Five Principles for Rightly Handling Scripture

God’s word is our most important and indisputable authority. This is not to say it is the only authority. R. C. Sproul notes that the Reformation notion of sola Scriptura does not mean the Bible is the only authority for the Christian, but that it is the only infallible authority—for the simple reason that God himself is infallible.

1. Scripture should speak to all of life
We should not see the Bible as a manual for how to escape this world, but rather as a book of wisdom for, in part, applying God’s revealed truth to all of life now. Scripture should be both the foundation and impetus for all our knowledge pursuits.
 
2. Scripture should define your paradigm
All of us tend to like the parts of Scripture that support our paradigms while we ignore or downplay the parts that threaten our status quo. But bad things happen when we start shaping Scripture around us rather than ourselves around Scripture. We must always be on guard against force-fitting Scripture into boxes of our liking.
 
3. Scripture is valuable as a whole, not just the parts
Context is everything in Bible study. The truth of any given verse becomes clearer when we see it in the larger context. We get the most out of the Bible when we read it in big chunks and grasp its grand narrative. The Bible is a cohesive narrative.
 
4. Scripture should spark worship and obedience
We must “be doers of the word, and not hearers only” (James 1:22). Our lives should be beautifully transformed by the Bible because we obey what it says. Part of this is acknowledging that the Bible should engage not only our minds, but also our hearts, leading us to love the Lord and trust him more and more. We read the Bible to know its author, to behold the beauty and glory of Christ.
 
5. Scripture doesn’t have to make complete sense
This doesn’t mean we turn off our brains, throw up our hands, and tolerate theological fuzziness. Rather, the difficulties of Scripture should invite us to even more rigorous and precise examination, going deeper and wider in our study as lifelong learners, not because we have to know everything God knows, but because the more immersed we are in Scripture, the nearer we feel to his sweet presence.
 

- Brett McCracken, The Wisdom Pyramid:

Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World, 2021

 

What Does Agape Love Really Mean?

Maybe you’ve already heard that agape (ἀγάπη) is the standard word for love in the Greek New Testament, and maybe you’ve heard that it points to a specific kind of love: a selfless, giving, non-emotional love—as opposed to the friendship love of philia (φιλία).
 
What does agape love really mean?
 
And now to love, because John 21 provides a perfect example of what Dr. Decker is talking about. I actually remember the day as a college freshman when I was given the (supposed) secret Greek key to unlocking Jesus’ famous conversation with Peter in that passage. Jesus asks three times, “Do you love me?” Peter replies each time: “Yes, I love you.” I was told that, hidden underneath the surface of the weak, imprecise English word “love” were two different Greek words: agapao (ἀγαπάω) and phileo (φιλέω). I was further told that these two Greek words pointed to two vastly different kinds of love, the one selfless and non-emotional and the other merely emotional and friend-ish. Peter, so the interpretation goes, twice couldn’t bring himself to say he loved Jesus selflessly and unconditionally, so Jesus asked him, in effect, “Do you even love me like a friend?”
 
…The fact is that the Bible never says anywhere that real love, ideal love, is non-emotional. In Jesus’ conversation with Peter, he appears to be varying agapao and phileo for purposes of style, not meaning.
 
One of the problems with using Greek without knowing it well is that you tend to fail to apply your principles rigorously. Are all synonyms in John 21 used to point up their differences rather than their similarities?
 
As D. A. Carson points out… Jesus doesn’t just vary his words for love in his conversation with Peter, he varies his word choice for the noun “sheep”:
 
“Feed my lambs,” he says.
Then, “Shepherd my sheep.”
Then, “Feed my sheep.”
 
Is it lambs or sheep? If Jesus intends to highlight a significant difference, he does not choose to make that clear. There do not seem to be obvious differences among the three imperative verbs, either: “feed,” “shepherd,” “feed.” The verb “shepherd,” in fact, also means “feed” sometimes, especially in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament). 
 
And John 21 isn’t the only place where Jesus varies his use of agapao and phileo in the Gospel of John. In John 3:35, Jesus says, “The Father loves the son,” and in John 5:20 he says precisely the same thing—only in one verse he uses agapao and in the other phileo, with no discernible difference in meaning. Jesus isn’t invoking two radically different kinds of love in his conversation with Peter.
 
One of the most popular linguistic and exegetical fallacies in modern times is that the Greek word for love, agapao, carries in it the implication of a divine love that is unconditional and comes to us in spite of our sin.
 
That is not true. Context must decide if agapao refers to our proud, cliquish love for our cronies (as in Matthew 5:46) or if it refers to God’s merciful and sacrificial love for sinners (as in John 3:16), or if it refers to our love for leaders, not unconditionally but precisely because of their labor (1 Thessalonians 5:13)
 
To be clear, the New Testament does speak of a special kind of love, but we don’t know that by looking up Greek words in the dictionary. We know it by reading the New Testament. People who can read the Bible only in English can still know what love is.
 
