How to Read the Bible with David Price

Join me as I welcome the insightful David Price, a minister, and certified professional life coach, to discuss the essential question: Is there a right way to read the Bible? Our conversation covers the cultural hesitations surrounding the idea of a 'correct' method to engage with scripture, stressing the necessity of foundational rules to truly grasp its teachings. We confront the laissez-faire attitude that any reading approach is valid and consider the Bible's explicit nature, advocating for an understanding of the consistent message God imparts to all rather than cherry-picking truths that conveniently fit personal narratives.

Listen in as we explore the crucial role of context in interpreting the Bible and the dangers of reading verses in isolation. This episode sheds light on the common missteps readers may encounter and offers practical advice on approaching biblical study with the reverence it deserves. We delve into the importance of recognizing the Bible as the infallible Word of God and the principles of consistency, competency, and comprehensiveness in study habits. By committing to these principles, we can develop a deeper appreciation for scripture and a more robust understanding of its messages.

Lastly, we discuss the dynamic nature of faith and the responsibility of believers to discern truth and verify teachings against the Word of God. David and I touch on the challenges church leaders face when confronted with questions, highlighting the importance of patience and love in the journey toward truth. The episode wraps up with a call to embrace personal growth through openness to new perspectives and an acknowledgment of the evolution of our understanding. 

I invite you to check out David's ministry.

Connect with David Price:
✔Website: www.TakeBackYL.com
✔Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?
id=100015415965649
✔Podcast: Take Back Your Life

✰ SOCIALS ✰
✔Website - https://www.ruthhovsepian.com/
✔Podcast - https://outofthedarknesswithruthhovsepian.buzzsprout.com/
✔Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ruthhovsepian/
✔Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ModernDayRuthRedeemed/
✔LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthhovsepian/
✔Speaking - https://www.ruthhovsepian.com/speaking
✔Books - https://www.ruthhovsepian.com/booksruthhovsepian

✰ BUSINESS EMAIL ✰
info@ruthhovsepian.com

✰ MUSIC ✰
hot music - winning-elevation

Transcript

00:17 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Welcome to Out of the Darkness. With Ruth Hovsepian and my guest today, David Price, who is a minister and a certified professional life coach. And today we're answering a very important question, and the question is is there a right way to read the Bible? Welcome, David. 

00:38 - David Price (Guest)
Thank you, thanks for having me back. I really appreciate it. I've been so excited about this conversation and this is my favorite topic in the world, so I'm really, really excited. 

00:48 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Well, for me too it has become, you know, between a prayer and reading the Bible that these two have become such a passion for me and to get the message out there, both to unbelievers and to those who have been walking in the faith for some time, the importance of reading the Bible. But the question really is not whether we should read the Bible or not, but when. If we're reading, which we should be, what is there a right way to reading the Word of God? 

01:21 - David Price (Guest)
Well, I believe there is, and I think I don't know if maybe I had a Facebook post not too long ago and I think the title was the right way to read the Bible and two wrong ways, I think was the title of that, and I know a lot of people would sort of resist that idea that there's a right way and a wrong way. 

01:41
But to me, ruth, that's just a product of the culture that we live in. Nobody wants to say that there's a right way to do anything and that other ways are a wrong way. Everybody wants everybody's way to be right and I just don't think that's acceptable. I mean, I think it's fine if we're talking about your sports team or your faith in closing or whatever, but to say that that there are, that everything is a matter of your own preference, to me is a very dangerous perspective. To say I believe that there's a right way to read the Bible, just like there's a right way to read anything. I mean, if I hand you something to read, there's there are some basic rules that you have to follow to understand that, or we can't understand anything that we read. 

02:25 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Right. We've become a little bit complacent in the way we do things as believers, sort of less fair. We say in French, kind of let it be. You know, if somebody wants to do it this way, let them do it this way, and if they want to do it that way, they want to do it that way. I think that's. I hesitate to say this. It's okay for certain things in life, but I think when it comes to our faith based cornerstones, the foundation of our faith, there we really need to be cautious of saying that that it's okay, just as long as they're doing it, it's fine. Yeah, we're trying to. We're going down that dangerous path. 

