About Jesus Steve Sweetman
Reading Between The Lines
In the weekly Bible study I lead we often have fun reading between the lines of certain Bible passages. For example, in Galatians 2 Paul speaks about some false teachers infiltrating their ranks. These guys were spies. You might say they worked for the C.I.A.. No, not that C.I.A.. This C.I.A. is the Circumcision Inspection Agency. Through their surveillance techniques they somehow discovered that Titus was not circumcised. How these spies discovered this intimate fact, Paul doesn’t say.
We can easily let our imaginations run wild concerning how these spies discovered this about Titus and come up with some pretty funny stuff. It’s probably best that I don’t fill you in on our imaginative ideas at this point. Actually, I shouldn’t blame the ideas on the others in our group. They were mostly my ideas. That should say a lot.
Reading between the lines is helpful for a Bible study group to get people relaxed, comfortable and thinking about the passage at hand. We certainly don’t want to make Bible study boring, as it often is.
Though as fun as reading between the lines may be, we should never take reading between the lines seriously because it’s pure speculation. We can never include speculation in our interpretation of Scripture. If we do, we must clearly state what part is speculative. Way too often many interpretations are more speculative than factual. This should never be.