You said: “Tulip” is a word, a part of a language, which *you* speak. The tulip does not speak this language or understand it.”

I note that you put ** around *you.* It is a way to emphasize that the Tulip is not doing the speaking, the person is doing the speaking. The Bible does not insert meanings into our minds, *we* actively read the Bible and make sense of it, attach meaning to it, impose meaning on it, use it in our daily lives.

The ** gets at a point I’ve been trying to make on this site for sometime: there is a tendency for some believers to smuggle out the *you* and act as if there is no reader and no interpretation, only unmediated Truth relayed from God/Bible through a faithful person.

Much of the debate centers on the source of meaning. Do meanings derive from some external foundation—like God or the Bible or a Tulip? Or do meanings emerge through the active work of *you* interpreting the Bible or the Tulip?

Part of an emerging theology, it seems to me, is a matter of making sure that *you,* the reader/interpreter, are visible and not smuggled out of the picture.