To interpret well requires keeping in mind the ethical imperative that is interpretive uncertainty, a posture that involves reading a text, the Bible, for instance, expectantly, attentive to all the myriad ways we have yet to hear what someone or something, the Spirit of God, for instance, is saying. Such uncertainty is probably the prerequisite for seeing and hearing anything, for knowing that you haven't gotten to the bottom of anyone or anything, for seeing eternity in a grain of sand, for hearing an oracle in a snatch of conversation overheard. Uncertainty precedes discernment. In the sweet light of uncertainty, we can renounce striving for possession by way of the militant illiteracy that only listens to its own voice; we reject the need to shrink wrap revelation to fit a target market or a voting block; we repudiate the pundit (or the nonprofit organization) that presumes to speak exclusively for America or moral values or “faith” or the Creator of the cosmos, as if one tradition or interest group could say and therefore police for all time what the Bible, for instance, means.
Oh, I loved this.