Identity and Interpretation
If we are going to do better, we should remember that little kids are imaginative—they’re weirdly brilliant— and they want to find the answers to a puzzle. So I think we should ask them a lot of questions about the biblical stories, and I think we should not feel threatened by the answers they give us.
it just a straight “aha” moment. But when you’re interpreting in a ministerial context, you’ve got to attend to applying the interpretation to “real life.” Is it possible to probe the text too much when you’re doing the work of interpretation? I think there can be too much focus on just individual words and the grammatical aspect of it—you can miss the forest for the trees, as they say. I think you should get your own idea or question first and then do your research. This seems backwards to some people. But if you have too many ideas in your head before you think of your own it’s like having too many bakers in the kitchen. What you’re baking doesn’t come out well! You show us, in your piece, how you read the biblical text through your own story, and then how the text also shaped your understanding of your story. I think this kind of conversation—between the text and our stories—happens all the time. But we don’t always think consciously about it. So how important is it to be self-reflective about how our stories are com12