I am sure you have had the experience. You say something that someone else twists all around to mean something you never intended. Depending on the severity of it all, you can feel pretty violated by such a flagrant act!

God has had that experience as well. Millions and millions of times more than we have. I doubt he enjoys it any more than we do. In fact, it is far more serious to take God out of context than it is a human being. Because, well, He is God and we are not. His words are the words of the creator of the universe, not the words of his created ones.

In Matthew 4 the devil takes God out of context when he quotes Psalm 91 to get Jesus to jump from the highest point of the temple. Yes, even the devil takes God out of context. It isn’t a good thing to do!

I have noticed over the years that we actually soften our language about this. I often hear people say, “You are taking that scripture out of context” as if the scripture is the entity being taken out of context. If someone took N.T. Wright or Francis Chan out of context would you say “you are taking that book out of context” or would you say “you are taking that person out of context”?

Words and communication are personal. When we take God out of context, it is personal. We can’t really soften the impact of it by saying “You are taking that scripture out of context” as much as we are actually taking God out of context when we do that.

Let’s keep in mind to always mind the context of the passages we are studying to be respectful of the One who inspired the words we have in the Bible. Once we make up our mind to find a way to make the Bible say what we want it to say we are doing the same thing Satan did in Matthew 4. That is not good company!

Principal Cook, of the West Side High School in Newark, New Jersey, had a problem.  Some students resisted when security officers tried to check their bags.  While one might assume they resisted because they were carrying drugs or a weapon, when Principal Cook started asking questions, he found that some students couldn’t afford to wash their clothes and were carrying dirty laundry in their backpacks.  They didn’t want people going through their bags because they were ashamed – in fact, the smell of dirty clothes was connected with bullying which was, in turn, connected with chronic absences.  Aware of the problem, the school addressed it by making washers and dryers available so that dirty laundry wouldn’t get in the way of an education. 

Christian Scharen’s book, Fieldwork in Theology: Exploring the Social Context of God’s Work in the World (2015), examines the relationship between theology and social situation – the connection between the story of the church (ecclesiology) and culture (ethnography).  Scharen summarizes the significance of the task this way: “In order to engage ministry with vitality, perceive the new things God is doing, and ‘participate in God,’ leaders have to get out and learn what’s going on and how to relate to the people and context where they are. Fieldwork in theology is that simple—and that complicated!” (30).  By asking questions and not assuming we know the answers, we may be able to get to the root of what needs to change in our ministry contexts.

Living in Mozambique, Africa, from 2003 to 2018, it was impossible for me to assume that I really understood the culture, the context of my ministry.  This appropriate sense of desperation led me to ask questions to learn their systems and how life worked in “their world.”  I used qualitative interviews to investigate different parts of their culture in order to learn how the gospel can bring good news into that reality.  Over time, that desperation turned into fascination as I began to see not only the problems, but also the solutions or connections that could be made.  In moving back to the United States, I’ve needed help again, and I am now leaning on the university students I work with to help me understand this new (to me) “foreign” culture.   

While Fieldwork in Ministry might be formally described as “qualitative interviews and triangulation of the data in small groups,” in our ministry contexts it may look more informal, although still very intentional.  It doesn’t mean trying to be amateur or armchair ethnographers, but it may look like keeping a notebook with some questions in it and paying attention to the answers we get over a meal or a phone call.  It may mean being purposeful in having conversations salted with phrases like, “I’ve noticed ____ happening… why is that?” and “Tell me more about that…;” “How’s that working for them?… for you?” “I’m curious to hear what you would say keeps _____ from happening?”  A Fieldwork approach can be the right tool in our ministry toolkit when we need to: Revisit a problem; Revamp a program; Augment our preaching/teaching; or Engage a challenge.  Fieldwork may take various forms, but it is effective only when we truly have eyes to see and ears to hear.   

Scharen tells a story of one interviewee, a woman who had a beautiful response to being really listened to, “You heard me. You heard me all the way… I have a strange feeling you heard me before I started. You heard me to my own story. You heard me to my own speech.” (29)  Powerful things, Kingdom of God-type things, happen when people are truly heard – things like clean clothes and an environment where learning and transformation can happen.

For more on Principal Cook’s story, see these links:

CNN – When students were bullied because of dirty clothes, a principal installed a free laundromat at school

NJ.com – Students were bullied because of dirty clothes. Washing machines in the locker room will change that.

NJ.com – Newark vice principal goes ‘old school’ to keep kids out of trouble

Steve desperately wanted to know God’s will for his life. So he determined that God would guide him to the appropriate passage of scripture. He opened his Bible to a random page, put his finger on a verse and read Matthew 27:4,

“Then Judas went and hanged himself.”

Frustrated, he tried again…flipping over a few more pages, he randomly opened his Bible to Luke 10:37,

“Jesus told him, ‘Go and do likewise.'”

This is obviously problematic for a number of reasons. First, we don’t pretend to think that we would get any sort of consistently accurate, personal message from God in this way. Second, it is reading the text devoid of context. Who would want to go the way of Judas rather than the way of Jesus?

Context is essential to our understanding. Far too many people ignore it far too often. Word studies are an especially dangerous place for ignoring context as are three point sermons.

Context is not just important in studying the Bible, it is also important in discussing the Bible – we have to understand others through the context of their statements.

This takes work, but it will pay huge dividends if we will try. Welcome to October and a discussion on the importance of context for greater understanding!