It is always curious how some Christians read the Bible, claim it as the foundation of their living and then become angry, judgmental people who insist that they have the only truth and that it is acceptable to try and force other people to live their way. On the other hand, it is equally curious that other Christians read exactly the same Bible and devote their lives to the loving and serving of human kind-and it is exactly the same 66, or in the case of a Bible with the Apocrypha, 82 books that these people are talking about.

             How can this be? How does it come about? Psychologists will tell us that each individual brings their own ideas, needs and goals to any task of interpretation, whether it be information in a tax form or the Bible. .

             It is not the purpose of this paper to examine in any depth the mind workings of various groups of people, but generally it is supposed that the people who want the Bible to be hard, fast, eternal rules would be those who are not very secure in their own value system; who are desperately afraid of authority and are very needy of approval. They adopt the hard stance to shore up their own lives and beliefs; therefore they can tolerate no diversity. Those who seem to find joy and peace and the authority to go and love and serve are more likely to be people who, no matter what morass they crawled out of-drugs, sex or rock 'n roll, as was commonly said a few years ago-have some fundamental inner strength that allows them to take their ideas of biblical principals and find freedom. These folks don"t need to control others yet they frequently end up in positions of great authority and responsibility.

             This leads to the question of how, assuming that controlling others is not what one really wants to do, can a person read the Bible wisely, humanely, lovingly?.

             We must begin by understanding that the people of 1300 B.C. and earlier had very different views of life and their values, and vision of Deity were quite different from ours.