SLICNations

This is why two people can sit under the same sermon, read the same passage, open the same Bible and walk away with completely different conclusions. It is not the scripture that changed. It is the lens they brought to it.

The theologian brings his systematic framework and finds what fits his tradition. The academician brings his historical method and finds what confirms his scholarship. The wounded believer brings their pain and finds only the verses that validate their position. And none of them are necessarily lying, they are finding what their lens was calibrated to find.

But Jesus said the Holy Spirit would guide you into all truth. Not some truth. Not the truth that fits your background. All truth. And the only way to access all truth is to lay down every other lens: your education, your denomination, your pain, your culture, your assumptions and come to the Word with the Spirit of God as your only filter.

Every other approach will cost you something you cannot afford to lose.