03:14 - David Price (Guest)
Well, this is not very often a biblical perspective, ruth. I mean, if you read the Bible carefully, you don't often run across God saying, hey, it doesn't matter to me, however you want to do, it is fine. I mean, most of the time God is laying down some very specific rules and he's giving some very grave consequences If we don't follow those rules. Then very seldom does God say it's all just doing however you want to do it. And I think that it's the same thing is true when it comes to reading the Bible. Reading the Bible, I think there are some basic ground rules to reading the Bible. 

03:48
I do a whole series on how to study the Bible, a bunch of lessons about how to study that. 

03:55
There's a lot that we can talk about, but I think there are some basic ground rules that if those ground rules are ignored, it's very difficult to hear what the Bible is really saying, and we don't ever want to have the attitude, ruth and I think you would agree with this that whatever the Bible says to me is is what it says. The Bible says what it says. It's my job to learn to hear what the Bible says, not take it how I want to apply it to myself, and then you have the freedom to do the same thing. First, peter, 1, 20 and 21 says no prophecy is a matter of one's private interpretation, but the prophecies were given by men moved by the Holy Spirit and they spoke from God. And so my job is not to read the Bible and get my truth out of it. My job is to read the Bible and hear what God actually said in it, and that's going to be the same thing to all of us. 

04:54 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
So that's a great example of what not to do when reading the Word of God. And then that is, you know, taking something and applying it to our lives because we want to justify a certain lifestyle or something that we do or something that we believe. What other examples can you give us of what not to do Before we start covering what we should be doing? Are there a couple of other things that you have noticed that are being done, you know, when reading the Word of God? 

05:27 - David Price (Guest)
Well, the big one is probably taking things out of context. People who listen to me, take them free, probably get tired of hearing the word context. But you know, as the old saying is, context is king. There's no way to understand something outside of knowing its context. You know, we have in English we have all sorts of words you know, like the word. You know, dude. You know you can. 

05:51
If you say to somebody you know, dude, that means one thing. Or if you say dude, that means nothing, right. So depending on how you use it or the context, right. If my kids say to me, whatever, I'm not going to like that very well. But if my wife says, well, it doesn't matter where you want to eat, whatever, that could be a different meaning altogether. The context determines what all of that stuff means, and I think one of the really, really really common errors that people have in Bible reading is this ripping a verse out of context and making it mean something to them that it doesn't really mean. If we're not reading the verses that have come before and after, if we don't know what the whole book is about, if we don't know what the Bible teaches as a whole, then we're just going to be pulling verses out and do whatever we want to with them. 

06:45 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Yeah, that's a great one too. I see that often and I get quoted verses that are taken out of context and I really suggest, as you just did, that go back to that verse and read the whole. Sometimes you need to read the whole book to get the comic. Sometimes you need to read the whole word, the whole Bible, to get you know. Like, stop stop doing. You know, stop doing that thing of you know, like opening the word of God and just stabbing your finger into it. You know, I've heard about that and yes, there are times where you know you just don't know where to start or what to do and it works. But really we need to read things in context. Is there maybe one more example you can give us of what we shouldn't be doing while reading the word of God? 

07:40 - David Price (Guest)
I think one thing that people are quick to do is to make the that's only cultural argument, that something doesn't apply to us because it was just their culture. A lot of people will make that argument who really and honestly don't know anything about the culture that the Bible was written in. But to very quickly make an argument from culture is, I think sometimes that's a sign that we don't really like what the passage is saying and we kind of want it to go away. And so sometimes we'll look at something was that? Well, that's just cultural, that doesn't apply to us today. Well, have you really investigated that? Have you looked at the whole of what the Bible says, or have you simply found something that you don't like and you'd like for it not to apply? So I think that too quickly saying, well, that's just cultural, I think that can be a problem. 

08:40 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
I agree, all right. So we've kind of covered the three things that we shouldn't be doing. Now. The real important thing is what is the right way of reading the Bible? 

