Interpreting "Bangs"

First, listen to this:

Then read the interpretation here.

Did you get all that sinister meaning out of the song when you listened to it?  No?  Really?  Me neither, actually.  I just thought it was a nice song about a guy who liked a girl's hair.  Little did I know there was that seething, sordid mess of iniquity below the surface.

Although ... I've listened to the song quite a few times since reading that -- I've been on a bit of a TMBG kick lately -- and I still don't get all that underlying stuff.  It just seems like a weird little love song.  I'm not saying that my interpretation is the only possibility, but I would like to point out that it matches what the song actually says, without a lot of speculation and wild fact-stretching.

So why should anyone care about the misinterpretation of an obscure band's more obscure song?  Because that's how many people interpret the Bible.  Even when the meaning is obvious, they dig until they find something ... usually something they brought in themselves.  It's how advocates for homosexuality, materialists, warmongers, and Jehovah's Witnesses can all find verses to trot out in favor of their positions.

Before we start playing guessing games with Scripture, shouldn't we take the time to actually see what it says?  Shouldn't we take the black-and-white words on the page at face value before we start bending them into our little molds?

If your answer is "yes", then do it.  Make the effort to see what a text says.  Look at the plain meaning of the words, and pray about it.  The answer isn't always easy -- God rewards those who diligently seek him -- but even if you have to dig a little deeper, what's on the surface will let you know what to look for.  There's no passage in the Bible that actually says the opposite of what it says.

If your answer is "no", then have the integrity to step away from Scripture entirely.  If you're less interested in what it says than in what you can make it say, then there's no reason to keep bringing it up.  Why offer as authoritative a book whose authority you don't accept?  Frankly, you're better off ignoring the Bible than misusing it, though both have eternal consequences.

It's fun to play the "what does it mean" game; it can be vastly entertaining to try and solve little mysteries, even if they aren't actually there.  It's ultimately unprofitable, though, if we like the game more than the goal and refuse to embrace the answer when we do find it.