A third reason is the long history of conflict between religions. This adds a thicker, more distorted glass to the lens through which people view the Scriptures. One religion considers itself the mother church of all Christianity. It has long taught salvation by faith and works—works that are said to merit (earn) good standing with God. For many centuries these works served as a giant funnel for money that made the “mother” church supremely wealthy and powerful.
Eventually some of her own members attacked the “works” that made her so rich. In the sixteenth century they broke away in a movement called the Reformation. Many reformers rallied around the doctrine of salvation by “faith only.” They emphasized passages like Romans 3:28, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” Their “mother” church shot back with a different set of Scriptures, including James 2:24, “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.”
This dispute began in Europe. Political forces turned the conflict into bloody riots and wars. Europeans were also colonizing other parts of the world, so they carried their conflicts with them. In a sense, each denomination went about handing out its favorite glasses—its own way of looking at faith and works. Throughout the world each group trained its converts to read the Bible through its own special lenses. Wherever the “mother” church went, it read the Scriptures in favor of works, and its converts dutifully accepted that view. Wherever reformers went, they taught their converts to read in ways that favored salvation by faith alone. The debate raged on with no prospect of resolution. Why? Partly because neither side could see what the other side thought it read in the Scriptures.
We all have glasses. But we want, as much as possible, to set aside familiar mental lenses. We want to go back to a quieter time, before the clash and din of European strife, and try to hear the Bible itself.