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What is dangerous about taking a Scripture to mean something other than the plain, natural or literal sense? Do we have the option to say the Holy Spirit has given us new meanings from the same words in Scripture? Explain your answers.
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The danger is that we can interpret based on our own biases, cultural backgrounds, personalities, etc and come up with meanings of Scripture that was not what God or the author meant. Cults may arise when enough people try to see the deeper meaning of a passage and come up with new theology that is not Biblical. The Holy Spirit can use the Bible to speak to us in our situations, but we need to use wisdom and discernment when listening to the voice of God.
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The danger in taking scripture to mean something other than it says is wrong because we are either going to accept the Word as it is written or not. The Bible is Gods Word or love letter to us.
We do not have the option to say to the Holy Spirit to give us new meanings from the same scripture. That’s like blaspheming God. You do that it’s changing Gods Word and God warns us about that in the Bible.
People sometimes take the Bible and try to make it say what they want. That’s dangerous too! We are to fear God, take his word like it is written and honor his word by living it out in our lives, through faith not works. -
I don’t believe that we do have that option, but I have a bunch of “Christian” friends who insist that they do and it just scares me and breaks my heart because some of them are so far out that, well, no I don’t. I do feel that, as Christian brothers, and sisters we have the option to come together in love and discuss differing ideas in an exchange of thoughts and beliefs that builds the Kingdom of God, not trying to pull other people down by saying that it means what it means, and I won’t hear anything else. I know a Pastor who says that a lot. I am always trying to tell people that we are really not “all that” in the eyes of God and our thoughts are not the “be all and end all” of scripture. Dangerous practice to even put ourselves in that position.
What doctrine(s) can you think of that do not appear to come from the plain teaching of the Word of God but do serve as distinctive beliefs for particular denominations of Christians? How do you respond to those who defend such beliefs?