Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made Of

Last fall, I read a book by a Christian author on the subject of dream interpretation after seeing a lot of chatter on social media concerning the topic. My point in this post is not to call out a particular person, so I'm not going to name the book title or author. But I do feel that some of the assertions made in the book need to be addressed using biblical principles.

In the introduction, the author states that, while God definitely speaks our human languages, that it must really please Him when we make the effort to understand His "creative language of dreams." As someone who is fluent in Spanish as a second language, and has studied a bit of biblical Greek, I know a little about learning another language. Many people expect learning another language to be a simple matter of learning which word in the source language corresponds to which word in the target language, as though languages are just replacement ciphers. 

This misconception can lead to a lot of false starts and bad conclusions. Anyone who sets out to learn a second language quickly discovers that context is just as important as knowing a list. I've lost count of the times a native Spanish speaker has asked me, concerning an English word, "What does the _______ mean?" Probably 80% of the time, my immediate response is, "Can you tell me the sentence you saw it in?" because that one English word could have three or more Spanish equivalents, depending on the context in which it is being used. So, before we can think about learning the "dream language," we need to have an actual understanding of how languages work.

The author does say several true and valuable things about trying to interpret dreams, such as the interpretation should never be contrary to Scripture. The first guideline given for understanding one's dreams is to make sure that the interpretation measures up to the test of the Word of God. But then as an example under this rule, the writer says that your pastor appearing in your dream may represent the Lord "because they are the head of the church." A local church pastor may be charged with leading that congregation in the ways of Jesus, but the idea that the pastor is the "head" goes against the clear ecclesiology presented in the Bible, where Christ alone is the head of His body, the Church. Assuming that your pastor saying something to you in a dream means that Christ is speaking that to you is risky.

The second guideline is to wait on God for the interpretation, and not rush to secular sources or "so-called 'spiritual' people" for help in understanding the dream. But then later in the book, the author presents a lot of possible meanings for various objects, events, colors, and numbers, with no basis in Scripture for those "translations" of the dream symbols, but only references to a couple of other books on the topic by ostensibly Christian authors. I do not have access to those books to verify the sources, but I have to raise the question whether they are truly qualified authorities on the matter, or could be just someone who appears "spiritual" because they have written on the topic, and their own teachings may be more assertions than validly drawn conclusions from exegesis of Scripture. 

The third guideline warns against sharing dreams with others before one has prayed to God about the dream, first to ask Him whether the dream was a message from Him (and not just random firings of neurons pulling various images from one's memory into a mash-up), and secondly to ask Him for the interpretation (since, according to Scripture, the interpretation of dreams and visions belongs to God alone).

On those general guidelines, I can agree.

Next, the author talks about different kinds of dreams. First are "soul dreams" that reveal what is in the dreamer's heart. Next are "venting dreams" related to the issues of daily life that can frustrate or anger us. "Instructional dreams" show the dreamer what course of action they should take (examples are the dreams of Pharaoh interpreted by Joseph in Genesis, and the dream Joseph had to flee with Mary and the baby Jesus to Egypt because of Herod). There are also "future event dreams" that tell of something coming, but may not give specific direction on what to do. "Warning dreams" seem to be defined as a type of instructional dream specifically directed at avoiding a course of action. "Demonic dreams" try to "discourage, scare, or deceive" the dreamer. Finally are "calling dreams," which reveal God's calling or giftings in a person's life.

The observation that there are different types of dreams may have some validity, and the classification of dreams into these categories may be useful to some extent. But it must be pointed out that there is no clear teaching in Scripture defining these types of dreams. This is simply observation and categorization by a human being. Trying to be hard-and-fast about making each dream one has fit a certain box could be problematic.

The author writes that if the dreamer cannot find a good scriptural interpretation of a dream, to just leave it alone and not persist in trying to figure it out. Maybe God will reveal the meaning later, or maybe the dream wasn't God trying to reveal something. That's definitely sound advice, as we do not want to try to force something that isn't actually there. Sadly, many of the interpretation examples later given in the book do seem forced, really reaching to find a spiritual significance in the people, colors, and objects in the dreams. It's kind of like those times when a teacher tries to assign precise meanings to every single element of Jesus' parables, and ends up missing the forest for the trees.

The writer also warns against relying on web sites that talk about numerology, as they are often tied to the occult and should be completely avoided, but then goes on in example interpretations to assign meanings to numbers in dreams without giving any scriptural support for those meanings (just asserting those meanings as though they were widely known facts). One example is saying that the number thirty represents divine order, with "three being the number of the Trinity and the zero at the end showing multiplication for emphasis." Where do we find such a meaning for the number thirty in the Bible? This sounds more like mystical Jewish Kabbalah than the Christian tradition. (Not to mention the fact that if you mention multiplication and the number zero together, the result is zero. That's basic fourth grade math.)

Another example the author gives is the number eleven, saying it represents "coming up short of perfection." Presumably this is because it is one less than the number of the sons of Israel and the number of original Apostles. But I have also heard the number seven touted as the number of perfection or completion, because God finished the creation of the cosmos and rested on the seventh day. So is seven or twelve the number of perfection? Or do they both represent completeness? Would that make 84 (7 x 12) the number of super-completeness? I can certainly make such a claim (especially since I minored in math in college), but is there any biblical basis for it?

Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman III points out that Daniel and his Hebrew compatriots were sent to "Babylonian university," and one of the first things they would have been trained on, after learning the myths about the Babylonian pantheon, would have been how to interpret dreams according to the Babylonian method. This involved the person telling you their dream, then going to consult the commentaries or dream interpretation manuals.

Yet never do we see in Scripture where a servant of YHWH uses dream dictionaries, commentaries, or lists of symbols/colors/numbers to interpret a dream. God gives His servants the interpretation directly, with no other intermediate sources or references. 

It seems to me that trying to come up with standardized lists of meanings for numbers, colors, animals, objects, etc. borders on divination, which the Torah explicitly forbids. We are not to try to read tea leaves, the flight patterns of birds, the shape of the internal organs of sacrificial animals, or even our own dreams to figure out what God is speaking to us. 

Can God communicate to His people today through dreams and visions? Absolutely. I have had dreams myself where I knew God was trying to tell me something. But when God did speak to me in a dream, He spoke clearly. I knew immediately what the symbolism stood for. I didn't have to recall all the letters and colors from the dream and look them up to figure out what God wanted me to do.

I may follow up later with another post discussing some of what I consider to be the oddest interpretations presented in the book, but I cannot guarantee it at this time.