Spirituality For Ordinary People

Reading is interpreting. We know this more keenly than ever because we interpret all the time.You receive an email announcing that you have won a cruise. You read just a bit of it and already you have done your interpretation. It is spam or a scam. You delete it or send it to your Junk Mail folder.You read a news story and wonder if they have really got all their facts straight. Where is the news from? Is it the Globe and Mail or the National Post? NBC or Fox News? You interpret what you read or watch accordingly based on the source, on your beliefs, and probably a host of other things.The same goes for novels, plays, movies, TV shows. You are reading or watching, and interpreting. All the time.Reading the Bible isn’t any different. We don’t just read and get “the facts” or “the plain meaning.” Interpretation happens. One of the most important things to pay attention to is what we can call the narrative arc of Scripture.When reading the Bible one really must enter the world of the story. We often zero in on