Chapter 4
The Inability to See the Forest for the Trees

If the Bible is the forest, the devil’s in the details.

Would you cook a dish you were unacquainted with without using a recipe? Would you establish a life guideline based on a perspective that lacks the overall picture? We are going to illustrate a simple concept that eludes almost everyone to some degree. Misunderstanding of the Bible happens by those who have never read it in its entirety and those who read the Bible to reafirm their own ideas and serve their own agenda. To understand the Bible and its seeming complexities, one must observe the entirety in context as a whole before delving into individual portions. The Old Testament tells how the chosen people lived and how God chose to relate to them.  When the son of God came, they did not recognize him due to their straying from the path that God had set up originally for them. So it is written that Jesus made his kingdom available to everyone, and all that recognized him and believed would be saved and would receive life ever after. This special gift which we now call the fulfillment of the covenant was supposed to be explicitly for the Jews as they were the chosen people. It was their nature as man that ultimately turned the path to an alternate route than what God had allowed for them. This failure on the Jew’s part has led to an open door for all who choose to walk through it.   

People fail to realize the overall relation of the Old Testament to the New Testament and tend to lean towards placing more importance upon one than the other. An example of how flawed this point of view is can be seen when a person opens up any book of the Bible in either Testament and reads it and acts on it as if it were meant for them without recognition of the context in which it was presented. The illogic is taking a stand on what they read as if the entire Bible is a cornucopia of blessings for the favored and a stern warning for the faithless all laid out and custom-made for the reader. Random pieces of the Bible were not meant to be utilized in this way, yet the observance of the details by themselves is widely done and has been throughout time. The modern manifestation of this example of failure, the stumbling of followers, is shown to us through Jesus’ teachings to this day and is a mirror image of the failure of the Jews to walk the path they were given. The verses that get quoted from the Old Testament are mostly all dealing with the people of that time period and were written for them for a specific purpose.  It is written in the Old Testament that The Lord clearly said to follow Him, and the chosen people to whom he was relating will have all measure of bountiful things in this life. It is written that The Lord also said that if the chosen people to whom he was relating did not follow him, they would find curses instead in this life. Ultimately, they did not follow the path that God had set for them and their deviation from that path caused them to fail to see God’s fulfillment when it came in the form of Jesus Christ.

We recently received a Christmas card from someone who regards themselves as a Christian. The card was quoting a verse in Isaiah referring to fear not because you will be protected by God. The card quoted the passage as if it was meant for the people of today. But the verse in Isaiah that was quoted was given to the chosen people as a promise and a blessing, and more importantly, only for so long as they walked in God’s grace at that time as part of their covenant. The card completely left out the consequences that would happen if their walk deviated from God’s grace and totally left out that the entire purpose of the entire communication from God was for that people and the purposes of their covenant at that time. What the writer of the card had inadvertently done was to utilize a positive-sounding thought, knowing that people want to believe that they can be protected by God, even though in this particular example they’re not the ones God was talking to in the verse quoted. This type of behavior that lacks understanding towards relevance or context of the Bible is commonplace. Why? Because people do not read the Bible in its entirety and yet cling to portions of it with their limited understanding because they desire to have the blessed things that the Bible refers to as part of their lives while avoiding the negatives. This is a lazy and self-serving way to be acquainted with the Bible that many utilize. This example is so commonplace that it undermines the very ability to understand how God’s word is attempting to help the people of His creation. The exercise of this flawed utilization of the Bible is one of the physical manifestations of the stumbling blocks for the people of today just as the people of yesterday had their own set of stumbling blocks.

Another example of how people utilize the teachings of the Bible in an effort to bolster their own agendas can be easily seen through the televangelist, Oral Roberts, and his doctrine of viewing prosperity as a reward in this life for what we do as Christians today. What he is doing is utilizing the concept originally established for the Jews in the Old Testament that they would be blessed by God because of their righteousness and cursed when there is lack thereof. He then applies it to our obedience and our rewards today. The understanding of the totality and the context of the Bible as a whole in regards to the difference between the old and new testaments is paramount in avoiding these types of errors. But why then do these errors flourish? Because they offer what is within the nature of man’s desire to believe.

What we are presenting does not require vast intellect to understand but does require a grasp of the whole context of the Bible and for one to be devoid of desire to serve self agendas. While developing one’s conscious, one needs to be continually aware of eliminating this pitfall. Many people today think since they have God on their side that all they need to do is believe and feel it in their heart for their interpretation to become for them what the individual passages from the Bible were meant to mean. What they are actually doing is utilizing the words of the Bible to support their own agenda.

The examples that we’ve given can be viewed as trees by considering the meaning of the following phrase. “One cannot see the forest for the trees.” When one looks at a particular tree and has no concept of the whole forest, they’re subject to the limits of their detailed analysis of that particular tree in relation to the other trees and in relation to the whole forest. This illustrates how attempts become futile when the whole is not considered equally important as the details themselves. We relate this to you to help in understanding how man’s design to utilize their interpretation of the Bible for self-serving purposes is shown to be logically in error. This plays a key role illustrated in the stumbling of mankind in the Old Testament. It is our suggestion that this same pattern of stumbling of mankind by emphasizing the details over the whole is occuring now.  Man’s continued failure to use his interpretation of parts of what the Bible says without consideration of the entire context remains a stumbling block to this day.