08:55 - David Price (Guest)
Yeah, Well, I think that there are three basic aspects to that, and however much you want to get into any of that or not is fine. I'll just kind of give you the overview of it as I see it and then, however you want to take it, but I think there's the foundational issue is what is my regard for and view of the word itself? Do I believe that it is the divine, infallible, perfect, authoritative word of God? Or do I believe that it's up to me to make judgments on it and pick and choose? Or do I feel comfortable saying, well, I know that's in there, but you know, man wrote part of that too and that's just something that man put in there? 

09:47
Do I have a very high regard of the Bible or not? That's the big thing. And then I think when in the three big principles that I give people for Bible study all the time are consistency, doing it regularly, competency, which means knowing how to do it, and then comprehensiveness, which means reading all of it, not just part of it. And then, while we're doing studying the Bible, the big thing, as I just mentioned, the big thing is context. And so to me they're sort of what's my view of the Bible? What is the three big issues of Bible study? And then, when I'm doing it, am I keeping passages in context? So, however you'd like to take that discussion, I'm happy to be that. 

10:39 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
I'd like to go a little bit deeper into these things, and I think that unless we take the Bible seriously and that is infallible, that it is the Word of God and even though it was scribed by man, it is the Word of God I think the rest starts to lose. It's important, so to speak, because if you're not believing that the Word of God is the Word of God, the breath of God, then taking things out of context just goes along with the fact that you don't believe that that is so. Let's just put it on the table that we believe that the Word of God is infallible. It is truly the words that God wants us to receive. So let's move on to the next one, which is the competency of it. That you said Just walk us through it, as though you were telling someone who really has no idea, or doesn't have a church background, or may have but doesn't understand it. What do you mean by that? 

11:57 - David Price (Guest)
Well, you see, of course, it certainly means knowing how to do something. If you're confident at something, it means you know how to do the thing, and there are some basic ground rules, as we have said, to Bible study. And just to say, there's a lot of different things that we can talk about. Genre is one. What type of literature are you reading? To me, this is one of the most common reasons that passages are misunderstood is because people don't understand the differences between genres, which just means a type of literature. That's all it means. 

12:31
And so if you're reading poetry, you're going to read it very differently than if you're reading history, and you're going to read that very differently than if you're reading what the Bible, what we call apocalypse, which is a certain kind of prophecy that uses very graphic, spectacular imagery. And so you know, we know this from being in school, middle school, high school. You read a poem very differently than you read a history book. The poem is filled with figures of speech, it's filled with emotional images, it's filled with word, pictures, and we take it in a figurative way to get an overall mood or feeling. And then, with history, you read it for straight facts. You don't read the history like a poem and go. 

13:26
Well, I know it says that happened in 1875, but what it really means is this, and what it really means is it happened in 1875. That's what it means. And so we need to be very clear about genre, about the type of literature. So the Bible has several types of literature instant poetry, prophecy, apocalypse, wisdom, and I think letters is another one, letters, epistles, and so to be familiar with that and to know going okay, this is the book of Acts, this is a book of history, it's very different from the book of Psalms with poetry, and so I'm going to read those things very differently. I think that's a big one. Understanding the difference between different types of literature, I think is a big one, and when we don't do that, it can lead to a lot of misunderstanding on it. 

14:19 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
And I think that if you know some, some Bibles, actually you can purchase that, have, you know, sort of a introduction to each book of the Bible, and I think that would help be helpful for someone who doesn't know that, and I think that there's a lot of help out there. We're in the age of information, we have the internet, we have books galore all over the place. I think that that's what we should be investing some of our time in information. You know, and I'm such a become such a big proponent of studying the Word of God, not just reading the Word of God, studying it. Therefore, when you study something, you, you, you read that and you look for other information. And one of the examples that you said was understanding the, the time frame of when something was written right, and understanding if it's historical or history, if it's a poem and and I think there's it really brings to life. You know, because some of some, some of us, may not have that in our, you know, like sort of in our imagination, to bring it to life. But I have found that very helpful to to look up things. You know, if I'm reading something, I'll, you know, like search, for example, I don't know an area, for example. Let's take that you know and and study up on that area. And why did it make a difference when it said you know it was rocky or whatever it was? There was a reason. 

