You can learn to be more decisive based on sound hermeneutics and conclude a thing and you can also know when to reserve judgment.
I think many studious Christians make decisions and come to their presuppositions based on sound hermeneutics and they don't feel the need to question them constantly as if they have no revelation already given to them.
Searching for truth is fine. But people do find it. When they do they stop questioning what they know to be truth. If you never know what is truth you just end up faithless and floundering, tossed by every wave and wind of doctrine that comes along. There is nothing admirable about not having a backbone. But that being said we can't make conclusions without textual support that we can point to and articulate.
There is a problem when we keep thinking up different interpretations that violate the context or the rules of interpretation and repeat them as if they are fact. For example...
I didn't see any hint that the report to the King from his servant about Elisha came by way of occult activity.
This knowledge could have been passed to him by some friend of his in the court of the Israeli king who knew about it.
Without any suggestion of occult activity on the part of the servant why would you be so bold as to state it as fact as you did?
11Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled for this thing; and he called his servants, and said unto them, Will ye not shew me which of us
is for the king of Israel?
12And one of his servants said, None, my lord, O king: but Elisha, the prophet that
is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber.
Since there is not a shred of evidence in the text to suggest that the servant was informed through occult activity one does not have a biblical reason to suggest it. Did I miss something in a previous chapter that suggest that this servant has a crystal ball or was looking into a well, or visiting an oracle or reading the entrails of a chicken? If so please inform me where you got it from.
Thinking about all sorts of possible scenarios is fine, but it seems like you went from "thinking about things" to Concluding a thing and you stated it as fact. You are not able to conclude that the servant got the knowledge through occult activity so you should not have concluded it yet. You should be saying "I can't know" like you said before.
This is not how we do bible interpretation. You said a lot about
not knowing a thing. What makes you think you
know that the servant had an occult portal instead of a friend in the Israeli kings court? Seems like you would be more willing to put this occult idea on the shelf and
"not know it for sure" than you would to put the answer that Jesus gave about not having sex in heaven on a shelf and not know it for sure.
I can know for certain that Jesus said there will be no marriage or sex in heaven. I cannot know how the servant was informed about Elisha and told the King and I certainly cannot, and should not suggest it was from occult activity without the text suggesting it. That is a flagrant violation of biblical hermeneutics. I would lean toward the servant getting it from talking to people. This was common in history. Spies everywhere informing others what was going on. The servant was probably informed that Elisha was informing the King through a friend of his in the Court of Israel. That would be the most likely scenario not a crystal ball. That is pure fantasy on your part. Maybe you want it to be true? Makes for a good fantasy novel but not true to historical reality. I prefer historical reality myself. I see no hint of occult portals in this text. There are rules of interpretation and many of them are the same rules of reading comprehension learned in school.
You said a mouthful. I hate that the churches are so divided, because when people are divided, their communication is also divided.
I've written several long posts, but I hate to write more than two short paragraphs because 'my style' is to 'fly over, drop a bomb, and keep moving'. Unlike bullets, bombs target everything in the area rather than picking and choosing. I use generalities all the time because I learn quickly when people generalize and forget that not everyone learns that way.
God uses generalizations throughout the Bible, and when Jesus said that
all the religious Jewish leaders were [snakes, condemned, etc.],
He knew that not every last one of them was what He was saying they were. He knew about Nicodemus, later Joseph of Arimathea. He also had common sense and did enough mingling in Israel to know that
not all Jewish religious leaders were corrupt.
But when He spoke 'harshly' about them as a whole, He always lumped them together.
As far back as 1998, I was never into seeing or believing things that fit my own feelings or beliefs. I knew how to separate my own things from the truth. This was why when my older brother told me in 2000-2002 that the Vineyard churches (begun in Anaheim, CA) were corrupt and that the charismatic churches were not really worshipping God is spirit but were "soulish", I genuinely didn't believe him (which I distinguished from not wanting to believe him).
But since I understood that God knows everything and not us, I put what he said on the backburner thinking, "I don't
believe it, but I don't
know either. So I'll put it here and let God reveal it." Before the end of 2004, God revealed to me that
everything (all the 'bad news') my brother had told me was true to the last bit. God would not have had a chance to show me the truth if I had thrown out what my brother said because I didn't believe it. Still works that way now.
You mentioned hermeneutics, etc. God, that is like the extremely slow-motion route to learning. Okay, so that's just for me. 99% of what God has taught me has never come from any man-made commentaries, lexicons, or those helps. I'm not against them. As I said, my style is to get in, drop a bomb, then get out. I'm not the type to sit around and linger (which is why I fly through these comments and probably make lots of errors); my design is to go-- to stop here, stop there, and keep moving. Because God made me this way, He usually teaches me
while I'm on the move and I don't have to sit and study and read, etc. Hopefully, you don't think this is illegitimate as it's God's preferred method of teaching anything:
"When you are brought before synagogues, rulers, and authorities, do not worry about how to defend yourselves or what to say. For at that time the Holy Spirit will teach you what you should say" (Luke 12:11-12).
I've experienced it all the time and it has to do with practical, pragmatic, down-to-earth aspects of life; it's how God teaches me (ie. in the moment). It's God's preferred way to speak to or teach anyone, but He doesn't do it with everyone or all the time. This style of teaching, revelation, or communication frees a person up. Someone who is say heading an organization or company would benefit tremendously from this style of communication and teaching from God because they are freed up to be busy with work, etc. I have lots of examples of how this has worked for me. Here is just one:
Sometime in 2013, I began attending a church and noticed (there again is that 'anointing' connected to being 'taught in the moment') whenever we met on Sunday and Wednesday, most attendees immediately dashed to get something to eat at the nearby Dairy Queen or some restaurant-- every time after a service/meeting.
I stopped and considered why this was, then I gained understanding. God 'released to me' (not said to me) why this was the case: we humans are tri-partite beings, and each of our three parts must 'eat' or be nourished. Our spirits are nourished on Christ; our souls are nourished by love, belonging, entertainment, good times, etc.; and our bodies are nourished by food that goes in our mouths.
Since these three parts are interconnected, it makes it so that when one part is not being fed, the other two parts will seek to compensate (the same way your stomach acids begin to 'eat' your inner walls if there's no food in your stomach). Jesus talked about all three to the Samaritan woman at the well (soul hunger (her five husbands and sixth lover), body hunger (coming to the well for water), and spirit hunger (the water Jesus gives that wells up to eternal life)).
What I was witnessing at that church was that the people were not being spiritually fed. Since their spirits were not fed, they immediately sought to compensate for that hunger (as is normal)
by eating for the body (and over-socializing before and after church).
That's how God talks to me. He also usually talks to me in 'spiritual language', so that's how I tend to talk myself. For that reason, most people don't get what I'm saying which is why I keep telling people to ask what I mean instead of writing a treatise that will then take me 100 years to try to explain. Hermeneutics can only go so far. God has taken me farther teaching me directly by the Holy Spirit. I don't know what else I can tell you now, but this is why I ask (and might say) some things that some christians think are stupid
but which are not in fact stupid at all. Lol.