Avoid Spiritualizing the Texts

Whenever preachers and teachers of the gospel go forth in proclaiming the Word of God, the objective is always say what God has spoken. This involves interpreting the Biblical text so that what was revealed to its 40 authors over approximately a 1500 year period speaks faithfully to audiences and hearers today far removed the original social, historical, political, and religious contexts as it did to those long ago. In short, the continual hermeneutical (process of interpretation) challenge is to connect the Biblical author's theological intent and message to a modern, or rather post-modern audience of today. This connection is meaningful if the preacher/teacher of the word "exegetes" or leads out of the text a few key concepts: where is God in the text, what is God doing in the text/story and what is shared, or held in common between the human situation of the Biblical characters in the text and the modern listening audience and reader. This is what makes for real and relevant preaching/teaching as opposed to spiritualizing the Biblical text.

What is meant by spiritualizing the text? Spiritualizing the text is a shoddy short cut to application that "reads into the text" or eisegetes something that would not have been led out by a careful examination of the grammatical, historical, cultural situation, and setting of the Biblical text or passage. A common example is artificially attaching a modern day situation or problem to a Biblical situation. Let’s take a well know biblical character like King David as an example. It's pretty common knowledge that David's greatest exploit was slaying the giant Goliath. The basic narrative of the story is that Goliath, the Philistine’s champion warrior has been taunting Israel for some time and no one from King Saul's army is willing to face Goliath. David, a shepherd, is sent by Jesse his father to check on his brothers and bring back a report as to how they are doing. When David arrives at the camp he hears about the situation and it comes to Saul's attention, he accepts Saul's offer to challenge Goliath. David goes against Goliath with just a sling and a stone killing him in spite of the fact that the giant Goliath has advanced weaponry and protection for the age. David is the new national hero of Israel. Now, in "spiritualizing" this text, Goliath becomes a metaphor for whatever struggle, sin, or shortcoming that someone has faced, but eventually conquers and David personifies whoever has slain a "giant" of anger, internet porn, depression, smoking, drugs, or whatever.

A sermon or message snippet on the above would sound something like this, "In facing Goliath, David faced a giant in his life. What are some of the giants in your life? Is it anger, smoking, relationships, or maybe your giant is internet porn...." Now, it is clear that this was not what the narrative of David and Goliath is about. The listed issues that are representative of Goliath have been clearly "read in" to the narrative and not led or exegeted out. They've been "read in" to make the text applicable in child like Sunday school manner, but fail to bring out the theology of text which focuses on what God is doing in relation to David and Israel. In doing a basic exegesis of the text, one would observe that the nation of Israel is facing a real and existential threat from its enemy the Philistines, the Army is at an impasse as to what to do in the face of the challenge of being fearful and being taunted by Goliath. The Philistines are a much stronger Army than the rag tag Israel Army, and if they accept the challenge of Goliath, and lose, they will be in bondage to their enemy. What is at stake is the salvation of Israel and their inability to overcome their oppressors; the theological theme here is salvation or deliverance from enemies, and physical danger. 

 In asking the basic interpretive question of "How does God allow salvation to come to Israel in this situation?", one sees how God used David for deliverance in spite of the odds of the differences of weaponry, armor, and qualifications: David a shepherd with no prior military experience and Goliath a trained battle hardened combat vet. Another basic interpretive question "What is God doing in the text?" draws out of the text that God will deliver if there's a dependence upon Him to fight our battles. Notice that these two basic exegetical interpretive questions focus on what God is doing as opposed to "spiritualizing" which points to an anthropocentric (man-centered) individualistic focus that is common today.

The question of proper application of what hopefully has been prayerfully exegeted out of the text using good hermeneutics, deals with connecting this to the current situation in life and the times we live in now. One of the ways to properly handle application without “spiritualizing” is to ask, for example, what is common with David and the situation he faced and the present day reader of the text? Common to the David and Goliath narrative and a modern day reader would be facing a real and physical threat of danger which seems insurmountable if viewed through our own abilities, but when viewed through the lens of God ability to deliver we can be victorious when God fights our battles as we face the opposition. Now notice how easily God’s historical salvific event of David delivering Israel in slaying Goliath is connected to our situation without “spiritualizing” the present day listener or reader as the hero David, and artificially tacking on modern sin and discrepancies to Goliath that aren’t there to begin with. The reason for this is that the emphasis is on what God is doing in the text. If what God is doing in the text is lifted up and exalted, then the authority of the text, teaching, or sermon carries a greater weight because a declarative proposition is put forth about God as opposed to a self-centered, self help message devoid of how the power of God makes a difference instead of “personal steps” to improvement.

Avoiding “spiritualization of the text” means that the historical reality of the biblical narrative must be taken seriously. This means the “stories” of the bible must be understood as how the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob broke into human history to affect His salvific redemption mission to a fallen world, and how he has, and is continuing to bring human history to its conclusion. In short, this means understanding, preaching, and teaching the Biblical narrative as a worldview or view of reality. In my next post I'll discuss our next “spiritualized” biblical figure Joseph of the book of Genesis.

TWB