture in Early Christianity
Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts
Gamble begins his first chapter with an intriguing quote from Origen. Perhaps the greatest biblical scholar of the early church, Origen was defending the scriptures from the accusation of being literarily lackluster. He did not defend the gospels as masterpieces of literature, but rather argued,It was not any power of speaking, or any orderly arrangement of their message, according to the arts of Grecian dialectics or rhetoric, which was in them the effective cause of converting their hearers. Nay, I am of opinion that if Jesus had selected some individuals who were wise according to the apprehension of the multitude, and who were fitted both to think and speak so as to please them, and had used such as the ministers of His doctrine, He would most justly have been suspected of employing artifices, like those philosophers who are the leaders of certain sects, and consequently the promise respecting the divinity of His doctrine would not have manifested itself; for had the doctrine and the preaching consisted in the persuasive utterance and arrangement of words, then faith also, like that of the philosophers of the world in their opinions, would have been through the wisdom of men, and not through the power of God. (Against Celsus 1.62)Origen goes on to quote Paul’s response to his cultured Corinthian despisers (1 Cor 2.4-5). Similarly, Acts portrays the apostles as “unlettered and uneducated”
My Source goes on to say:
"..Still, it is important to recognize that “literacy,” was both extremely rare and widely varied. It was rare in the sense that most people could not read. It was varied in that “literacy” could describe one’s ability to read a simple text aloud or the skills to compose lengthy texts.
The typical estimate of literacy, broadly defined as “the ability to read or write at any level” (4) was only about 10 percent of society at large. The lack of any widespread educational system meant literacy was limited to the elite."
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