16:05
I believe that there's a reason for certain descriptive information in the Bible, and that's what we should be really studying, because we are not going to know historically or geographically everything that the Bible talks about. So I agree with you, we really need to know what it is. So the next thing you mentioned was comprehensive, and I like this one, so I'm going to throw this back to you. 

16:38 - David Price (Guest)
So it's getting all of the thing rather than just part of it. And I think that a lot of times we get very we can sort of narrow in our Bible reading. A lot of people will just read songs, or they'll just read Proverbs a lot, or they'll just read the Gospels and they'll read things that they like, things that are particularly personally helpful, or they'll read something that they're used to it in their comfort zone, they already know it and it's difficult to get out of that. And the Bible is a big book and there's a lot there, and to confine ourselves to only certain parts of it, the parts that we're comfortable with or already know about, is doing ourselves a disservice. It's limiting our growth and I don't think it reflects very well of our view of God. If God gave us the whole thing, I believe he expects us to read the whole thing. That's why it's there. And so, getting outside of our comfort zone and there's a million ways to do that you can do a read the Bible through the year program. There's a lot of different ways, there's a different forms of those. You can read books that you've never read before. There's all kinds of ways to do that. But if you find that all of your Bible reading is confined to just a few books or a few types of Bible literature, then you've got a challenge there, I think, to really knowing all the truths that God has, and just one. 

18:22
I'll give one example as to why this thing is important. When I'm teaching the book of Revelation, one thing that I talk about is the importance of knowing the Old Testament. A lot of times we talk about knowing Daniel, ezekiel and Zechariah, and that's true. But to understand Revelation we have to understand all of the Old Testament, and I do this exercise with people. We turn to chapter 11, and we read verses 1 to 10. And I say find every New, every Old Testament reference or allusion in those 10 verses. And people will find 10, maybe 12, but in those 10 verses there are way over 20 Old Testament references or allusions, just in those 10 verses. In Revelation 11, 1 to 10,. Understanding the book of Revelation requires at least a basic familiarity with the Old Testament, the history, the prophecy, the practices, all of that stuff, and so it's really really important to read all of the Bible, not just parts of it. 

19:38 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Why do we have to read numbers, David? 

19:44 - David Price (Guest)
God's testing you, ruth. He wants to see if there's serious or not. But really, though, I'm glad that you said that that's a really good question, because we will ask ourselves why is this here and what possible relevance does it have? For me, it's interesting. You said that I've just finished teaching the book of Genesis where I am, and we actually went to the book of numbers and we made a couple of points from the genealogy list in numbers that apply to some things in the book of Genesis, and so I think something you said a minute ago, ruth, is really, really important. 

20:24
You said that sometimes you will lock in on a word or a phrase and you will ask yourself what's the meaning of that there? That's a really important question. You know this if God had put everything he could put in the Bible, it would be too big to be of any use at all. So what did he do? God had to select just the things that were most important to put in the Bible. Therefore, if they're in the Bible, they are very important and worthy of our attention, and so, doing just what you said, ruth, which is such a wonderful practice whenever we're reading, to just stop and, with each word and phrase to say why is that there? Why is that there? And that really gives a lot of insight into it. 

21:17 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
I've come to understand that, as you just said, that if the scribes that wrote these books put every single detail in, there's no way we could consume it. And I've always wondered why, at this very moment, did he describe something to the nth degree and yet in this situation, over here, there's no description about it. Why and this is what I've come to understand is if I don't read the Word of God, I'm not going to be able to see that there are these. They're not discrepancies, but differences in the way things are written. And the more you read the Word of God, you start to say okay, why is it in this instance that he's going into all these details, but over here he didn't? 

22:23
Okay, so let me focus back here. What is he telling me? So I totally get that now, and really it's funny because I get that question about what is the point of numbers and what's the point of kings sometimes. But, as you said, there is a reason and that's why I asked that question, because there's a reason for everything. Alright, so the third thing that you said was context, and I think this is a really important one as well. 

