Personal Depictions

As humans, when we read any kind of text, we subconsciously add details to that text. Seeing that no two humans have identical subconscious minds, our depiction of a text will never be identical to another’s depiction of the same text. Each person creates their own unique mental image of a text, adding details that do not actually appear there. These personal depictions, especially of biblical texts, have a lot to do with temporal and culture separation from the stories told. This is something that everyone does, but it is important to mindful of our personal depictions of a text in order to prevent straying too far from the true meaning. This relates both to biblical translation and to musical creation. Personal depictions of texts are what produces new biblical translation and biblical music pieces.

Using biblical texts to create pieces intended for entertainment has long been a controversial topic. Personally, I think these entertainment pieces can be useful in guiding us to the lesson or the deeper meaning behind the text because they supplement the text with emotion and impact. In my opinion, retaining the deeper meaning (what God wants us to know) is the most important part of biblical observation. Our personal depictions and the depictions of others help guide our journey to the larger lesson, so in this sense, I think it is completely appropriate to use biblical texts/stories in entertainment as long as they do not stray from the larger lesson.