Biblio-Idolatry:: The Lenses of History

When we attempt to make an argument one of the best strategies involves pointing out historical evidence to support your claims. 

If I can find individuals or large groups of people who've "successfully" negotiated the world operating with an assumption I hold true, then my belief can be justified. And this makes sense when you think of humans as pack animals. Individual thoughts, actions or behaviors are inherently dangerous because that differentiation can threaten your survival. Wolves can easily take out one lone sheep, but a flock of sheep is much more difficult to attack. 

This is why we dress, talk, and consume media in alignment with some number of people who currently or have previously existed. There can certainly be change in people's behaviors, but only when enough people move together to create it. 

What makes this concept interesting in Biblical interpretation is that 2,000 years has created millions of ways to view the various parts of the Bible and what it is saying. Now, that statement probably doesn't feel true because people like to talk about the Bible with only one dominant lens of interpretation. When we grow up in one Biblical culture it doesn't even feel like a lens, but rather the Bible. 

We want to zoom out of our last couple hundred years to see the ways that the Bible has been interpreted historically. The hope is that experiencing a diversity of Biblical lenses can give us all permission to acknowledge the lens we're using at any given moment. 

When we gain awareness of how we've interpreted the Bible it gains a new voice that it hasn't been able to have before.