Hermeneutics is critical because it’s the connection between God’s Word and its application. The single most influential class I took in seminary was hermeneutics. It did more to enrich my knowledge and understanding of God’s Word than any other subject.

There’s one topic I wish every believer would study. Even though I’m an apologist and have taught apologetics for nearly two decades, it has nothing to do with defending the faith (though it can help with that). It’s called hermeneutics, but it’s more commonly known as biblical interpretation. If I could, I would require every believer in the global church to learn its principles.
Now, I can almost hear the pushback. Hermen-what? It sounds like a dry, academic subject that has no practical value for my walk with God. It’s probably just for pastors, people say.
That’s just not true. Hermeneutics is an exciting topic because it helps us believers better understand what God is saying to us. You’re going read the Bible between now and the day you die, and what you read will define your theology, affect major life decisions, and determine what you teach others according to what you think it says. Hermeneutics is critical because it’s the connection between God’s Word and its application. The single most influential class I took in seminary was hermeneutics. It did more to enrich my knowledge and understanding of God’s Word than any other subject.
Let me illustrate how three key principles of biblical interpretation can help you understand a commonly misunderstood passage. It’s based on a verse that has fueled numerous skeptics to challenge the integrity of Jesus.
They claim that Jesus commands his followers to round up those who reject him and kill them. They cite Luke 19:27 where Jesus says, “Those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me.” That doesn’t sound like the tender and compassionate Jesus we all know. What’s going on? The problem is entirely a hermeneutical mistake—people are misinterpreting the passage. Consider how applying the three keys to biblical interpretation clarifies the meaning and application of this passage.
Context: The first key to interpreting any biblical passage is to read the verses before and after the passage in question. The more you read, the better. That’s why we say at Stand to Reason, “Never read a Bible verse.” Always read the whole paragraph, the chapter, or the whole book. When this verse is read in context, you discover that Jesus is telling a parable about a nobleman and his servants. Parables, of course, are fictitious stories intended to illustrate a point. This story is about a nobleman who leaves ten minas with his ten servants and departs to be crowned king. His servants hate him, though, and send an envoy to petition against his appointment. After he’s crowned king, he returns to judge his servants on how they’ve invested his money. After rewarding the faithful servants, he punishes the unfaithful ones and then orders his enemies to be killed.
Read More

Christians…should model humble engagement with scientific findings. Christians should not pretend that science is a perfect, objective, infallible source of truth. But they also shouldn’t have cynical attitude every time a scientific discovery is made.

As an engineer, I read scientific papers quite frequently. I am convinced most people do not know how to read scientific papers intelligently. This doesn’t need to be the case: you don’t have to be an expert to think critically about a study and its results. In a society which is obsessed with scientific discovery and “scientific truth,” Christians in particular need to be wise when engaging with modern science.
If you want to better engage with scientific findings, you are going to know certain questions to ask as you read scientific papers. Additionally, you are going to have to get a good grasp of the uncertainty inherent to any good science. Recently, I read a book that gives both a series of questions to ask of a scientific paper as well as a good analysis of the uncertainty inherent to science in general.
The book is called “Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth” by Stuart Richie. Although written by a non-Christian, it is an essential read for any Christian working in a STEM field and is useful for any believer who finds themselves looking up the latest “scientific study.” For today’s Book Quote of the Week, I want to look at questions Stuart Richie says you should ask when reading a scientific paper.
Is everything above board? Authors from reputable universities, companies, labs? Journal published in look professional?
How transparent is it? Can you find data set online anywhere?
Was the study well designed? How was the control group treated? When seeing headline claim, should ask “compared to what”
How big is the sample? How many subjects were included from the final sample and why?
Are the inferences appropriate? Causal language when only a correlation study? Experiments on animals jumped to humans?
Is there bias? Does the study have obvious political or social ramifications and do the scientists write about these in such a way that seems less than impartial? Where was the study funded?
How plausible is it really? If study involves human participants imagine yourself having taken a part…did the environment of the study even approximate the setting that the scientists want to know about?
Has it been replicated? Stop relying so heavily on individual studies
Questions from “Science Fictions:How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth” by Stuart Richie
What the Quote Means
These questions come at the very end of “Science Fictions.” The entire book looks at the ways researchers intentionally or unintentionally publish results which are misleading in one way or the other. The results can be over-hyped, they can ignore important data, or the conclusions can be impossible to replicate in a future study. All of these questions laid out by Richie are designed to help you as you read scientific papers to ask the simple question “is this true?”
Some of these questions are harder to answer if you don’t have a STEM background. But the basic questions of “how was the study designed? Who were the people who did the study? What were the conclusions of the study and do they make sense?” are always useful to have in the back of your mind when reading a “scientific conclusion.”
Now, the goal of these questions isn’t to cause you to never trust another scientific conclusion again. Rather, they are tools for you to more intelligently discern whether an article like “10 Superfoods which reduce aging instantly” is something you should read and take to heart, or not. These questions help you sort the “wheat from the chaff” so to speak.
Read More

