Our method for Bible study can be summarized with just three letters—OIA—which represent three skills that govern all human communication: observe, interpret, and apply. Those three skills provide the answers to three basic questions:
- What does it say?
- What does it mean?
- How should I change?
Over the years, I’ve regularly heard well-meaning folks ask that third question—the question of application—in this way: What doest it mean to me?
That question has the benefits of rhythm and resonance. It flows right off the tongue to recite: “What does it say, what does it mean, what does it mean to me.” And that rhythm can certainly aid with memory.
However, the costs we pay in clarity and accuracy are not worth the gains of memorability, for at least four reasons.
It confuses application with interpretation.
By asking “what does it mean?” we are doing the work of interpretation. We are figuring out why the original author says what he says, and what that meant to the original audience. By using the same verbiage of “what does it mean,” despite the qualifier “to me,” we communicate that we are doing the same thing, only with a different audience in view.
Why does that matter? Who cares if we do (or communicate that we are doing) the same thing for different audiences? That leads me to the second reason that “what does it mean to me?” is a bad question.
It relativizes truth.
The question presumes that meaning is a matter of indifference. That a text’s meaning depends on who reads it. On how they perceive it. And so a text can mean one thing to one person or community, and another thing to a different group.
When we relativize the truth in this way, we ought not be surprised when the realities of Scripture are brought into question whenever they grow too inconvenient. For example, many who once stood for the Bible’s definition of marriage have come to interpret those pesky passages to have a different meaning, now that severe cultural pressure has been exerted.
And while I’m a fan of relativizing application, we must not do the same with interpretation. A passage doesn’t mean what any reader believes it means. A passage means what the author meant by it. For this reason, the concept of meaning carries much weight and is not something with which to tamper.
Wi to the intent to apply, it makes sense to ask “what does the text mean for me?” That question prods for implications and applications. But to ask what the text means to me is to tamper with its meaning.
You can choose to agree with the text or disagree with it. You can like it or dislike it. But you can’t change what it means. Do you see what I mean?
It makes application an exercise in self-fulfillment.
I recently wrote a thank-you note to a generous person who did something extraordinary for my family. In that note, I said, “it means so much to me that you…” That phrase, “what it means to me,” has a particular force and use in modern English, which has more to do with inspiration and delight than with truth or understanding.
The average person in today’s Western world, hearing the question “what does that mean to you?” doesn’t naturally hear a challenge or stimulation toward life change. That person hears an expression of self-fulfillment.
And self-fulfillment is not always a bad thing (as long as it’s not a godless or ultimate thing). I hope many people find great satisfaction and delight in their study of God’s word. But such satisfaction and delight is not the same thing as robust application.
It predisposes application to only one direction.
By asking “what does it mean to me,” we communicate momentum from the text to the individual reading it. Perhaps unintentionally, this frames what is happening as something that terminates on the reader. Therefore, even if the question itself is understood as one of application and not interpretation, it sets the reader up for inward application alone. The reader is not likely to consider outward application as well.
And since many of us are already naturally inclined to forget application’s second direction, we don’t need to reinforce the inclination with the way we frame the question.
Conclusion
For these reasons, we have never recommended “what does it mean to me” as a way to summarize the application step. We prefer to ask “How should I change?”
That doesn’t mean I’ll start flipping tables if I’m in your Bible study and you ask “What does this text mean to you?” I promise I’ll do my best to be polite. But I’ll also do my best to reframe the resulting discussion in a more useful way.
