One useful thing about comedy is that it is very often an exception that proves a rule. Comedy capitalises on the unexpected. You may listen to, or read something, which at first glance seems serious, and then, out of nowhere, the switch is flipped and you realise you've been had. Let us take, for example, the meme in the header image.
This meme, and its many variants, pose as "did you know" type information. Who doesn't love an interesting animal fact? In this instance, we are told there is a species of antelope that can jump higher than your average house. Anyone reading this for the first time will immediately picture this antelope... well, jumping higher than a house. This is such a default interpretation, I can't even think of a better way to say it. Then the meme takes a turn, describing first the power of the antelope's legs, but then reminding the reader of the obvious. Houses don't jump! Suddenly, the reader realises they've been had. The language used has concealed its true interpretation, only to reveal at the most hilarious moment what it really meant. Ha. Ha. HA.
Because of the way language works, memes like this will pretty much always trip up anyone who hasn't been conditioned to spot them. If you've seen the same memes over and over again, you might spot them early, and then, sadly, it just ceases to be funny. But if you've never seen it before, the chances are you're going to take the default interpretation until the last possible moment.
This is because comedy is the exception, not the rule. In most written documents, there are default meanings to every word. Further context may change our default interpretation, but typically, lacking that context, there is a default understanding. This is why, for example, we take the 6 days of the Genesis creation week as actual days. When scripture says "and there was evening, and there was morning, the (numeral) day", there is no context to suggest these days refer to eras, or ambiguous spans of time.
On the flip side, we have symbols, such as the Lord's Supper. Why do we interpret "this is my body" and "this is my blood" symbolically? Simple: Context. It is not unusual to speak of symbols or representations in this way. When we look at photos, statues, action figures etc., we might say "who is that?" "This is my wife", "that's Abraham Lincoln", "I'm holding Spider-Man" etc. No one is married to a photo, a rock carving did not free the slaves, and your little toy never featured in a movie. The action figure actually has two layers, because the figure portrays a fictional character portrayed by a real actor, yet we can easily say "this is Toby Maguire", and no one is silly enough to suggest we hold the actual Toby Maguire in our hands.
Furthermore, context renders the literal interpretation of "this is my body" impossible. Already, the objects have been explicitly identified as "bread" and "the fruit of the vine", of course held by the very Jesus who said "this is my body". There is no sensible way to interpret Him literally here, and in fact, extra context would be required to make it a feasible interpretation. Thus, we default towards a more symbolic view.
You see, then, how simple reading scripture is. What I have done in this article is simply outline unwritten rules we just know by instinct. It's just how we speak as humans. When these rules are violated, it's usually to be funny. Even poetry is not as easily left open for interpretation as we might think.
But if scripture is so easy to interpret, why are there so many different interpretations? This, unfortunately, is because although scripture does follow the same rules of interpretation as any other written work, we all too often treat it as if it doesn't. The two examples I gave in this article are excellent ones, being so commonly misinterpreted, and for opposite reasons.
On the one hand, the 6 days of creation are so clearly literal, Old Earthers and their ilk struggle to convince others, and even themselves, that although the text seems to imply a literal creation week, this cannot be the true interpretation, Why? Well because "science". So they come up with contrived excuses for why God gave us Genesis as He did, and why we should take it in a different way than basically all of our predecessors, but they will never be able to come up with a contextual reason, based on any rule of any language, to give up the most natural interpretation: The literal one.
While the creation week is so clearly and contextually literal, the Lord's Supper so clearly and contextually isn't. Yet, whole denominations, specifically the Catholic Church and its siblings, teach a doctrine called "transubstantiation", wherein the clearly non-literal phrase "this is my body" is taken literally; the bread and wine literally become the flesh and blood of Christ. But there is no evidence in the text, and all evidence of every kind suggests this is not the correct interpretation. Therefore, Catholics do not stick to the text, but rather, insist that they alone have the authority to determine the true meaning.
Notice how in both cases, the text itself requires "help" to sustain these other interpretations. These interpretations do not flow naturally, like "higher than a house" does. They come from some other source. An extra authority. An ad hoc reason to take a different view. Rather than "this is what most people will take away from the text just by reading it", it's "this is what we want the text to say, so here's how we make it fit".
Of course, these two examples are just that: Examples. But these rules can be applied across the board, simply because we always apply them across the board, even without knowing it. We aren't even conscious of these things when we pick up a book or a Kindle, or even listen to each other speak. Rather, it takes conscious effort to deny them. What does that tell us, then, about those who take such obviously strange interpretations of scripture?