If I were a betting man, I would give two-to-one odds on my annual salary that you’ve heard at least one sermon on David and Goliath where the preacher preached that you too can slay your giants.

David and Goliath might be the most frequently allegorized passage in the Bible. It has been used (and abused) until we almost can’t think of it any other way. I was with a group of fellow pastors a few years ago, and I commented that we tend to make Bible stories about ourselves instead of Christ or instead of seeing why God gave us that story. I gave the story of David and Goliath as a case in point. One of my fellow pastors immediately objected to the notion that the story of David and Goliath might be about Jesus. “That’s allegorizing,” he said. I asked him how it is allegorizing to make it about Jesus but not allegorizing to make it about me?

To allegorize is to interpret symbolically. When we allegorize a passage, we look for hidden spiritual meanings that transcend the text’s literal meaning. “Commentators who use allegory deserve high marks for creativity but low marks for approaching the biblical account as literature.” (Haddon Robinson, Biblical Preaching, 59)

Continue reading “The Danger of Allegorizing” →