The Christian Bible's Guide to reading the Christian Bible

Update:  Please see my Translator's Preface to The Christ Family Bible.

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The Christian Bible does articulate principles that, very likely, are essential for avoiding misreadings (and mistranslations) of the Bible:

(1) Jesus Christ is the only "guide" (kathēgētēs) to Christian teaching, which is then taught and supervised by teachers (Matthew 23:8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4:11).

(2) The Holy Spirit, promised and sent by Christ to faithful disciples, guides Christians to all truth (John 14:15-17; John 16:13). 

(3) Wisdom is given freely to Christians who pray for it (James 1:5).

(4) Divinely authored Scripture as a whole is entirely orderly, never contradicting itself (1 Corinthians 14:32-33).

(5) A wicked force ("the god of this aeon") works to prevent people from perceiving God's wonderful message of good things (2 Corinthians 4:3-4).

(6) Experience confirms the correct reading, or in the words of Jesus, "Wisdom is justified [shown to be righteous] by her works" (Matthew 11:19) and "all her children" (Luke 7:35).

(7) The Christian Bible can be misread, "twisted", to the extent of the "self destruction" of the misreaders (2 Peter 3:16).

Two guides to Christian rejoicing

How can a Christian "always rejoice", as God's Word in 1 Thessalonians 5:16 commands him or her? It can hardly be rejoicing in the general conditions for life in the world, which are described by God's Word as continually worsening during a long period, marked by increasing lawlessness and lovelessness (e.g. Matthew 24:12). 

Two guides toward Christian rejoicing are given here:

"As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." (John 15:9-11, KJV)

"Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice. Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:4-7, KJV)

KJV: Scripture quotations from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press.

The most important misreadings of the Bible?

Are misreadings of these 12 verses of the Christian Bible the most consequential for misunderstandings of Christianity?

1. Isaiah 1:18 
2. Matthew 5:28, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, 1 Timothy 2:11-14 (the missing-wife verses)
3. John 3:16
4. Galatians 2:16
5. Ephesians 2:8-9
6. Philippians 3:9

Yet in all the above cases, clarification of the intended sense is made in the very same text—just as one would expect from an intelligent author when a potential exists for misinterpretation because of polysemic (multiple-sense) words or phrases.

1. Isaiah 1:19-20
2. Matthew 5:29-30, 7:24-27, 1 Corinthians 14:34b-35, 1 Timothy 2:15
3. John 3:20-21
4. Galatians 2:14-15, 5:19-21, 6:2
5. Ephesians 2:10-11, 5:3-7
6. Philippians 3:10-14

Altogether it is astounding, tragic, and yet predictable, however. Both in the (foreshadowing) Old Testament and in the New Testament, misunderstandings of God's Word that are either foreseen, or intended, or both, are described repeatedly: for example in Isaiah 6:9-13, Matthew 13:10-15, Mark 4:10-12, Luke 8:10, John 6:22-68, Acts 28:24-28, 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, and 2 Peter 3:16. 

The most important misunderstandings of Christianity?

Update: I wish to question the lack of distinction in this text between the authority of Jesus's words and the authority of other words in the Bible.

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Could these be the most important misunderstandings of Christianity?

1. God does not judge all people (including Christians) justly, by rewarding their good and bad deeds with perfect justice.* (Versus Scripture)
2. God does not chastize (punish) Christians, with for example sickness or death, in order to prevent their eternal condemnation. (Versus Scripture)
3. Christians’ sins cannot stop them from receiving eternal life. (Versus Scripture)
4. Obedience to Christ—keeping Jesus’s commandments and teachings—is not necessary for Christians. (Versus Scripture)
5. A Christian can sin intentionally and then receive forgiveness on the basis of Christ’s sacrifice (or the merits of the church). (Versus Scripture)
6. Infants and young children should not be baptized into Christ. (Versus Scripture)
7. A Christian is anyone who believes that Jesus died for his or her sins. (Versus Scripture)
8. Theological statements cannot be evaluated on the basis of evidence from actual experience. (Versus Scripture)

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* The Christian Bible makes clear that God is merciful and forgiving, most especially towards sins committed prior to knowledge of God's grace through Christ's sacrificial torture and death (Romans 3:25). Even after repentance and Christian conversion there is mercy and forgiveness from God toward a Christian person, but the Bible makes clear that there are limits (see 1 John 5:16-17 for example).

Qualifying church leaders more carefully than physicians

Update: I wish to question whether Christ authorises any human leaders for the churches. See for example Matthew 23.

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Are there ways to qualify and licence church leaders that are even more dependable than how societies qualify and licence physicians (medical doctors)? There are strong reasons to look for them: church leaders have even more responsibility, and power to do good or harm, toward people in their influence, than do physicians.

(1) Problem-based learning (PBL), used widely and successfully to prove whether a person can be relied upon as a physician, appears worthy of consideration also for church leaders. Can a person apply theological understanding to solve a comprehensive set of problems? A key here is that the New Testament lays out an evidence-based theology: a range of outcomes are witnessable through objective facts.

Other best practices from medicine potentially applied to church leadership are: 

(2) Regularly recurring licence reviews that focus on the facts of a practitioner’s work (e.g. patient outcomes).

(3) Training in the basic sciences that enable a practitioner to detect errors and generally understand the process of reasoning and verification. Imagine a physician who does not understand mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. He or she would be at the mercy of whatever “truths” the medical profession teaches. 

(4) There may be even surer verification (qualification and licencing) methods for church leadership than for physicians. For example, when St. Paul, writing with St. Timothy, faced doubts about their authenticity as Christ-ministers, he presented a long set of criteria, in 2 Corinthians 1:3—6:10, all of which are fairly easily observed within a short period of time (again, here is evidence-based theology). A similar list of criteria for bishops, elders and deacons is found in St. Paul's letters, 1 Timothy 3:1-13 and Titus 1:5-9. 

Is this surprising? It seems entirely predictable of God, who is perfect, and perfectly loving, that He would provide straightforward, highly practicable methods for identifying both trustable church leaders and untrustable ones (identified explicitly in texts such as Romans 16:17-19, 1 Timothy 6:3-5, 2 Peter 2, and 2 John 9-11).