One of the most disturbing characteristics of our society is the loss of the ability to read. I don’t mean that people can’t “decode” the letters and read the words. I mean that our culture reads for what they want the words to mean.
This absurdity really began in the colleges in the sixties and seventies, in which (in my experience) students were taught to bring their own meaning to something that was written instead of seeking the author’s intent. Since then it has become common. For that reason, it wasn’t surprising that a recent issue of Newsweek ran with a shallow article purporting that the Bible really argues for Gay marriage, “Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side.”[1]
The only way to make such a case is to avoid drawing the meaning from Scripture and instead bringing one’s own meaning to it. Such virtues as love and a forgiving spirit are reinterpreted to mean “toleration.” So instead of being our redeemer and suffering the judgment of sin, Christ becomes the great enabler, the great tolerator of vice.
Such thinking only works in the realm of ideas, with feet firmly planted in mid-air. Nobody can actually live that way consistently. Imagine if airline pilots took the same view toward the air regulations. Imagine if doctors decided that standards of care could just be ignored.
Really learning how to read means learning to comprehend what is written and intended by the author.
A metaphor I have used before:
Just as a pilot flying in the clouds must trust and follow his instruments, without regard to his feelings about location, direction, or anything else, so also we Christians, ask above anything else, “What does the Bible say?” and (learning how to read!) rest everything on that.