Reading the Bible As Intended

I have a pet peeve amongst Chris­tians (well, one among a few). I get frus­tu­rated when Chris­tians attempt to read the Bible for some­thing that it was not intended to be used for. Among the guilty par­ties are Nou­thetic coun­selors and Answers in Gen­e­sis. To give an exam­ple of what I’m talk­ing about, let’s visit a few of these. We’ll con­clude with how I think the Bible should be read as decreed by God.

Nou­thetic Coun­sel­ing Theory

Nou­thetic coun­sel­ing is the belief that the Bible is the only item that should be used in coun­sel­ing. They out­right reject any sec­u­lar psy­chol­ogy as “substitute[s] the ‘dis­cov­er­ies’ of rebel­lious human thought for the truths revealed in Scrip­ture.” They also state:

“The coun­selor must build his coun­sel­ing sys­tem, includ­ing its pre­sup­po­si­tions, prin­ci­ples and method­olo­gies solely from scrip­ture. His coun­sel­ing must demon­strate that Scrip­tural truth, min­is­tered in the power of the Holy Spirit, is suf­fi­cient to enable coun­se­lees to love God and their neighbors.”

In adopt­ing this method­ol­ogy, depres­sion and other psy­chi­atric dis­eases and symp­toms are often reduced to sin. This group attempts to read the Bible as a map for psy­chol­ogy when that’s not what it was intended for.

Answers in Genesis

Answers in Gen­e­sis is the more sen­sa­tional of the two. The very title of the orga­ni­za­tion gives us a clue into how this orga­ni­za­tion builds its sci­en­tific method­ol­ogy. They state the fol­low­ing in their state­ment of faith regard­ing the use of the Gen­e­sis nar­ra­tive in sci­en­tific research.

“The account of ori­gins pre­sented in Gen­e­sis is a sim­ple but fac­tual pre­sen­ta­tion of actual events and there­fore pro­vides a reli­able frame­work for sci­en­tific research into the ques­tion of the ori­gin and his­tory of life, mankind, the Earth and the universe.”

I’ve heard Ken Ham say in debates, with other Chris­tians mind you who dif­fer on the age of the earth, that he just “believes the Bible.” Well, one of the peo­ple he was debat­ing was Wal­ter Kaiser, and I think it’s safe to say that he would “believe the Bible.” Any­one who devi­ates from under­stand a sci­en­tific epis­te­mol­ogy out­side of the Gen­e­sis nar­ra­tive is seen as “anti-Biblical.” So much time is spent by this orga­ni­za­tion attempt­ing to read the Bible as a sci­en­tific text­book when that’s not what it was intended for.

What Then Was It Intended For?

The Bible is an ancient doc­u­ment out­lin­ing a Chris­t­ian mythol­ogy. Now before you go away, remem­ber that “mythol­ogy” doesn’t mean “myth” as in false. The other mean­ing of mythol­ogy is a sys­tem that accounts for our ori­gins and answers exis­ten­tial ques­tions. All reli­gions have a dif­fer­ent mythol­ogy, and as Chris­tians we look to the Bible as God’s revealed truth about cre­ation, man, redemp­tion, and Himself.

With the debate of how Gen­e­sis 1–2 should be read we must keep in mind that we can’t try and look for some­thing that’s not there. The nar­ra­tive is meant to dis­play a few things notably God’s power in cre­ation, the cre­ation of man in His image, the rela­tion­ship once had (and to be restored) with man and God, and the sub­se­quent fall which led to out­work­ing of the eter­nal plan of redemption.

God and sci­ence are not mutu­ally exclu­sive enti­ties. If some­thing sci­en­tif­i­cally does con­tra­dict then we should stand up and search for truth, but we need not dis­pel all sci­en­tific find­ings, rea­son­ing, and use of these tools in order to under­stand our God and our world. The same is said for Nou­thetic coun­selors, because they out­right dis­miss any sec­u­lar find­ings in psy­chol­ogy in order to pre­serve their pre­sup­po­si­tion that it is out to “dis­place” the truths in Scrip­ture. John Frame gives us a good quote on what truth is in and out­side of the Scriptures.

“Sola Scrip­tura, after all, does not require the exclu­sion of all extra­bib­li­cal data, even from the­ol­ogy. It sim­ply requires that in the­ol­ogy and in all other dis­ci­plines, the high­est author­ity, the supreme stan­dard, be Scrip­ture and Scrip­ture alone.“
John Frame, Apolo­get­ics to the Glory of God (pg. 18)

This is an impor­tant truth to keep us cog­nizant that God works both in gen­eral and spe­cific rev­e­la­tion. His truth is revealed in cre­ation, the human psy­che, His writ­ten word, but most notably in the rev­e­la­tion of His beau­ti­ful Son. We must learn to bal­ance read­ing the Bible as God intended while real­iz­ing that the Scrip­tures sim­ply weren’t designed to answer every sin­gle ques­tion in our lives. To make it clear as to what I’m say­ing, we don’t look for instruc­tions on chang­ing light bulbs in Joshua, but we do look to that book as a record of God’s covenant faith­ful­ness in His out­work­ing of redemp­tion. The Bible was intended to answer onto­log­i­cal ques­tions on the nature and char­ac­ter of God, and that is how it should be read.