Taking Verses out of Context

My good friend Beth (fellow Mountaineer turned Seminarian, at least, vicariously through her husband at the moment) has posted a great entry on taking verses out of context. She tells the story of being on a evangelistic summer project with campus crusade, where the group used a verse out of Habakkuk as a motivational verse. The verse reads:

“Look at the nations and watch—and be utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your days that you
would not believe, even if you were told”
(Habakkuk 1.5)

Beth reflects on the verse in its context:

“It was used as a motivational verse for our big week of evangelism. But in actuality, God is not speaking positively in this verse. In fact, he’s speaking of how He is going to ruin Israel. He is going to put them to shame by other nations (in particular, God mentions the Chaldeans in verse 6).”

For those of you who may not know, the Chaldeans were the Babylonians, which laid siege to Jerusalem and destroyed the Holy Temple, leading the Israelites into captivity. Quite the opposite meaning when compared to evangelistic zeal. Unfortunately, this lack of understanding of context and original intent is running rampant today. While most visible in the “name it and claim it” type of theology, you can find it everywhere. We’ve all done it. In fact some of my biggest theological shifts have occurred when I realized that this was exactly what I was doing.

The best way to keep from taking verses out of context is to find out the original meaning of the author in writing the text and the understanding that the original audience would have had. This keeps us from reading our 21st century culture into the text to draw out some other meaning. In Beth’s example, the prophet Habakkuk was not concerned with evangelism and the great commission, but warning the Israelites of what they would face if they didn’t repent from their sins and turn back to God. Habakkuk was wondering where God was while all kinds of injustice was going on. The verse quoted above is the first part of God’s answer: “I see the injustice. I hear your complaint. Here is what I’m about to do in my righteousness.” Now there’s an evangelical application, the Justness of God.

I previously wrote on this subject when I showed how Rick Warren took Psalm 2.4 out of its context.