Flipping through channels the other day I saw that the movie, Overboard, was on.  Again.  It seems like it plays on some channel at least once a month.  I have seen it once in its entirety and different bits and pieces on a number of occasions.  It is a fun movie.

If you haven’t seen it I will give a synopsis of it so that I can make my point. 

Goldie Hawn plays the part of a very irritating and arrogant rich woman.  Kurt Russell plays a rather simple, but conniving, carpenter.  She hires him and then treats him like she does everybody and cheats him out of his payment.  Through a series of comedic mishaps she gets amnesia and does not remember anything about who she is. 

Kurt’s character finds a way to convince her that she is his wife and the mother of his rather wild children.  He does this to simply get his money’s worth from her in service to his family.  It may not feel right to her but the new family is able to finally convince her she is who they are telling her she is.  There is a lot more to it but this gets me far enough to move on.  It is a fun family movie if you haven’t seen it.

Now let’s move to bible interpretation. 

There is a lot of different ideas out there about how to interpret the bible and a lot of different people telling us what it says.  There are some people with a slew of different degrees and many years of education that say one thing and then there are others with just as much education saying the exact opposite. 

Some say we could never lose our place in heaven and others say we can toss our tickets out if we choose.  Some say everyone can be saved and others say only a few are chosen.  Is eternal damnation or annihilation what the lost have to look forward to?  Should we be speaking in tongues, or not?  Is Satan really out to destroy me or is that just a symbolic representation of the sin in this world?

There are just so many issues out there that no one seems to be able to agree on.  When I look at the various ways true, scholarly men of God use the Word to back up their beliefs I am sometimes thrown into a state of confusion.  They can’t all be right.

It looks to me like the problem is, that no matter how hard we try, we bring our own set of preconceived notions to the table every time we open up the bible.  We see thru lenses that are tainted with who we are, where we come from, what we have been taught, and what we want.  Some seem to be able to keep this to a minimum while others are heavily influenced by these things. 

That’s why I am wondering if maybe amnesia could be a blessing.  I wonder what would come out of the study of the Word of God if John MacArthur, Jack Hayford, Greg Boyd, and Father John Corapi all got amnesia and were given the bible to study with nothing else to filter it through.

But who am I to say all of this?  I’ve got my own set of glasses.

Love you all

Tags: Amnesia, Bible, Father John Corapi, Greg Boyd, Interpretation, Jack Hayford, John MacArthur