Shannon directed Regan and me to a little Hermeneutic Quiz from building church leaders.com. For those who are unaware with the terminology, a hermeneutic is a method or principle of interpretation, usually applied to the Bible. So this quiz, through a series of questions, attempts to identify how you interpret the Bible.
Though not perfect, it is quite insightful regarding your Biblical approach. We will be using this quiz as a springboard for future discussions. So, we encourage you to take the quiz (follow the link and click on “Take Assessment”) and report your score to give everyone an idea of where you stand before we continue with the specific topics. I give you the same advice Shannon gave to me – take the quiz honestly, because it is easy to skew your answers conservatively or liberally.
By way of reference…
Sam scored an 80
Shannon scored a 64
Regan scored a 68
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11 comments:
I scored a 50.
Tada: 71
By the by, the options for the Sabbath question absolutely sucked in my opinion. Who cares about Sunday!
Thanks, Merry, for sticking with us. With such a conservative hermaneutic, it must be very frustrating reading some of the things we write.
Yes Merry, thank you for putting up with us.
Ben, your comment about the Sabbath is right on - for you and me. The question goes to show how we appropriate the Bible, which we will unpack in the next few weeks. Though we may not care, some people take "The Lord's Day" very seriously, almost Pharisaically.
Any other thoughts about some of the questions?
The only other question I have specific reservations about is the question on Capitol punishment. It seems to approach it from a policy perspective (whether or not it should be instituted), rather than asking how grace impacts our view of the practice in general, disregarding the states practice of it and instead wondering whether or not Christian's should request/support it. If that paragraph makes sense.
Otherwise, just a general malaise that comes over me whenever I take a multiple choice survey that I don't feel really represents what I think within the options presented.
I do have an observation on the survey in general though. I decided to see if I could skew the results all the way to both extremes, and was surprise to notice that while you can indeed reach a 100 on the "progressive" (snicker) end of the scale, you can only get down to 20 on the "conservative" end of the scale.
I suppose they did that because they didn't want to give people a score of zero, but still. What's the used of using a 100pt scale, if your data isn't allowed to be plotted along the entire range?
Because if you get a perfect 100, then you are right on.
I've always known you were more conservative then me! But if I only read people who think the same things I do, then I don't have nearly the opportunities to be forced to re-evaluate my beliefs on things and make sure I know what I believe and why I believe it and sometimes making modifications as necessary.
I agree that some of the options were just plain ridiculous - esp the Sabbath. It is hard to take complex subjects and reduce them to multiple choice.
BTW, I don't disagree with you all on everything. Some things you 3 write I totally agree with - like Regan's grace hit me post today.
Sorry. I tried. Really, I did. I made it all the way through and even tallied the score... but there is just no way... I mean, the questions were not ever appropriate to pigeonhole someone if that is what you are into.
To chose between whether I believe smoking is good for you, climbing Mount Everest is good for you, laying down doing nothing is good for you or I fall somewhere in between two of them is insane when I do not think any of them is good for you. I wouldn't choose any of them. I would pick a fourth answer outside the limitations.
So, I apologize; I tried. I am certain this tells you much more about my principal of interpretation than any stupid pigeonhole assessment could.
Perhaps the score I can give you is that my liberal friends find me too conservative and my conservative friends find me too liberal.
Thanks for trying. You are correct in your assessment. This is obviously not the best thing ever, but what it reveals can be helpful, especially to those who have never considered what their hermeneutic is or that they even have one. Stay tuned and we will discuss more in depth how and why we interpret the Bible the ways in which we do.
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