Text and Framework
Over the last several Wednesday nights, we have been wrestling with some of the big questions that are facing Americans in our particular cultural moment: abortion, euthanasia, gender confusion, homosexuality (this coming week), etc... Our challenge, as people who seek to follow Jesus, is to sort through the cultural noise surrounding these issues and discern the voice of our Shepherd as he leads us in the way of life, as opposed to the "...way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death (Proverbs 14:12)".
Crucial to discerning the way of life as opposed to the way of death is having a right relationship with the Word of God (which is how he primarily speaks to us), especially as it relates to the various messages that bombard us from other sources. One way to speak of the relationship of the word and alternate messages is to speak of the relationship between the text and our frameworks*. The text, of course, is the Word of God. What does it say? What does it mean? What might it mean for me in my particular circumstance? These are all fair and good questions that we bring to text, questions that are influenced by our framework. Our frameworks are the various ways that we understand the way things are and how they work.
Everyone has multiple frameworks that converge to form an overarching framework. Frameworks are necessary for organizing and expressing our thoughts. They develop over time through what we are taught, what we experience, and through our place in history, etc .... As new information comes to us, we decide to reject it or allow it to reshape our frameworks. Our frameworks affect how we read the Bible. When we sit down to study a text, our frameworks influence the way we think about God, man, sin, salvation, suffering, our view of life and death, how we think about sexuality and many other things.
Some frameworks are thought out and consistent with God’s Word. Others are not. Regardless, we must learn to recognize the frameworks that are giving shape to our thinking, or as the following illustrates, the lenses which we are seeing through:
Note in the first diagram, the framework is setting the tone in the relationship between text and framework signified by its superior position. The hard lines going from framework to text, especially when the framework is given priority, signify the baggage that we bring to the text which ends up shaping how we read it. The result is a fragmented and colored understanding of reality, signified by the tinted lenses of differing colors. In contrast, the second picture shows that the text is in the driver's seat in the relationship between text and framework. It is the text that is shaping the way that we see the world (note the hard line from text to framework) while the framework questions of our culture are brought to the text humbly, and with the acknowledgement that the text is king (indicated by the dotted line). The result is a more cohesive and clear (note the glasses) way of viewing the world, informed by the sweet voice of the Shepherd.
*The language of text and framework, along with some of the attendant explanation, comes from Word Partners Dig and Discover Principles by way of Proclamation Trust.