📽 Q&A Video Transcript
👋 Introduction
Welcome to the Q&A for Chapter Eleven: You Already Have a Lens. I didn’t receive any reader questions for this chapter, but I want to dig into something that shows up often in the world of scripture interpretation—especially in conversations around exegesis and eisegesis.
🧠 Exegesis vs. Eisegesis: You’re Already Doing Both
In a lot of seminary or church settings, exegesis is framed as the “right” way to read scripture—careful, contextual, faithful to the original meaning. Eisegesis is framed as what you do when you’re being lazy, selfish, or manipulative: reading your ideas into the text instead of letting the text speak for itself.
But that framing assumes objectivity is possible. It’s not.
We all read with a lens. Your upbringing, your body, your culture, your trauma—all of it shapes what you notice, what you skip, and what you believe the text is allowed to say.
Exegesis isn’t the opposite of eisegesis. It’s a compensatory tool. A helpful one. It gives us language, context, and history so we can notice when our personal lens might be skewing things too far. But it doesn’t erase the lens. It just names it—and helps us work with it more honestly.
🎯 Literalism Is Also a Lens
When someone says they’re “just taking the Bible literally,” what they usually mean is that they’re reading like a 1920s fundamentalist. This reading style came out of a historical movement that insisted the Bible was inerrant, and that its plain meaning should be followed word-for-word.
But even people who claim to read literally don’t take every passage at face value. They’re interpreting—they just don’t always name it.
So let’s name it: every reader has a lens. That includes literalists, skeptics, mystics, and yes—trauma survivors.
💡 Eisegesis Can Be Ethical
I believe sermon writing inherently involves eisegesis—and when done with intention and honesty, it can be joyful and ethical. You’re not pretending to be neutral. You’re naming your location and choosing to interact with the text from that place.
What makes eisegesis dangerous isn’t the subjectivity—it’s when people pretend they don’t have a lens. That’s when interpretation turns into manipulation.
🌀 What Does This Have to Do with the Body?
Everything. Because most of us learned to read our bodies the same way we learned to read scripture:
Ignore the parts that feel disruptive.
Elevate external authority over internal sensation.
Distrust your own lens.
This process invites you to name your lens, not eliminate it. Your body has a story. Your interpretation has a context. That’s not a flaw—it’s a starting point.
📝 Journal Prompt
When you reflect on something your body is going through right now, what would it look like to exegete it—study it with care and curiosity, as if it had something ancient and important to say? What would it look like to read into it—to let your fears, hopes, or assumptions shape the story? What do you notice when you try both?
📅 Next Week
Next week is our last week of the read-along. I can’t believe it. Looking forward to it.
