Through out my life I have always had other Christians, friends, family, even people I do not know, the lot of them offering answers to life's questions with simple Bible passages. Harmless and considerate, yet misunderstood! It was not until recently that I have been pondering over these inquiries, and have come to understand that when people use what they think they know, they are doing the same thing as fortune cookies, in a sense.
If you have ever eaten a fortune cookie, you know that the best part of the cookie, besides the cookie itself dipped in ice cream is that there is a fortune within it, and on the back there is a word in English and its translation in Chinese. Many Christians that I know, and I am even guilty of this, use a single passage found in the Bible and force it to mean something that it does not mean to make us feel better, or fulfill our own need to find a meaning of that passage that was never intended to be heard. This whole concept is about context, which the majority of the Christian population do not do. Hermeneutics before exegesis, does not help in our understanding of God or our role in this life.
For the purpose of this blog Christianity is the cookie, 1 or 2 passages are the fortune, and Christian terminology is the Chinese word to be learned. It is important to understand, that we can make anything sound the way that we want it if we do not have the context behind it, and unfortunately many people, including Christians, do this and think it is ok. Instead of eating the cookie and not paying attention to the context of the fortune, lets eat the cookie while searching for the context in order to have that fortune apply to us today.
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