Can We All Understand the Bible Alike?

By Gary Freeman

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     Can we all understand the Bible alike? Well, it all depends on what one means by "can." There is theoretical possibility and then there is possibility of the more realistic sort. Can a person playing dice throw seven for a thousand times in a row and do it fairly? It's technically possible. Can Willie Mays play the complete season next year and hit a home run every time he comes to bat? It's "possible." Can Johnny Unitas play the complete season next year and throw a touchdown pass on every single offensive play? It's "possible." If we say that all people can understand the Bible alike we can only mean possibility in the most theoretical sense. Anything else is impossible. For the truth is that it is not realistically possible for even two people to understand the Bible alike, or the Constitution, or Hamlet, unless one of them allow the other to do the thinking.

     When I first started preaching I used to have a sermon, borrowed from one of the "church fathers," in which this question was asked and which I then proceeded to answer in a thundering affirmative. Of course people could understand the Bible alike, I said. It was all hysterically simple. Just follow the Bible! I was too naive to realize that what I was really saying was that we could all understand the Bible alike if we would all accept my understanding of it. And possible--possible just like a thousand sevens in a row are possible.

     People who think they have come to a perfect understanding of the truth quite naturally waver between truculence and smugness. If they claim no direct inspiration in their understanding, and I didn't, then understanding becomes a classically simple matter. People who do not have the "right knowledge" are either ignorant or perverse, and neither of those sins is excusable. We have weighed them in the balance of our interpretation and found them wanting. Mene, mene, tekel and parsin. We have even gone so far as to save God all the trouble of having a judgment day. Judgment has already come--the rigid, terrifying judgment of the Christian Pharisees.

     Can all people understand the Bible alike? A better question is this--can anyone perfectly understand the Bible? The answer to that is "No," and this renders superfluous the original question. Jesus said that the people who think they see (spiritually) are blind. There is no blindness quite so dark as that of the person who thinks he understands everything and that everything he thinks is true. We see through a glass darkly. The most perceptive of us are abysmally ignorant. The world is not divided between those who have the truth and those who don't; it is divided between those who are looking for the truth and those who are not.

     When a man decides he perfectly understands all essential truth, he has not just made a mistake; rather, he has become, in a very real sense, irreligious. He has become the Pharisee in Jesus' parable, justifying himself and condemning his neighbor. He has effectively shut off dialogue both with God and man, for he no longer really has anything to learn from either. He has done himself the ultimate disservice of fortifying his spiritual deprivation against every possible source of enlightenment.

     Does this mean then, when religious beliefs differ, that one man's view is as

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good as another's, that there is no distinction to be made? Not at all. What it does mean is that the case should not be pre-judged in my favor. It is simply to recognize what should be self-evident, that no person is infallible. It is to recognize that truth suffers when men think they have it cornered and begin to sit on it. It is to recognize that it is not only possible but desirable to have confidence in what you believe, to try to convert the sinner from the errors of his way, and yet to realize at the same time that we have much to learn from others.

     (Editor's Note. Gary Freeman labors with the saints at Cleveland, Ohio, and the above is from the bulletin of Church of Christ, 3425 Mayfield Road, Cleveland Heights 18, Ohio, the issue of December 26, 1965. Brother Freeman may be addressed at the meetingplace of the congregation).