The Word of Truth

I saw a video of a man who crashed his first bike just minutes after purchasing it; he was clearly not handling that motorcycle rightly. There is a passage of Scripture that warns clergymen (and by extension all the faithful) that they need to "rightly handle" the word of truth. This certainly means to preach it correctly, and not apply false interpretations to it. Yet, it also means handling it rightly in the normal day to day reading of Scripture.

A common non-catholic practice is to read Scripture and assume too much knowledge about what God means--this is not rightly handling the word of truth. A common catholic practice is to read Scripture and assume too little knowledge about what God means--and this is also not rightly handling the word of truth.

Scripture is hard to understand (it even says that about itself!), but that does not mean we should avoid it out of fear of not understanding it. God speaks to His Church and reveals truth; the Church then speaks to us to inform us of that truth. Since we know truth definitively, then let us read Scripture with that truth in mind and know that we will find it there.

There is certainly a reason why the church used to give far more warnings about reading Scripture than encouragements actually to read Scripture: it is dangerous. After all, motorcycles can only kill you, bad interpretations of Scripture can send you to Hell! So those without the authoritative voice of the Church in their lives should be very cautious when reading Scripture. Those, however, who know the truth still need caution, but they have the confidence to know what the Scriptures say. As Catholics you know how to "rightly handle" the word of truth; do so.