Puzzle Pieces

I once tried to make a puzzle that had all the pieces the same shape (yes, I know, it sounds a bit like one of the tortures of Hell). It took quite a while to finish it. The challenge was the fact that you only had one clue (the picture on the piece) to guide you because the shape of the piece was useless. The Scriptures are a bit like that puzzle. There are ways to piece them together that seem to fit on the surface, but in reality there is no connection between them. Looking no more deeply than the surface of the Scriptures we might make ourselves think that there are connections that are not really there. If we wish to understand what is in the Scriptures then we must dig deeper.

I have read some scriptural interpretations that are complete gobbledygook (that is a technical term), and I am not referring here to our protestant brethren, but from Catholics. Yes, Catholics at times will claim certain things in the Scriptures which are not really there. I am not sure where they picked up this awful habit, but it is there. They will think that they find support for a certain Catholic teaching, but all they have found is a coincidental similarity. I am not going to go through a list of these, but suffice it to say that we in the Church are not immune from bad interpretations.

To squeeze certain ideas into the Scriptures and try to make forced connections on things is truly not helpful to our faith. It may feel special to have "found" something in the Bible that we did not know about before, but that is entirely a personal gratification and not a result of the grace of God. The take-away from this problem is this: learn the Scriptures better. Learn what the infallible teachings of the Church actually are (and what they are not!), and you can better read what is said and see what it is telling you.