Hermeneutical Crimes: Intentional and unintentional mishandling of the Word of God

Being a leader in the Church - even a trained leader - doesn't automatically guarantee that one's interpretation of the Bible is correct. And if a leader teaches the wrong doctrines, then he's guilty of leading church members into believing the wrong doctrines.

Over the centuries the confusion - over how to interpret the Bible, with hundreds of millions of Christians and hundreds of thousands of denominations and churches each contributing their own version of what it means -has left us with the feeling that there may be no single unified meaning to God's Word. In the end, it all depends on what people want to hear.

But God has his own message in the Bible that he expects us all to see. It requires more than a superficial read-through, and it requires setting aside our opinions and culture and traditions.

Warning: if we don't hear what God is really saying, we are guilty of changing his eternal Word into a false religion.