This past Saturday, our parish library was crammed full of people hungry to learn more about our scriptures for the upcoming month and to share their thoughts, reflections, and wonderings. We studied the Epistles for the month, which are largely from the book of 1 Timothy.
One of the topics that I think was most fruitful was an exploration of what to do when there is a word of phrase in the scripture that you don’t like.
- Do you just skip over it?
- Do you look up the word in the original language to see what it meant then?
- Do you look at other translations and pick the one most congruent with your understanding? Or the one most irritating to you?
- Do you settle into the tension and reflect upon why this word or phrase is causing such a reaction in your own soul?
- Do you talk to others to see if this worried them as well?
The answer, of course, is “all of the above” (except the first one!).
It is always important to know the context of the passage, to look up the original word in Greek or Hebrew and look at all the possible meanings ~ and it is very important to know why this word or phrase grabs your attention. Often it’s God’s message to you to pay attention to what’s happening within you.
Questions are a good thing, in the Episcopal Church. So bring them on!