Taking something—a quote, a verse, whatever—out of context is a serious problem, but one that I think we tend to blow off as not a big deal. But it really is.
If you haven’t experienced something being taken out of context personally (and I’d assume most everyone has), then you’ve surely been warned about it from time to time. But in spite of hearing about it, I don’t think we really understand the gravity of the problem.
Recently though, I came across an example of this issue that I found very helpful and thought-provoking. Coming from a simple little bookmark.
In one of my display Narnia book sets, I keep a set of bookmarks my Mom gave me that correspond with the volumes. While looking up something in one book, I re-read the quote on the bookmark in that chapter. I don’t know that I’ve really paid attention to that one before.
“Ours is a high and lonely destiny.”
Mmmm. Now where does that sentence come in? Sounds like a forlorn, wistful thing to say. I was wracking my brain to try to remember who said it; surprising, since I’d think I’d remember someone making a rather pitiable statement like that... Probably during difficult journey... But I don’t remember Fledge the horse saying it. Or Digory or Polly.
It’d been a bit since I’d read this Narnia book (really quite a while for me, since younger me used to try read them all every year ;) ), so I had to look the quote up. And you know who actually says this? None other than devious, conniving Uncle Andrew. Oh, he might not be the most evil villain of the story, but he definitely comes in just a step short of that. And he’s definitely the main one; not a nice, upstanding old fella by any stretch of the imagination. Basically the evil opposite of everything the Professor is in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
This statement about destiny comes when he makes a little attempt at a profound, inspiring speech just after tricking poor Polly into trying something he’s too afraid to try himself. With the feeble, self-confident goal of convincing his nephew Digory that he’s surely not doing anything wrong, that Digory should join his scheming and condone his unscrupulous methods, Uncle Andrew says;
“No, Digory. Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules [ie. ethics] just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny.”
Whoa now. That’s not at all the kind of thing I would’ve thought was being said on that bookmark. It looses any noble-sounding inspiration it might’ve had when put back in that original context. Now I’m not trying to make a big deal out of just a little bookmark; it’s just a great example of how easily something can sound totally different when it’s yanked from it’s context.
But wait. It gets better. Or actually...worse. That same quote gets used a second time in the same book. By who? Guess. Take a wild guess. Yup, it’s later said totally independently by none other than Jadis, the Witch who wiped out an entire world with one word because her sister wouldn’t hand her the throne...and eventually causes the whole winter oppression situation in Narnia... Yeah. Ouch.
“I had forgotten that you are only a common boy. How should you understand reasons of the State? [ie. why she had a “right” to wipe out the whole world] You must learn, child, that what would be wrong for you or for any of the common people is not wrong in a great Queen such as I. The weight of the world is on our shoulders. We must be freed from all rules. Ours is a high and lonely destiny.”
Yeah, wow. Not at all the meaning you would have guessed from the bookmark either, huh? And not really someone you’d want to be quoting.
As a side note, Lewis himself also never said this. He wrote it for a fictional character. (two, actually) And bad ones at that. But loads of things get attributed to Lewis if they sound even remotely thoughtful, profound, or inspiring. Anyway...
Something like this fictional quote can so easily be used for something it doesn’t really mean, cutting and pasting it where it suits a personal purpose, and making it appear that its author said or supported or meant something he never did with those words.
How much more serious when this is done with Scripture. And let’s be honest, that definitely happens a lot.
‘Words. So innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.’
—Nathaniel Hawthorn
(...doing my best to attribute these quotes rightly...especially when we’re talking about context...)
Now I haven’t done detailed research to solidly back this up, but if I had to guess, I’d say that the Bible is the most misquoted book of all time. (I think mainly because most of us only ever learn isolated verses and stories, missing the context of the entire book, not to mention the chapter, the subject, who wrote it, etc. But that’s a thought process for another time.)
‘A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it out of his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.’
—Charles Peguy
This is true with words and context in general, including who is saying what. It seriously affects what a quote is conveying, and we can’t presume to bend whatever we want into saying whatever we prefer it says. Which is magnified a hundred, hundred times when it comes to Scripture.
We could keep riding this train of thought for a long while. But why don’t you and I at least take care to use quotes and verses to say what they actually say without twisting and cutting them to fit other things.
And beware of anyone who claims to have a hall pass on rules and ethics because they “have a high and lonely destiny” apparently...!
(All thoughts are my own. Quotes always belong to their original owners.)