Jesus was a master at engaging people within their culture, whether they approached Him as friend or foe. He related to people without typical cultural filters. Even His primary followers had different backgrounds and livelihoods. A classic example is Jesus engaging a woman of questionable character at Jacob’s well near Sychar in the region of Samaria. It was culturally inappropriate for a Jewish man to engage a Samaritan woman in conversation.

It’s been said that history is a wonderful teacher, but a terrible master.
In this guest article, Trip Kimball uses history as a teacher. It’s a scholarly look into three significant ways that Christians throughout history have responded to the changes around us —  both good and bad —  to give us a better understanding of how to respond to today’s cultural shifts in a biblical way.
— Karl Vaters

Culture is dynamic. Fluid and fickle. Culture changes over time, sometimes with extreme pendular swings. Popular culture is reflective of shared beliefs, values, and social norms.
Each swing of culture has its own trends, like currents within the ocean, as movements within the larger cultural context.
People tend to respond in one of three general ways to pendular swings in culture: to reject, embrace, or engage each swing. Only one of these approaches is effective in bringing helpful change or productive dialogue.
These pendular swings of culture have one fixed point — human nature. They all pivot on self, our basic nature. Not our identity but our being, our innate essence centered on self-preservation.
On the surface self-preservation makes sense. It’s expected, natural. But when the self is corrupt or fragmented it’s not so good. At its basest level, self-preservation is bound to cause conflict. These conflicts disrupt our shared experiences, resulting in culture clashes.
These culture clashes are very noticeable in cross-cultural missionary experiences, but they also happen across and within sub-cultures.
1) Rejection of Cultural Shifts
Rejection is the preferred approach of those who oppose a culture shift, especially when it impacts them personally. It’s not just resistance but rejection — an unwillingness to accept or consider a cultural change.
Rejection of a cultural shift is a defense of what was, an attempt to turn back the tide of change. On the surface, to those who are opposing the change, it seems gallant and right. But it takes on a sense of righteousness. And indeed, it may very well be a righteous stance.
It’s not hard to find exceptional examples of resistance to evil. The prophet Daniel and his three cohorts (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) refused to worship anyone else but their God, the Most-High God,  the Living God (Daniel 3:12–18, 26; 6:10–23, 26).
Their stand would cost them their lives, but God intervened.
Lessons from History
Taking a righteous stand against evil requires a willingness to die for righteousness’ sake. And God doesn’t always intervene.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a modern-day example of this. He was a Lutheran pastor/theologian who stood up to Nazism and paid for it with his life. His testimony is an example of resisting an evil trend.
Not all resistance to cultural change is so righteous or wise. The Jesus People Movement and the Charismatic Renewal of the mid 1960s and early -70s (parallel moves of God’s Spirit in America) were largely resisted and condemned by the established churches of that time.
The resistance proved foolish and fruitless. It reminds me of what Gamaliel warned Jewish leaders about when they considered contending with the followers of Jesus; …if it is of God, you cannot overthrow it — lest you even be found to fight against God (Acts 5:39).
This is as a lesson to consider when attempting to resist/reject present cultural trends. The resistance of Bonhoeffer and others in the German Confessing Church did not stem the tide of Nazism. That took a world war. And yet the Nazi mindset and influence lives on.
The Jesus Movement and Charismatic Renewal did prevail and reshape the practice of Christianity during the cultural upheaval of the 1960s and -70s. It powerfully impacted American culture, then sadly faded. What was once a powerful cultural influence morphed into the present common approach to culture.
2) Embracing Cultural Shifts
The flip side of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the German Confessing Church’s resistance to Nazism is the German Christian movement. This movement was composed of fanatic Nazi Protestants, a politicized church subculture that was devoid of the Spirit of God.
This movement embraced the political-cultural wave of Hitler’s Nazi regime. They reshaped theology to buttress their nationalistic beliefs, distorting the gospel into their own racist image.
Another spiritual movement in America during the 1970s and early -80s was a hybrid smorgasbord of Eastern religions and amenable philosophies. These quasi-religious groups became known as the New Age movement, a full embrace of the countercultural social revolution of the Sixties.
It epitomized what became known as the Me Generation of the Seventies.
Read More
Related Posts: