Now that we have established that the verbal proclamation of the Gospel (as mentioned in the Bible) is itself sufficient to produce a moral obligation on the part of the sinners (irrespective of the preacher’s spiritual condition), we will go on to see the scriptural examples where the actions had been misinterpreted or interpreted in different ways, by the on-lookers. The point that I would like to drive toward in this post is that actions don’t speak at all, and that they are always interpreted according to the presuppositions which the people hold. And that this interpretation might be totally different from what we might have wanted to get across to them.
The first set of passages is from Matthew 12:22-24 and Matthew 9:32-34. In both these instances, Jesus drives out a demon from a demon-possessed man. The people are astonished saying “nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel” and wonder “could this be the Son of David?”. But the Pharisees in both the instances maintain that Jesus drove the demons out using the help of Beelzebub, the prince of demons. Now you see that there has been only one action that had been performed: driving out of demon. But people had come up with two different kinds of interpretations. And both these interpretations are contradictory to each other. Now it is possible that both the interpretations could have been right. Now don’t misinterpret me into saying that two contradictory propositions could be right. What I’m saying is that both the interpretations would have explained the action, but only one of them has to be right. And which is the right one, neither the interpretations themselves nor the action indicate to it. Jesus had to explain it to them which one was right.
The next passage is from Acts 2. This was when the Holy Spirit comes at the Pentecost. The believers filled with the spirit begin to talk in tongues. What is the crowd’s response? One group is astonished and amazed, and are asking how is this happening. But another group comes up with an interpretation that the people have had too much wine. Now again their interpretation of the action was wrong and Peter had to stand up and explain it to the people that it was not because of wine but because of the pouring of the Holy Spirit.
The last passage I’d like to quote is from Acts 14:8-19. Here again Paul performs a miracle by God’s power. But the people look at it and think that their gods have come down in human form and they named Paul as Hermes and Barnabas as Zeus. They also wanted to offer sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas. Later on Paul had to explain to them about the God who made the heaven and the earth. This is how bad unbelievers can interpret us based on their own presuppostions. Even though it was through God’s power that Paul was able to do the miracle, the people, deeply entrenched in their Greek philosophies, could only interpret it as the work of the Greek gods and not as the God of the Bible.
We could give more examples but I think it is beyond the scope of this post. I think these three examples provide ample evidence that well-meant actions could be interpreted in many ways, even contradictory to what was actually meant by it. Unbelievers don’t think Christianly and they will interpret our actions by their own unbiblical presuppositions. You may as a Christian show compassion, but they might infer nosiness. You may demostrate humility, but they might infer humility. You may value the exclusivity of your religion, but they’ll infer intolerance and arrogance towards other religions. I may add on more examples ad boredom.
More in the next post.
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