If we only followed Jesus’ example, we could have avoided many centuries of self-righteousness, bigotry, and violence. Jesus practiced a scripture-study method that the Jewish people called Midrash, using questions to keep spiritual meanings open and allow them to transform us.
Hebrew rabbis and scholars used Midrash to reflect the underlying messages of Scripture on levels that are beyond their literal meaning: deep meaning, comparative meaning, and hidden meaning.
Deep meaning offers symbolic or allegorical applications. The comparative study combines different texts to explore entirely new meanings. Finally, in traditional Jewish exegesis, the Hidden meaning gets at the Mystery itself.
Jesus consistently ignored exclusionary, punitive, and triumphalist texts in favor of passages that emphasized inclusion, mercy, and honesty. Referring to two passages from Exodus (21:24) and Leviticus (24:20), Jesus suggested the opposite: “You have heard it said, ‘Eye for eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you . . . turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:38-39).
As with Jesus, we must read the Scriptures in a spiritual, selective, and questioning way. As with Jesus, we would have deeper and wider eyes that would know which passages create a path for God and which passages are cultural, self-serving, and legalistic.
1 Corinthians 2:13 “When we tell you these things, we do not use words that come from human wisdom. Instead, we speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths.”
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