Interpreting the Bible

I have come across so many different interpretations of the Bible lately that I thought I would write about it. I took a class on it in college called hermeneutics. I really enjoyed the class because I learned a lot about the practice of interpreting the Bible, but especially because the teacher told us plenty of examples of times where we use a verse to back up our argument when that is not what the verse means. I have heard that a lot in the Christian ranks.
We need to take a humble approach when studying and understanding the Bible. We all have presuppositions as a result of how we were brought up. And it is easy to say, well this is how I have always known it, so it must be true. We must humbly come to the Scriptures and study to see what passages are really saying. To understand what the author and God are trying to communicate, we must study the background, context, who they are writing to and why, the culture and customs, and also the language. Unfortunately, humans did the translation of the Bible and words change meanings as well.
One must also be careful where resources are found for interpretation. Scholars are humans too, and many disagree, soooo..... someone has to be wrong in their interpretation. That is why it takes much time in study before we become sure of a meaning, and then even still, unless it is a major proven doctrine, we must not be dogmatic about its meaning and label everyone else as liars.
Well, there are other thoughts on my mind for this post, but if it gets too long, I will lose the 3 people that visit my blog.