Debunking beloved interpretations of Scripture is a favored pastime of young seminarians. But constructive help, not destructive criticism, is my goal here. It is my impression that the church in general—and perhaps the most studious of us in particular—put too much weight on looking up Bible words and not enough weight on reading Bible sentences in their contexts. There is nothing necessarily wrong with looking up words, and Logos can do it so incredibly well! I do it all the time—and if you’re curious as to what I think “love” really means, I actually believe the standard Greek dictionary defines it pretty well if you put senses one and two together: “to have a warm regard for and interest in another; to have high esteem for or satisfaction with something, cherish, have affection for, love, take pleasure in.”
 
But you’ll learn far more about “love” by reading the resurrection accounts in the Gospels, or by reading the story of the Good Samaritan—Scripture passages which don’t even use the word—than you will by looking up agape in a dictionary. By all means do both, but know in advance which one weighs more than the other.
 

Excerpt from: https://blog.logos.com/what-does-agape-love-mean/

To vs. For

When to use TO 

1. Direction - Expressing movement toward something
i.e. We’re going to the zoo this weekend.

2. Receiving - Showing who or what receives an action or item
i.e. She was always mean to us.

3. Connection - Showing an abstract link between two people
i.e. I am married to my best friend.

4. Attachment - Showing a physical attachment between two things
i.e. The piece of paper was accidentally glued to my hand.

5. Comparison - Introducing the second part of a comparison
i.e. They preferred water to soda.

6. Reason (with verb) - Describing why something happened, when the explanation uses a verb
i.e. I study so much to get good grades.

7. Infinitives - In the infinitive form of a verb, to comes before the root verb.
i.e. To succeed in anything requires motivation.

8. Time - used to mean “before” a certain time.
i.e. Ten minutes to closing!

9. Synonym of “until” - often used colloquially as a replacement for “until.”
i.e. We’re open from dawn to dusk.
 

When to use FOR 

1. Support - Indicating agreement, allegiance, or favor toward something
i.e. If you’re not for the union, you’re against it!

2 Representation - Showing an action on behalf of or representing something else
i.e. I may work for Walmart, but I don’t shop there.

3. Exchange - Introducing the second part of a purchase, deal, or trade
i.e. He bought the entire Skrillex discography for only a dollar.

4 Length - Indicating length of time or distance
i.e. Go straight for a few miles and then turn left.

5. Gratitude - Showing thanks or gratitude
i.e. Thank you for your email.

6  Reason (with noun) - Describing why something happened, when the explanation uses a noun
i.e. She became a doctor for the money, not the long hours.
 
7. Conjunction -  a coordinating conjunction that acts as a synonym of “because,” although today it’s a little outdated. 

i.e. The crops aren’t growing, for the weather is lousy.

8. Comparisons with what’s normal - You can use for to emphasize how something is different from the norm or general standard.
i.e. “You’re not bad for an elf,” said the dwarf.

9. Scheduling - to indicate a planned arrangement in the future.
i.e. Is our D&D session still on for later?

To vs. For

Using to vs. for purpose and reason
- to is used with verbs (i.e. I came here to see you)
- for is used with nouns (i.e. I came here for you)

Using important to vs. important for
important to - indicates personal or sentimental value, with emotional significance
important for - indicates a practical benefit, not always an emotional significance

Using to vs. for with receiving something
- Essentially, when you’re talking about someone receiving something directly, use to followed by the recipient (the person who receives something).
i.e.  Every year I give a birthday gift to my dog.
- If you’re talking about the reason or purpose behind doing something—but not the actual giving—use for.
i.e. I bought a birthday gift for my dog.
(Notice how the action in the last sentence is about buying the gift, not giving the gift.)

source: grammarly blog

Why We Must Read Books

Books are vital in cultivating wisdom—not only for the truths they contain, but also for the way they help us think. In our distracted age, books give us perspective, focus, and space to reflect. Reading books—a wide variety, from different eras and places and worldviews, both fiction and nonfiction—keeps our anachronism and self-centeredness in check. They educate us, help us make connections across disciplines, and open up the world.
 
Books Help Us Connect, Explore, Think Well

When we read books, we are stepping into another’s shoes. We are entering the author’s world, giving our attention to the author’s perspective for an extended time. This last part is key. It’s hard to develop empathy when you only read a tweet by someone; but a book-length immersion in someone’s world creates the opportunity for understanding. The act of reading a book is literally the act of being “quick to listen, slow to speak.” In literary fiction, we develop empathy by getting inside characters’ minds. We may love or hate them, but to the extent that we listen to and live with them for a time, we can learn from the particularity of their existence. Research shows that literary fiction especially helps readers develop empathy—a better understanding of the complexity of what others are thinking and feeling.
We read to connect, but also to explore. Even though we technically read a book without ever physically going anywhere, we all know the feeling of how a book transports us to other places and other times.
 
