I was recently told by a bishop that we can take scriptures too literally or too seriously and I'm really confused about this. The example he used was that if someone was inquiring if they should move to a new city, they wouldn't find their answer in the scriptures. I feel like this is against everything I was taught in seminary! I found this quote that seems to agree with how I feel about it...
"Those who believe the scriptural canon is closed typically approach the reading of scriptures by focusing on what was meant at the time the scriptural words were spoken or written. In this approach, a passage of scripture may appear to have a single meaning and the reader typically relies on scholarship and historical methods to determine it. The Latter-day Saint approach is different. Professor Hugh Nibley illuminates this in his essay “The Prophets and the Scripture.” He observes that “men fool themselves when they think for a moment that they can read the scripture without ever adding something to the text, or omitting something from it. For in the wise words of St. Hilary, … ‘Scripture consists not in what one reads, but in what one understands.’” Consequently, he continues, “in the reading of the scripture we must always have an interpreter” ( The World and the Prophets, The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, 12 vols., Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1987, 3:202)."
I'm just so confused! I felt like a scripture really was speaking directly TO me, in fact multiple scriptures, and when I showed him the first scripture he said that I was taking it to literally, but I thought after prayer and inquiring the scriptures could really speak to us and tell us what to do?! My mom's wedding story is that when she wasn't sure if she should marry my dad but prayed about it and felt right, her scriptures opened to a verse that said something like "what more of answer do you need than that which is given to you" I'm just so confused right now, and really want to know if other people think the scriptures can literally speak to us?
