Posted August 5, 2005
Location, location, location: very familiar words in the area of real estate. However, listening to a BBC live broadcast a few days ago I heard a play on these words that caught my attention. The word play was: interpretation, interpretation, interpretation.
It was all to do with a hosted broadcast/phone-in program on the growing problem the world faces with terrorism. The focus was particularly on threats from Islamic fanatics; especially suicide bombers, as those who recently annihilated themselves and others in the UK.
As guest commentators and phone-in-callers made their various points concerning what is happening worldwide it became very obvious how divided they were on the why of terrorism. The discussion's context was the many opinions about what the Koran teaches.
There were sympathizers from all sides of the question. Some were defending Israel's stand against the Palestinians' cause and vice versa. Some were defending America and the UK, others condemning their every action. There were even some Islamic scholars who defended terrorist atrocities, or tried very hard to explain them away. Other "experts" condemned violence in all its various forms. Towards the end of the broadcast the host concluded that it all comes down to these words, "interpretation, interpretation, interpretation."
One can find teachers (supposed experts in the Koran, Islam's Holy Book) who espouse completely opposite interpretations of the same verses. Some interpretations will be literal, some puritanical, some … well it's up to the teacher and his interpretation!
The host commented that this problem (of interpreting the Koran) is just like the world of Christianity, with all of its various branches and ways of believing. And this is true!
There is the Eastern Orthodox form of Christianity. There is Western Catholicism (Roman style). Within those two branches there are hundreds of "Orders" that vary in their practices or actions.
Then there is the Protestant world with its countless numbers of sects, cults and differing understandings of what the BibleThe books (Greek, "biblia" ) that are acknowledged as canonical (authoritative) by the early Christian Church. It includes both the books of the ancient Hebrew prophets and those of the apostolic witnesses to Jesus Christ. says and means. In the end it usually comes down to the same three "I's"—interpretation, interpretation, interpretation.
How confusing to the man in the street who would simply like to know what is the right thing to do. Is there a way to cut through all of the arguments and get to the heart of the matter, to know and understand what mankind's Creator really wants and means? The answer is a resounding yes!
Jesus Christ—accepted as a prophet in both Islam and Christianity—gives us this clear instruction: "If you hold to my teaching ... you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:31-32, New International Version, emphasis added throughout). In his final recorded prayer, just before His crucifixion, Jesus defined the source His disciples should turn to for the truth that would make them different from the world about them.
In that prayer He reminded God, "I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth" (John 17:14-17, NIV). God's word is so clear in so many areas that it really doesn't need 'interpreting' for us to rightly perceive its intent.
Jesus summarized that underlying intent with these words: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matthew 22:37-40, NIV).
This loving type character is the essential foundation for all workable human relationships. It is the theme that runs through all of God's word. That is what Jesus meant when He said, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:35). Each of us needs to know and live by those loving principles revealed through the teachings of God's word.