There is a growing body of research that shows the powerful ways reading books—long, immersive reading in contrast to the fragmented, quick-scan reading we do online—strengthens our brains’ abilities to think well.
 
Books Confront the Noise
 
At a time when the glut, speed, and tailored-to-you nature of information is making us ever more prone to misinformation and unsound wisdom, reading books offers a powerful antidote. Books confront the “too much information” problem by focusing our attention on one thing for a longer, deeper time. They confront the “too fast” problem by forcing us to sit with one writer’s perspective for long enough to really grapple with it. Books challenge the “too focused on me” problem by putting us in another’s shoes.
 
Books give us solid grounding at a time when everything is up for grabs. They offer rubrics to better evaluate the barrage of information we face in today’s world. In a world of snapshots and soundbites, books offer fuller context, and as Andy Crouch writes, “generally speaking, the older the book, the deeper the context.”
 
Books Help us to Change
 
But reading is not merely a defensive act. To read and learn well we must also be teachable, willing to let our guard down enough to be impressionable (but not gullible). When we open a book we should be ready to be changed, open to being convinced, eager to learn something we didn’t know. If you think you know everything, you’ll have no use for books; if you are humble and curious (key foundations for a life of wisdom), you’ll devour them.
 
This is a key, yet countercultural, aspect of reading well. We live in a “death of expertise” world, after all. Our prevailing hermeneutic is suspicion. We are more comfortable proclaiming ourselves experts than we are being swayed or influenced by others. That’s why today’s discourse is at an impasse. We’ve so emphasized “you do you” liberty that expert knowledge, educated consensus, and logic no longer matter. It’s the problem educators face when they so emphasize students “learning to think for themselves” that the teacher’s own credentials and authority to adjudicate right and wrong answers loses any force.
 

Greatest Book

Still, we must put these books in their proper place. It would be folly to build one’s wisdom diet around great books but not also the greatest book, the Bible. Without the reference point of God, the “truth” of books is relative. One reader might find a book true, while another finds it false. There can be no consensus on canon if there is no transcendent reference point for words like good, true, and beautiful. “The only guarantor of communal truth is transcendent truth,” writes David Lyle Jeffrey. “Without intellectually accountable access to the Greater Book, very many lesser, yet still very great, expressions of truth may go without understanding.”
 

- Brett McCracken, The Wisdom Pyramid:

Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World, 2021

 

The Words under the Words

The words you choose can change the decisions people make. Psychologists call the mechanics of this choice “framing.” They’ve found, for example, that more people will decide to have a surgery if they are told that the “survival rate is 90%” than if they are told that the “mortality rate is 10%.” They’ve also found that having to pay a “surcharge” for using a credit card rankles people more than if they were simply told they would get a “discount” for using cash. They’ve even found that people enjoy meat labeled “75% lean” more than they do the same meat labeled “25% fat.” Framing, it seems, extends all the way to taste buds.

Think about more than just the straightforward definition of the words you use. Think about the connotations of those words as well—the ideas they might evoke, the reactions they might elicit, the images and emotions they could stir up.

--- Patrick Barry, Good with Words: Writing and Editing, 2019.

Discomfort of Growth

Writer Alice Walker on the discomfort of growth:

"Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger than we were before.

Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant.

But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be... for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed."

How To Read A Book

Read the title. Define every word in the title; look up any unknown words. Think about what the title promises for the book. Look at the table of contents. This is your “menu” for the book. What can you tell about its contents and structure from the TOC?

Read a book from the outside in. Read the foreword and introduction (if an article, read the first paragraph or two). Read the conclusion or epilogue if there is one (if an article, read the last one or two paragraphs). After all this, ask yourself what the author’s thesis might be. How has the argument been structured?

Read chapters from the outside in. Quickly read the first and last paragraph of each chapter. After doing this and taking the step outlined above, you should have a good idea of the book’s major themes and arguments.

You are now finally ready to read in earnest. Don’t read a history book as if you were reading a novel for light pleasure reading. Read through the chapters actively, taking cues as to which paragraphs are most important from their topic sentences. (Good topic sentences tell you what the paragraph is about.) Not every sentence and paragraph is as important as every other. It is up to you to judge, based on what you know so far about the book’s themes and arguments. If you can, highlight passages that seem to be especially relevant.

Take notes: Many students attempt to take comprehensive notes on the content of a book or article. I advise against this. I suggest that you record your thoughts about the reading rather than simply the details and contents of the reader. What surprised you? What seemed particularly insightful? What seems suspect? What reinforces or counters points made in other readings? This kind of note taking will keep your reading active, and actually will help you remember the contents of the piece better than otherwise.

source: https://courses.bowdoin.edu/writing-guides/reading/how-to-read-a-secondary-source/