Interesting read speaking to proper application of biblical teachings in light of context and original audience.

One problem not spoken of in the piece below - Humans want easy answers. We want a pill. We want a pithy quote or saying from which to form an opinion. "God said it, I believe it, that settles it!" is a favourite saying that simply flies in the face of intellect and probably offends God. Sad fact - applying critical thinking to Scripture tends to be too much work.

It seems that much of contemporary evangelical preaching is so concerned with the practical application of Scripture that we treat the Bible as a lake from which to fish application for today’s Christians. All of this is done at the expense of proper exegesis and interpretation.

The top three rules of hermeneutics (the art and science of biblical interpretation) are 1) context; 2) context; 3) context. Before we can tell 21st-century Christians how the Bible applies to them, we must first come to the best possible understanding of what the Bible meant to its original audience. If we come up with an application that would have been foreign to the original audience, there is a very strong possibility that we did not interpret the passage correctly. Once we are confident that we understand what the text meant to its original hearers, we then need to determine the width of the chasm between us and them. In other words, what are the differences in language, time, culture, geography, setting and situation? All of these must be taken into account before application can be made. Once the width of the chasm has been measured, we can then attempt to build the bridge over the chasm by finding the commonalities between the original audience and ourselves. Finally, we can then find application for ourselves in our time and situation.

http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-apply-today.html