Benita and I have joked before about a book to write called, Finding Joy In The Misery Of Others. We even have a scripture verse to use to make this book look “Christian”.
Proverbs 1:26
26 I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;
Of course if anyone bothered to look at the context of Proverbs 1, they would find that the context of the chapter does not support our make believe book title. This is one of the issues in the Church today. There is a whole movement in the Church today, called the word, faith movement or the prosperity gospel which uses single scripture verses out of context to support false teachings. Most cults take some of the harder to understand scriptures and twist them to lead people away from the true Gospel.
Although deception is not always easy to see, a place to start in guarding against false teaching is to combine prayer with Bible reading. Pray that the Holy Spirit would guide you into all truth and then read the scriptures. Read chapters of scripture at a time to get the context of the entire passage. Start at the beginning of a book of the Bible like you would normally read a book. No one reads books like the modern church reads the Bible (jumping around to sentences they like without ever really getting to what the author was truly saying). God has designed the Bible so that there are several witnesses (different verses describing the same thing) so that we can understand what God means if we will study the Bible. A concordance is very helpful in finding what God means when He uses different words and symbols in the Bible. Beware of teachers who are constantly trying to convince their hearers that the plain teaching of a passage doesn’t really mean what it says. (The false teachers would say, “What this word really means in the Greek is” or “a better translation is.”) Usually the main idea of a chapter is plain to see if you simply start at the beginning and read to the end. Context takes a little diligent study and the rewards are great.