reading into things

The challenge is to make sense of the text without reading into it.

- R. Allan Culpepper

I came across this statement yesterday in a biblical commentary on the Gospel of Luke. "Yes," I thought to myself, "that is a challenge!" One might even wonder if it is truly possible.

One of the helpful insights of this present era that we have labeled Post-Modern is the way position shapes perspective. Whether we're trying to locate and describe the nature of light - is it packed in particles or flowing in waves? - or debating the interpretation of a beloved poem or passage of scripture, we find that our location (physical, social, historical, cultural, racial, religious, etc.) has the power to shape what we perceive.

Some may worry here, "Oh no! We're about to step onto the slippery slope of relativism!" Perhaps. Yet, the truth of our contemporary insights into position and perspective need not lead us to some sort of mushy place of "anything goes," or a you've-got-your-way-I-got-mine-and-all-is-well-as-long-as-we-don't-tread-on-one-another's-toes sort of self-involvement.

Our insights into subjectivity and perspective can call us into deeper humility, reminding us that we do not stand apart from life and reality around us. We forever exist in relationship. Our relationships with one another, with landscapes, with ideas and beliefs will inevitably shape what we see, and how we make meaning of what we see.

To return to Culpepper's statement above, when we engage a text or story the web of interrelationships that is our life will influence - "read into" - what we read and understand. Perhaps the words we read in some way confirm some strand of our web, or perhaps the words help us to create new strands and relationships. Whatever may happen, it remains an encounter, a relational act.

I find that when I encounter passages of scripture there are multiple layers to the encounter. Yes, there is often a use of interpretive tools and methodologies, attempts to allow a text to "stand on its own."

But there is also the engagement of my imagination, emotion, and the inevitable encounter of my own story with the text. There is also, I trust in faith, the possibility for deep listening to God's own voice in this encounter with a text. So in these ways I "read into the text," and one might also add that in other ways "the text reads into me."

I sense that one of the greatest challenges lies in remaining open not only to the truth of what I may encounter in a particular text, but the truth of what you are encountering there as well. Perhaps only then do we begin to "make sense" of it!