Transcription
[Music] Social media insists that the Bible says so when it comes to some moral or theological claim that they want to defend. And there's a huge problem with this.
And the problem is that the Bible doesn't say anything at all. It's a text. It cannot speak and it does not have inherent meaning. And this is going to strike a lot of people as rather counterintuitive. For the more advanced readers in the group, it certainly seems like we're just extracting inherent meaning from this text that has been packaged and transmitting, uh, meaning through these words and phrases and clauses and sentences. But the reality is actually much different.
Meaning only exists to the degree that it is created in the mind of a reader, a listener, or a viewer. Now, precisely how we generate meaning from linguistic expressions can get rather complex, but we can simplify it down to a two-step process. And it starts with our mind generating as many potential meanings as it can from a given linguistic expression based on its experiences with agreements that have been reached regarding relationships between specific linguistic expressions and specific semantic content or meaning. Then, using available cues, our mind whittles those potential senses down to what it believes was most likely intended. And for experienced readers, this usually takes place so rapidly that it feels like pure meaning is just being transmitted directly from the text into our minds. But that's just not how language works.
It's important to note that when we generate meaning from a linguistic expression, uh, that meaning was not inherent to or contained within the text, and it wasn't the only possible meaning that could have been intended. A text is just a configuration of symbols, and any given configuration of symbols could be associated with a limitless number of meanings and shades of meanings depending on those agreements. And this is why secret codes work. Uh, usually we have a good enough grasp of these agreements to be successful enough to meet the goals of our communication. But agreements are not always identical for every time, place, person, and circumstance. And so communication frequently fails, and we do not understand.
And this fact was made abundantly clear to me my first week at the University of Oxford when I stumbled upon a KFC on Corn Market Street and excitedly went in and asked for biscuits. And the poor young man behind the counter could not fathom why I would imagine they were in the business of making, much less selling, biscuits. And then I remembered, oh yeah, the agreement where I was was that that combination of sounds would evoke what I would have called a cookie. And then I realized that I did not know what combination of sounds I could put together to help him draw up in his mind an image of the buttery and flaky goodness that I desired. And I, I had people later say, "Oh, you should have said a scone." And obviously, I do not dignify that with a response.
Um, but let's take a look at a related example from the Bible and from the most famous English translation of the Bible in the world, the King James version. This is the 22nd verse of the letter of Jude in the King James version. And it says, "But of some have compassion making a difference." And I want you to think about the meaning that was generated in your mind when you heard the phrase making a difference. Most of us have almost exclusively had experience seeing that combination of sounds associated with the idea of having a positive impact or a positive influence. And so we would interpret this to mean that if you have compassion on folks, you can make a difference in their lives. That's a pretty common reading, and it has absolutely nothing to do with what the King James version translators were trying to say, because that phrase didn't come to refer to having a positive impact or a positive influence until around the year 1900. And the King James version was published in 1611. And in that time period, to make a difference meant to make a distinction. That's the agreement that the translators had in mind. And here is, uh, Leviticus 11:47, uh, where the Israelites are instructed to make a difference between clean and unclean animals. So the translators of the King James version were trying to say that one should be discerning regarding to whom you are going to show compassion. So it's an entirely different message. And the overwhelming majority of the readers of the King James version today miss this because their experience with that phrase did not equip them with the adequate interpretive lenses to generate the correct meaning.
Once again, this demonstrates that we're not extracting inherent meaning from a text. We are generating meaning with a text based on our own experiences. We're negotiating with the text to arrive at what we think it's trying to say. In the case of Jude 22, there probably aren't a lot of people whose civil rights, whose healthcare relationships with their families or jobs rely on a specific interpretation of this passage. And so most of y'all are probably probably happy to accept that the meaning that comes most naturally to us is a misunderstanding, a misinterpretation. But imagine if all those things did rely on the most common interpretation today. It might be a lot harder to accept that that is a misunderstanding and a misinterpretation that was never intended.
And this brings us to another critical feature of how our minds generate meaning with authoritative texts. You see, our experiences in the world around us, our experience of our place in it have installed a lot of intuitions into our subconscious mind about how things are supposed to work. As an example, here's an image, uh, that illustrates a famous illusion known as the Cornsweet effect. Uh, in short, you see two different objects of two different shades of gray, but they're both actually the exact same shade of gray. By adding highlights, shadows, and a background to make it look like it is a three-dimensional object in space, we can trick our minds into believing that's exactly what it is. And when we have three-dimensional objects in space, what is in the light should be lighter in color. What is in the shadows should be darker in color. Because the two objects are the exact same color, our minds just alter what we perceive in order to align it with how they think the world around us is supposed to work. And that's how a lot of illusions work. This is just one simple illustration of the fact that our subconscious mind is rifling through the mail of not only our senses, but of all of our cognition. And it will add and take away what it needs to to ensure that the mail that gets to us adequately fits the parameters for which it has been conditioned.
When we come to the Bible with deeply held experiences, assumptions, expectations, and dogmas about what it is and is not supposed to say and the values that it is and is not supposed to endorse. Our subconscious mind is going to predispose us to construct and then defend meanings that protect and advance our self-image and our standing within the social identities that are important to us. This becomes incredibly important when it comes to social issues today that people try to use the Bible to resolve. Issues like LGBTQIA rights, nationalism, the role of women in society, environmentalism, uh, vaccines, contraception, abortion, disciplining children, the role of religion in government, the end of the world, and many, many other things. The convictions that we have about these issues are overwhelmingly socially constructed. And when we take those convictions to the Bible, it is those convictions that are governing how we intuitively construct meaning. When we turn around and we say, "This is right because the Bible says so," it's really just us saying so. We're trying to leverage the authority of the Bible in order to grant divine inspiration and divine authority to convictions that we hold because of our experiences and our relationships. This has caused untold anxiety, conflict, trauma, oppression, abuse, and even death for millennia. If we're going to look up as a society and rise above the division and confusion, we need to learn to think critically about how everything we're bringing to the Bible influences how we read it. And we need to develop the discipline to overcome the impulse to appeal to its authority to baptize our own intuitions and our own dogmas. The Bible doesn't say so. And the sooner we we realize this, the sooner we can elevate our thinking, our communities, and our future. Thank you. [Applause]