Quotes out of context: how we twist Scripture, and each other

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This is a companion to the video "Quotes out of Context: Hurting Others, Twisting Scripture, and Creating Confusion. #BaalGate." It is for the person who has been on the wrong end of a clip: you said one thing, somebody cut it down to a sentence, and now a version of you that you have never met is being argued with online. It is also for the person who was told they were "barely" a Christian, or a heretic, because they landed somewhere unapproved on a debated question. And it is for anyone who has quoted "do not judge" and had a nagging feeling there was more to the sentence.

Here is how to use it. Watch the video first if you can. Then open your Bible, because this guide asks you to check things, and keep it beside you the whole way through. Read "The teaching" straight through, since it carries the whole argument on its own. Then work "The passages" slowly with a pen, reading each quotation against your own Bible, including the verses around it. Save "Questions to sit with" for last, and answer them on paper. Some of them will sting a little. That is the point.

One thing before we start. Being right about Romans 9, or about Calvinism, or about who won an internet argument in January of 2024, does not save anyone. Faith in Jesus does. I have friends all over the map on the questions this video touches, and they love the Lord and love people. I am going to argue hard in these pages, because I think the text is clear and I think people are getting hurt. But you are free to disagree with me, and nobody is leaving the family over it.

You will be quoted this week. By your spouse, by a coworker, by someone in a comment thread. And you will quote someone. Whether that goes well depends on a skill almost nobody teaches: giving a sentence back to the person who said it with its context still attached. The most-repeated line about this problem, "a text without a context is a pretext for a proof text," is usually credited to D.A. Carson. Carson himself says it came from his father, Tom Carson, a Canadian minister. Even the slogan about context is usually quoted without its context. That should tell you how deep this habit runs.