Ghanaian spirituality mentor, Evelyn Warlson Annan has admitted that for years she thought she understood the Bible, only to later realise that much of what she knew came from what she had been taught.
Her religious upbringing gave her extensive exposure to Bible reading, Bible classes, interpretation and evangelism.
But after the experience that triggered her spiritual awakening, Annan said she began looking at scripture differently.
“As from where I’m standing now, I see myself that from that aspect or that point of life I was only repeating what I was told,” she said during an interview with Richie Mensah.
“I hadn’t really studied the Bible for myself.”
Annan said the realisation forced her to separate what she had personally understood from the interpretations she had received from others.
“So everything I thought I knew, every interpretation I thought I was giving to it was different,” she said.
She then began studying the scriptures independently.
“I started going through it myself,” she said.
Annan said she deliberately approached the Bible without assuming that the interpretations she had previously received were correct.
“I said I didn’t want to act like I knew anything. Everything I know does not exist. It’s not true. I want to know my own truth,” she recalled.
That process, according to her, changed the way she understood several passages.
She said she began looking at biblical stories and revelations beyond their commonly accepted interpretations.
Annan cited the accounts of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael in Galatians 4, arguing that Paul described them as an allegory.
“What does that mean? It means that these mother, father, children that was given to you was only to give you a picture of something that was going to happen or something that was happening,” she said.
She said this led her to question the way people sometimes take biblical descriptions and build their understanding of life around them without examining the underlying message.
Annan also referred to a passage describing an invasion involving creatures with features resembling insects and scorpions.
She said the passage is often understood through a particular interpretation but claimed that her own understanding changed after what she described as a deeper spiritual encounter.
“If you get encounter with God yourself and it starts explaining that revelation, you see it’s far from a disease or a plague. It’s actually a war plane,” she said.
For Annan, the experience was not simply about rejecting what she had been taught. It was about going back to the scriptures and examining them personally.
“I knew what I was supposed to know in the scriptures. So I started going through it myself,” she said.
She said the process became an important part of her attempt to understand God independently.