23:02 - David Price (Guest)
Yeah. So again, we talked about this a little bit, but just getting that, getting the surrounding. So there are. There's several different kinds of context. There's the start, from small to big. There's the immediate context. So if you're reading 1 Corinthians 1012, well, let's say verse 13, I ran into this recently someone had a question about this on Facebook and 1 Corinthians 1013, you read that verse and if you read the immediate context, that means you're going to back up and read what comes before it and you're going to read what comes after it and what you're going to find. As you do that, if you go in chapter 10, if you go back up to chapter 10 and verse one, you're going to see very quickly that it's actually a continuation of the discussion that he ended in chapter nine. So you're going to go back and read that too. 

23:57
And that's another thing, ruth, by the way, is chapters and verses. I tell people all the time don't let chapter and verses exist, given the way of your understanding of passage. 1 Corinthians, chapter 11 and verse one does not go with chapter 11. It goes with chapter 10. And the people who who divided the Bible into chapters and verses were not inspired Most of the time. They did a very admirable job. Sometimes they didn't, and sometimes people will start reading at a chapter, the beginning of a chapter, and they'll read and not understand that that chapter is very closely connected to the chapter before it and you really need to get that into. 

24:37
So, anyway, that's the immediate context, and then there's the book context. Right, what is the book about? So, for instance, I think one of the really important examples of this is 1 Timothy. Paul has some important things to say in the book of 1 Timothy about how to do church, about how church is supposed to function. He says this in chapter three and verse 15 that I write, so that one will know how to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of God. 

25:08
And so 1 Corinthians, I'm sorry, 1 Timothy is about how to do church. Well, if you don't know that and you read some things in it, you might get totally the wrong idea. So there's the immediate context, the book context, and then there's the biblical context. A Bible verse cannot teach something that contradicts Bible teaching as a whole, and this is a very important concept. A Bible verse cannot teach something that contradicts what the Bible teaches as a whole. 

25:48
And people want to do this all the time. They want to take a verse and use it in a way that when you look at the whole of the Bible, it's inconsistent with what the Bible teaches, and that can't be true. Now, that can be through Ruth, with you and I. I can say something today and say something totally contradictory tomorrow, because I'm human. The Bible cannot do that. The Bible cannot contradict itself. So I've got to be sure, when I'm studying the Bible and I come to this understanding about this verse, that I'm going to say wait a minute, does that coincide with everything the Bible says? If it doesn't, then I've misunderstood it. 

26:36 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
I think context is a huge one as well, and we see how verses are taken out of context to fit the narrative of what is being discussed or what is being. You know what someone is trying to prove or get across. And I think the importance of us reading the Word of God and studying the Word of God and I always emphasize that reading and studying are different in the sense you read the Word of God, you read it through and then studying it is when you get stuck on a verse, get stuck on a word because there's something about it that you want to study, or you study, you know a book of the Bible and you put time and effort into it. And if we do not do this, how do we know when a pastor, when a social media influencer, a book we are reading, a song that we are singing, a movie that we are watching, is not seeing the context of the Word of God? They are taking it out of context. We don't, and I think that this is something that we need to emphasize in this day and age, as we said, in the day of information. We are in that generation where we have it, so how do we need to be able to discern what is right, what is wrong, what is in context and what is out of context. 

28:23
And I think that when we say, is there a right way to read the Word of God? Yes, because if you don't do it the right way, how do you know if you're being taught the right thing? You know you're sitting in the pew and there's a pastor or a leader giving a sermon and I'm not saying question everything your pastor says. But you know we need to be discerned right. We have to be able to discern right and wrong. 

28:54
And if it's just being politically motivated or it's denominationally motivated, what is the Word of God really saying? And you know we shouldn't be like horses with the blinders on where we're here. That's not what God wants from us. He wants us to explore the Word of God and look at the Word of God. To kind of wrap all of this up, I know this is a question that is, you know, sometimes kicks up some controversy, and that is are there versions of the Bible that we should not be using for study and notice? I'm wording this in an uncertain way. I'm not saying if we shouldn't read the certain, but use. There are some versions that we should not use for study. 

