Author's intent

It is a common thing these days, in "literary analysis," to project one's own bias on a text and interpret it however the interpreting individual sees fit.

"What I bring to a text" is considered a valid lens for its interpretation.

In my college days, in the 1980s, the Feminists and Women's Studies people were doing all kinds of wacky things with Shakespeare.  Shakespeare is pretty bawdy to begin with, but the acrobatic interpretations that came out of the University of Minnesota in those days were mind boggling, and not (in my opinion) in a good way.  I am sure that Shakespeare never intended to communicate most of what they came up with, but they did not care.  Shakespeare's intentions were not their concern; their own view of reality, regardless of how accurate it may have been, drove their "research."  In fact, they would have argued that nobody had a right to say that their view of reality was inaccurate, although they would not hesitate to dismiss--as inaccurate--a view of reality that honored tradition or accepted the concept of objective truth.

My own children, in their high school days, often complained about their English teachers, and the free-flowing idea that, "There is no right or wrong interpretation of this text; it's all about what you see in it."  One of my children came home mad as hops about a teacher's ridiculous manipulations of a poem that was actually quite clear, as far as my child could see.

Recently I read an article by John Piper (or a transcript of an interview), in which he addressed how Bible study is subverted when people come to the table to discuss the question, "What did this chapter mean to you?"  [I wish I could find it, but I'm old, and the internet is an illusive thing.  I encourage you to look for it yourself.] Piper says that it doesn't matter what the chapter meant to you.  What matters is what God meant to communicate through the person He inspired to write the words.  The onus is on us, in our study, to seek to understand what God is saying to us.

Selfishness reigns supreme when we exalt our own perspective, experiences and biases as a lens through which we insist on interpreting texts, and even conversations.  Because, yes, this "literary technique" filters down all the way to day-to-day communications between people.  It is bad when we read secular texts and selfishly impose our personal interpretations on them.  It is disastrous when we do so with God's Holy Scripture.  And it is immediately destructive when we apply the same habit to our daily communications with one another.

This is a shining example of selfishness: "I have the right to decide what you mean."  It's pride, pure and simple, and it breeds misunderstanding and conflict.  You don't have to be brilliant to be able to see that the world simply cannot work if we all pridefully insist on interpreting it according to our own inclinations.  There is no unity in selfishness.

We need to humble ourselves and strive to understand one another.

We must be willing to put aside an initial feeling of being offended, and seek out what the other person truly meant to communicate.

We need to look deeply into the hearts of others, to the best of our ability, and try to understand where they are coming from, what they are hoping to accomplish, and why they would attempt to communicate what they are attempting to communicate.  Indeed, understanding someone's initial motivation will always help us better interpret whatever it is that the person said, regardless of how eloquent or awkward the communication was.

God calls us to love.  The loving way is to humbly release our own bias and enter into a realm of endeavoring to understand someone else at heart level.

This is not to absolve communicators of the need to try to communicate well, clearly, accurately and with a view to what a given audience can hear and comprehend.  It is not to say that, once understood, every person's communication has merit and is correct.  It is only to say that we don't even have a fighting chance of understanding one another if we won't begin by trying to understand rather than insisting on being understood.