Cross Currents: Nobody can understand all of the Bible
Every morning for 40 years I taught an academic Bible course in a public high school. Getting to interact with over a thousand students during those four decades blessed me more than I can tell you.
Twice in a recent week I crossed trails with students from the 1980s. Both of them are now old men, so I didn’t recognize them, but they knew me and greeted me warmly. And both of them told me how much that college-level Bible study has blessed them all of their lives. It enabled them to read the Bible and make sense of it.
Is Bible study a regular part of your life? Or does your copy of God’s word gather dust on a shelf because you don’t think you can understand it?
The Bible is not an easy book. Even those of us who study it as a vocation find sections of scripture we can’t explain. In his excellent book "Working the Angles", Eugene Peterson recalled hearing Gilbert Highet say that “anyone who reads the Bible and isn’t puzzled at least half the time doesn’t have his mind on what he is doing.”
But the part we do understand will bless us immeasurably. We’ll have to go to heaven before we can know what Ezekiel or the apostle John were trying to tell us in their strangest visions, but who can’t understand, “You shall not steal,” or, “You shall not murder”? What follower of Jesus needs help to discern his instruction, “If you love me, do what I tell you to,” or to plug into his promise, “Come to me if you’re burdened, and I will give you rest”?
Some portions of the Bible baffle us because those verses contradict our doctrinal assumptions. I visited one congregation that never studied Romans. “We can’t understand it,” they told me. Of course, they couldn’t. It clearly says that Christians are justified by faith, not by works — the opposite of what they were teaching.
If we’re convinced we’ll go to heaven because we are so right and so good, we’re not likely to understand Paul’s clear message in Ephesians 2 that “you have been saved by grace, through faith — and this is not because of anything you do. It is the gift of God, not by works.”
Nobody needs a Bible course to comprehend a simple verse like Colossians 3:8, “Rid yourselves of anger.” But in today’s world, all of us need to read it.
Gene Shelburne is pastor emeritus of the Anna Street Church of Christ, 2310 Anna St. Contact him at GeneShel@aol.com, or get his books and magazines at www.christianappeal.com. His column has run on the Faith page for more than three decades.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Cross Currents: Nobody can understand all of the Bible