30:05 - David Price (Guest)
That's a really, really big issue and something that really I think and not to tell you your business, but I think would be a really valuable whole episode, ruth, for your show. I agree, you know a lot about this on the, but yes, this is something that I've looked at quite a bit. Yes, there are translations that are that could be avoided, as study Bibles or main reading Bibles even, and so the whole translation issue is a big one. But the biggest issue is this so there are two basic translation philosophies of Bible. One is called formal equivalency and one is called dynamic equivalency. Formal equivalency is more of a word for word translation. Dynamic equivalency is more of a meaning for word and so informal. And an example of the formal translation Bible is the numeric and standard, which is what I use. It tries to be as literal as possible to the original text. That's what I want. I want a Bible to tell me what the original says, not what the translator thinks it means. That doesn't help me. So the dynamic equivalency is that much looser and the translator quote unquote is going to give you more of their interpretation of what it means. 

31:32
The famous example of a dynamic equivalency Bible is the message. The message is not strictly a translation, it's more of a. It's a paraphrase, really so, but you've got. You've got translations on a spectrum. Some of them are very literal, some of them are very not literal, and then you've got everything in between. Right, the new international version, which is very popular. It's sort of in the middle. It sort of splits the difference for price to. So, yes, there are most certainly. So what you want to do when you're looking for a main reading Bible or a study Bible, you want to know what was the translation, philosophy, was it formal equivalency or dynamic equivalency? And you want to stay as far on that formal equivalent side of the spectrum as you possibly can. Thank you Great. 

32:26 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Yeah, I agree with you. This is a whole full, not even one episode, multiple episodes of why. 

32:35
Yeah, yeah, it's there's. You know there's different philosophies and you know ways of thinking on it, and you know it would be great if we could all read Greek and we could all read the original text, but we can't. So, yes, you know we, you know we need to be discerning again, and I think that this is, you know, a thread that is going across the whole, you know narrative, and that we need to be discerning, we need to to look at things for for what it is and how it is. David, before we close, is there anything that you would like to leave us with? 

33:16 - David Price (Guest)
For this great reason. 

33:18
Something you said sparked this thought is first, on chapter 4, we're drawing how old, regular Christians just rank and file, ordinary Christians test the spirit, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 

33:32
It is the obligation of every believer, or every believer, to listen to what is being taught instead and to filter it through the Word of God and see what the Bible actually says for themselves. I will not be able to stand before God in the day of judgment and say, well, this is what my church taught and that's why I went along with that. And if a person is has any sort of interaction with a teacher or a leader who is not willing to be questioned, they're not willing to be disagreed with. If they get upset or defensive when you question something that they have taught, you need to really take a look at that, because any teacher or leader would be willing to listen to questions and disagreements and address them in a loving and patient way, so that we can all get to the truth together. And so that's just a couple of things I think are important. 

34:36 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Yeah, and I agree with you. That's the only way for us to grow as well. If you know, we listen to other people's opinions and takes, and for me, this is what Out of the Darkness is about is learning from everyone here. You know, I'm not I never say that I know everything I'm learning so much. It's such an amazing journey, but we need to be open, and you said something earlier and I thought that's where you were going. 

35:04
But I may say something today and in three months, I may not even agree with myself, because that's the learning process. It doesn't mean that there's nothing wrong with that, and I've learned that and maybe it's my age and you know, with it, maybe I'm understanding that there's nothing wrong with admitting that you were wrong about something. This is what I truly believed and I believe in now and maybe, you know, in three months time, my eyes will be open to something else and I will say, oh, I'm sorry, this is what I should have, you know, and we need to continue that growth and this is what we have to do as believers hold each other accountable and and you know like be there for each other. David, I really thank you for taking your time out of your busy schedule. I know you have so much going on and I appreciate you and your time. 

36:02
And for those listening to my friends that are listening here, if you want to hear more from David, he's got an awesome, awesome ministry going on. All of his contact information will be in the show notes. I strongly recommend you go and listen to him and read the stuff that he puts out there. Thank you, david, for being with us today. 

36:25 - David Price (Guest)
Thank you. Thank you for all that you do. I love your heart, I love your work and I appreciate you so much. Thank you for having me again. It's been an absolute joy. 

36:35 - Ruth Hovsepian (Host)
Thank you.