Our Lenses: Presuppositions, Traditions and Expectations

🎯 Objectives

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

distinguish helpful presuppositions from prejudices that close us off;
recognize how expectations and group pressure can steer your reading;
evaluate traditions with balance, always placing them under the authority of Scripture.

📖 Receive

Read these two passages, which tell of two moments when the disciples’ “lenses” were corrected:

Luke 24:13-27: on the road to Emmaus, two sad disciples tell Jesus, without recognizing him, that they had hoped he would be the one to redeem Israel. Jesus calls them slow of heart to believe and explains the Scriptures to them.
Acts 10:9-16 and 10:28: Peter, faithful to his food customs and his convictions, refuses what God shows him in a vision. Then, in Cornelius’s house, he acknowledges that God has taught him not to call any person unclean.

As you read, ask yourself: what was keeping these disciples from seeing?

🔍 Examine

No one reads with the naked eye

People who wear glasses soon forget they have them on. Yet everything they see passes through those lenses. If the lenses are clean and the right prescription, they help us see better. If they are dirty or wrong, they distort reality, even if the wearer does not notice.

The same happens with the Bible. No one reads it “with the naked eye”. You bring with you your story, the church you grew up in, the sermons you have heard, your fears and your desires. That is not bad: it is inevitable. The problem arises when we do not know we are wearing lenses, and we mistake what we see through them for what the text really says.

Presuppositions and prejudices

Let’s start with an important distinction.

A presupposition is a starting point. For example: “The Bible is God’s Word and does not contradict itself.” It is a conviction that orients us, helps us form an initial idea and stays open to checking: if the text shows us we had misunderstood a passage, we are ready to be corrected.
A prejudice is a conclusion decided in advance. For example: “This verse cannot mean anything other than what I have always been taught.” A prejudice does not allow itself to be checked: it decides the meaning before we have even read carefully.

📌 How to recognize them

A presupposition says: “I start here, but I am willing to learn.” A prejudice says: “I already know where I’ll end up.”

Presuppositions help us discover our mistakes; prejudices hide them from us.

	Presupposition	Prejudice
What it is	A starting point	A conclusion already decided
Before the text	Listens and checks	Chooses the meaning in advance
Before a correction	Allows itself to be corrected	Defends itself
Example	“The Bible does not contradict itself”	“This passage only says what I think”

Expectations: seeing what we want to see

Besides our starting points, we are also shaped by our destination: what we hope to find in the text.

Think of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. They knew the Scriptures and had followed Jesus. But they expected a Messiah who would free Israel from the Romans, and that hope was so strong it kept them from understanding the cross (Luke 24:21). The answer was in front of them, and they could not see it.

We too can read the Bible looking for confirmation of what we want: a decision already made, an argument to win a discussion, a sentence that proves us right. Expectations are powerful precisely because they work silently. A good question to ask before studying is: “What do I hope this text says? And am I ready to accept that it says something else?”

Group pressure

We are social beings, and the community we live in shapes us. That is a gift: we learn the faith together with others. But there is also a risk. No one likes to be looked at with suspicion in their own church. So, almost without noticing, we may prefer the interpretations our group approves, or defend a position only because we have already taken it in public.

Paul is very clear: if he were still trying to please people, he would not be a servant of Christ (Galatians 1:10). Our loyalty belongs first of all to the Word of God.

This does not mean becoming lone wolves. The Church is one body with many different members, united in Christ (Romans 12:4-5). The Spirit creates unity, not uniformity: he does not want us all to think alike on every detail, but to seek the truth of the text together, with humility. Listening to those who see things differently, even outside our own denomination, is one of the best ways to discover our lenses.

Good traditions and human traditions

The word tradition comes from the Latin tradere, “to hand over”. A tradition is what one generation hands over to the next: teachings, habits, ways of worshiping God.

The New Testament does not condemn traditions wholesale. Paul praises the Corinthians for keeping the teachings as he delivered them (1 Corinthians 11:2) and asks the Thessalonians to stand firm in the traditions received from the apostles (2 Thessalonians 2:15). Israel had its feasts to remember God’s works; the early Church had the Lord’s Supper, baptism, and the first day of the week devoted to worship.

But Jesus sharply rebukes the Pharisees because, to keep their tradition, they made void the commandment of God (Mark 7:9-13): they used a religious rule to avoid helping their own parents. The problem was not having a tradition, but placing it above the Word of God.

Peter, in Acts 10, shows us the right way. His convictions were deep and sincere, but when God speaks to him, he lets himself be corrected. He does not throw away everything he has learned: he places it again under the light of revelation.

A principle that sets us free

Here is a sentence that will accompany you throughout the course:

Scripture is without error. Our interpretation is not.

This does not make us insecure: it sets us free. Free to revise an idea without feeling betrayed, to listen to a brother or sister who sees things differently, to grow. The believers in Berea did not doubt God’s Word: they doubted themselves enough to check every day.

The cycle that cleans the lenses

Correcting our lenses is not a one-time event, but a journey that repeats. The diagram shows it: you read with the lenses you have, you compare what you have understood with the text and with the rest of Scripture, you let the Word correct your view, and you go back to reading with slightly clearer eyes.

flowchart LR
  A["👓 I read with my lenses"] --> B["🔍 I compare with the text"]
  B --> C["📖 I listen to the rest of Scripture"]
  C --> D["✏️ I correct my view"]
  D --> A

To set the cycle in motion, before a study you can ask yourself four short questions:

What have I always been taught about this passage?
What do I hope it says?
What would a believer from another church or another culture say?
What does the text really say, word for word?

They are not meant to make you doubt everything, but to help you notice what you took for granted.

🔗 Connect

The Bible is full of people whose lenses were corrected by God.

Luke 24:25-27, 45: Jesus rebukes the disciples who are slow to believe, then opens their minds to understand the Scriptures.
Acts 10:34-35: Peter acknowledges that God shows no partiality and accepts anyone in any nation who fears him.
Mark 8:31-33: Peter rebukes Jesus when he announces the cross, and Jesus tells him he is minding not the things of God, but the things of men.
Romans 12:2: Paul invites us not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
Colossians 2:8: a warning against human traditions and philosophies that are not according to Christ.

The common thread: God does not ask us to read without lenses, but to let his Word correct them.

🙏 Apply

Take a few minutes, on your own or with your study group:

Write down three “lenses” you wear when you read the Bible: the church you came from, a person who has influenced you, a fear or a desire. How can they help you? How can they distort?
Is there a teaching you have always taken for granted and never checked personally in the Scriptures? Write it down: it could be your next study.
Have you ever defended an interpretation so as not to lose face? What would help you be freer?
Pray with the words of Luke 24:45: ask the Lord to open your mind to understand the Scriptures.

📚 Go Deeper

Read Acts 10:1–11:18 in full: notice how Peter’s view changes and how the church in Jerusalem reacts.
Read Mark 7:1-13 and note the difference between the tradition of the elders and the commandment of God.
Exercise: choose a passage you know very well and read it in two different translations. What do you notice that you had missed before?

In the next lesson we will see who helps us clean our lenses: the Holy Spirit, who illuminates those who study the Word with humility and commitment.