"Means to Me" Means Nothing
Varied application does not imply individual truth.
August, 2016
Every so often, well-meaning Christians will refer to some passage or another, then begin an explanation with the words, "what this means to me is…" Or, they'll pose the same perspective as a question to others: "what does this verse mean to you?" The problem is, such a question is not merely irrelevant. It skews the purpose of having the written word in the first place.
In modern culture, relativism is the name of the game. Under relativism, everything is subject to each individual's own personal interpretation, and own personal meaning. The practical effect of this is that nothing actually has meaning. When "what this means to me" replaces "this is what this means," it opens the door to almost any interpretation at all. And, of course, that's the real motivation for relativism—protecting one's ability to defend a position, regardless of what others may say or think. Regardless of the facts.
Biblically, there is a critically important difference between asking, "what does this mean to me?" and asking "how does this verse apply to me?" Of course, many who ask the first question really mean the second one. But, words matter, and it's worth being careful how we frame our approach to the Scriptures.
The truth is that the Bible may have individual applications, based on our own unique circumstances. But it does not have individual meanings, in any useful sense. The words mean what they mean, and convey the ideas they are meant to convey. The point of having a written word is that it's objective—there is a limit to how far one can bend it. This is why, even as they wrote Scripture, the Apostles warned fellow believers not to go "beyond what is written" (1 Corinthians 4:6).
Passages in the Bible are not intended to mean different things to different people. The Word of God conveys the same meaning, the same message, and the same intent, regardless of who reads it and what their situation is. This is important for how we interpret the Bible—a passage cannot mean something to us, the modern readers, which it did not mean for the people who read it while the ink was wet. It cannot—faithfully—be interpreted differently by different people in different places.
That's not so say some parts of the Bible aren't subject to interpretation. But that's not the same thing—admitting that we're not exactly sure about what a passage means is not the same as claiming that it means different things for different people. Someone is right, and someone is wrong, even if the point at hand isn't ultimately all that important. This is also not to say there aren't differences in how Scriptures apply to the lives of specific people. How we live out the truths found in God's word will change, by necessity, based on the circumstances of our culture and our lives.
It does mean, though, that we cannot claim any "personal" meaning to any part of the Bible. We can find personal application, or personal relevance. But the word is not something subject to any one person's opinions or preferences. It means what it means. It says what it says. We might disagree on what, in fact, it means, but we cannot claim that the meaning flexes as it is read by different people.
-- Editor
