Wednesday, December 11, 2013

The Lie of a Quote

When I was in High School, I was going to be a journalist.  That was the plan, at least.  I enjoyed the process of writing articles, of interviewing, of weaving quotes in to a story.  However, I also know that is a dangerous, tricky, and some times deceitful thing.

How often have you heard someone complain that they were misquoted?  It's not necessarily that the literal quote itself is wrong, but the selection of the quote, where the given quote starts and where it stops... loses the context and lets the quote be wrongly applied.

This is the danger we face in theology as well.  Think on the various attacks that are leveled on solid doctrine and how often they misquote scripture.  It's a destruction of context.  A simple example off the top of my head - the reformed saying, "The flesh availeth nothing" as a text to show why the Lord's Supper isn't Christ True Body and Blood.  That is totally out of context and not even related directly to the Supper... it's a bad quote.

As Theologians, we must be very, very careful to pay attention to context.  Otherwise we will not recognize when people throw out deceit... or even more dangerous, when we ourselves use the very Word of God to lie and deceive in order to harp on our own thoughts and dreams.

Weighty stuff, methinks.

No comments: