I used to always here people tell me that hermeneutics didn’t matter. Guess what? I used to always tell them they were wrong. Here’s why:
“The very use of the term hermeneutics raises an important question: Why should Bible readers be expected to study principles of interpretation? In spite of what our day-to-day experience may suggest, the process involved in understanding a text is quite complicated. The difficulties surface especially when we try to read a book produced in a different culture or time, as some examples from Shakespeare can make clear. In the case of ancient documents written in other languages, we need to make a special effort to take into account their original setting through a method known as grammatico-historical exegesis. As a whole, the Bible is a fairly clear book to read, and it is helpful to specify in what areas the difficulties arise: language? literary style? application? Moreover, the divine character of Scripture suggests that we need to adopt some special principles that would not be relevant to the study of other writings.” (Moisés Silva, Introduction To Biblical Hermeneutics: The Search for Meaning, 16)
Game. Set. Match.
Curtis Allen has a great point about this in the introduction of his book Education or Imitiation. The point that he makes is that a bad hermeneutics will cause you to act in a wrong manner.