For anyone who loves simple answers and has a deep bias against nuance and complexity, the Bible can be very frustrating. For instance, how does the Bible say we should fight stupidity? Jesus says to not cast pearls before swine, but He also preached to thousands of people. Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal, but Paul reasoned respectfully with the Romans. Jesus confronted and insulted the Pharisees publicly, but James says to correct brothers privately. Solomon says to both avoid answering fools and also to answer them.
Thus, even a cursory reading says that the Biblical answer to this particular question is an emphatic, “Well, it depends….” This may not be satisfying to us who want simple, rigid, absolute answers, but it is an indication of two important facts.
First, God is complex when He should be complex, which means He remains complex even when we wish He would be simple. Second, the Bible was not concocted by men. Man’s concoctions don’t so brazenly contradict his own desires.
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- A philosopher and former agnostic who hosts a Christian talk radio show on AM 1360 KPXQ weekdays from 6pm to 7pm in Phoenix, Arizona.
2 comments:
After more than four decades of being a middle-of-the-road kind of guy when it came to understanding my own Christian faith, I decided, with a little novelty in mind, to delve into the book of Revelation. Surely, that mysterious supernatural book could be grasped in a few evenings of kick-back reading. I even went out and purchased a new, more easily understood "bible", which was actually a paraphrased counterfeit of the real thing. In my ignorance, I didn't understand that at the time.
I soon realized that nobody "delves" into Revelation. It requires an understanding far deeper than any man is capable, until such time passes when many of the prophesies have been realized, and we see how simple it was all along. At the same time, however, it's quite a knowable book when taken at face value. It states that certain things will come to pass, other things will happen and provide proof, and this is your warning, Signed, God.
I found that the Book of Revelation is actually representative of the entire Bible, meaning that it can be taken at whatever level of complexity the reader desires. And that's the miracle of the whole thing. That realization is what set the stage for a major spiritual turnaound in my life, having previously flip-flopped on whether the Bible was simply a compilation of (sometimes) contradictory stories, written with human fallibility. What other book can capture the entire imagination and mind of highly literate and educated readers, while at the same time present easily understood Truths to someone barely able to get through it? And, continue to do so over a span of hundreds of years? The more I pieced together various segments, stories, and prophesies of the Bible, the more I realized that it had to be written by none other than God, Himself.
You may find a way to rationalize other aspects of your Christian Faith, but the more you truly "delve" into the Bible, and realize that it is actually perfection that you see among its many perceived inconsistencies, the more you will start to understand the depth of Gods Words in His effort to reach our hearts in this unique way.
Bob
Well-said, Bob. =)
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