“The vision of Christ that thou dost seeIs my vision’s greatest enemy:Thine has a great hook nose like thine,Mine has a snub nose like to mine….Both read the Bible day and night,But thou read’st black where I read white”-William Blake
27to the pure you show yourself pure,
but to the crooked you show yourself shrewd.
Is God different to different people? Or do we see the same God differently? I think we do not see God, or the Bible, or each other objectively. Since we are a product of all that we have experienced, we see and interact with everything in light of that fact. You are the product of the people you meet, the books you read, the movies you watch, the courses you study – like a traveler learning new phrases and acquiring new mannerisms, we are far less ‘individual’ than we think we are.
Importantly, this is not just an interesting fact – a little thought experiment to brighten a dreary day, it really is of utmost importance. If I read the Bible differently to you, if I hear the same words of God differently to you, this is a problem. I’m not talking about the legitimate variety of expressions and ways we respond to God, I’m talking about deciding who God is, what his priorities are, and thus what ours should be. These should not be open to wide interpretation. Either God is something or He is not.
I wonder to what extent the Gospel writers were influenced by their own experiences? Their Jewishness, or their medicalness, or simply their personality type. Perhaps some degree of variation is actually what God wants, after all it was Him who chose 4 gospels and not one.
Nic Spaull 
Very profound post. Awesome that you do this (especially while going toward a masters in econ). Ephesians 4:5 talks about there being 1 Lord 1 Faith and 1 Baptism, I love how you explained that there are different interpretations of the Bible–different meanings for different people. I definitely agree with you, that this doesn’t seem right. I always believed that God has a specific will, and we need to follow it.
I think of a single point on a page, you can draw infinite lines through it in different directions, (The Bible, which is true, can have infinite interpretations–which it shouldn’t). Another example is a block of wood, if you pound a single nail into it, you can rotate the block infinite directions. If a second nail is pounded in, you have firm stability. I don’t want to seem preachy, here’s a link, (maybe you will be interested). I prayed and discovered that this book is a second nail in the block (or a second dot on the page–allowing for only one interpretation). http://lds.org/scriptures/bofm?lang=eng
Keep up the good work! Love the posts.