Feeling Scripture

Thinking about this quote I saw last week from Jared Willson at The Gospel-Driven Church: 5 Ways to Feel Scripture.

"My conviction is that evangelicals by and large have lost their ability to feel Scripture. The great irony is that now when the Bible is more available than any time in history, we are perhaps more biblically illiterate than any Christian generation in history.The great opportunity in this, of course, is that our generation is now extra ripe for biblical transformation and a revival in commitment to the deep well of Scripture."

I have always suspected that our problem is not so much feeling Scripture as in thinking Scripture. We are certainly a biblically illiterate generation. However, most people I know seem to relate almost entirely to the Bible through their feelings. What a passage means "to me" is what is important, and that seems to be determined almost entirely by how it makes one feel. What we need is a return to thinking about Scripture, and a reuniting of feelings to be based on what God actually says in His Word, prior to our personal reaction to it.

However, to give Jared credit, he went on in his post to discuss the rules of hermeneutics (the science of Biblical interpretation), and I agreed with what he then said. Therefore, I don't think he was using the word "feel" in the way I would usually use it. I think what he meant is that the objective truth of Scripture that we learn and know in our minds must impact our feelings and imaginations in order for that truth to change behavior. That is truth!

What do you think?