When reading the Bible

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We should regularly read the Bible, the infallible Word of God. In that collection of different books we might find all sorts of reliable stories, poetry, proverbs, and wisdom that can feed our spirit to grow in knowledge and to a better personality.

When reading the Bible you should ask yourself some questions:

• Principle 1: Read for the author’s meaning, not your own.
  When we read, we want to know what an author intended us to see and experience in his writing. He had an intention when he wrote. Nothing will ever change that. It is there as a past, objective event in history.
  We are not reading simply for subjective experiences. We are reading to discover more about objective reality.
  I’m not content with what comes to my mind when I read it. The meaning of a sentence, or a word, or a letter is what the author intended for us to understand by it. Therefore, meaning is the first aim of all good reading.
• Principle 2: Ask questions to unlock the riches of the Bible.
  When we read, we generally do not really think until we are faced with a problem to be solved, a mystery to be unravelled, or a puzzle to be deciphered. Until our minds are challenged, and shift from passive reading to active reading, we drift right over lots of insights.
  Asking ourselves questions is a way of creating a problem or a mystery to be solved. That means the habit of asking ourselves questions awakens and sustains our thinking. It stimulates our mind while we read, and drives us down deep to the real meaning of a passage.
• Principle 3: At every page, pray and ask for God’s help.
  Reflect on how Christians today should live in light of this passage, and consider what impact it should have on your life.

 

Solve the Right Problem

To remember

• Define problem right = you’re halfway to a solution.
• Define problem wrong = you’ll probably never solve it => You’ll waste all your time looking for a solution that doesn’t exist.
• Flip side of defining the problem wrong = what computer programmers call GIGO: “Garbage in, garbage out.” >>> If assumptions are wrong = if your logic is flawless =your conclusions will be wrong.
• social problems < base assumptions on optimism rather than realism => go straight from errors in their premises to errors in their conclusions.
• When you start with incorrect information but make mistakes in thinking, then you might get the correct answer just by blind luck. (it does happen)
• Why are the great monotheistic faiths – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – chronically unable to fulfill their own self-professed goal of creating individuals infused with moral sensitivity and societies governed by the highest ethical standards? = seems to define problem incorrectly, based on an incorrect assumption about what religion can accomplish.
• Judaism taught world about universal moral law under God, improving societies and people from ancient times to the present day.
• Christianity added emphasis on individual conscience + individual rights, helping to develop Western ideals of freedom and personal dignity.
• Islam = great improvement on earlier practices in the region where it developed, giving at least some rights to women + , in the medieval era, fostering a high civilization to which Jews contributed.
• << cannot do = make all individuals + societies ethical all the time, + can’t do it because it’s impossible.
• => limitation imposed by human nature, + fact people are not all alike
• problem > message must be simple, clear, consistent, + realistic + achievable + allow occasional failures, providing a way to recover from them and get back on the right track.
• solution = to talk to majority in the middle

The Thousand-Year View

My latest blog post for The Jewish Journal:

Define the problem right, and you’re halfway to a solution.

Define the problem wrong, and you’ll probably never solve it. You’ll waste all your time looking for a solution that doesn’t exist. That applies in every area of life, such as religion, relationships, science, and social problems. The best movie mystery of 2008 turned on mis-identifying the problem to be solved.

The flip side of defining the problem wrong is what computer programmers call GIGO: “Garbage in, garbage out.” If your assumptions are wrong, then even if your logic is flawless, your conclusions will be wrong. Garbage in, garbage out.

Ironically, it’s the best and brightest people who are most susceptible to GIGO errors when they think about social problems.

Their kind hearts make them want to believe the most optimistic things, so they often base their assumptions on optimism rather…

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