If you wish you understood the Bible better, you’re in good company. It is not just newcomers reading the Bible for the first time who think the Bible can be challenging to understand. Mature believers think that. Bible scholars think that. Even biblical writers thought that. Second Peter 3:16 says: “[The apostle Paul’s] letters contain some things that are hard to understand.”
This should not surprise us. It should, instead, enthuse us and inspire us. It should fuel our curiosity and compel us to worship. If, when we hold a Bible in our hands, we have the very words of the Creator of the universe—a Creator who loves us so much that he chooses not to leave us in silence—then we should not be surprised that those words can be mysterious, complex, and deep.
We should not want it any other way.
If the Bible were as easy to understand as a news magazine or someone’s blog, then God would not be greater than a journalist or a blogger. If we could understand all of the Bible the first year we read it, what more would there be for us for the rest of our lives? If the Bible did not take some work and patience to grasp, how could it possibly be a reliable guide for the great challenges of our lives? Think of it this way: if you went to a great banquet where there was a 30-foot-long buffet table with dozens of different foods, you would not be discouraged if you walked away having tasted only some of the amazing foods there. You would, instead, be enthused to return to it another day in order to taste more.
The Bible is challenging because it challenges. Mark Twain put it this way: “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.” The Word of God is wonderfully subversive. Scripture is like the scalpel that cuts, but also like a salve that heals. No empire or civilization can suppress the truth of the Word of God because:
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
and spreads them out like a tent to live in. (Isa. 40:22)
This is the God who has spoken—to us.
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What do you find difficult or challenging about understanding the Bible?
Leviticus, Numbers, etc. That’s where I get confused.
Prophecy. It is difficult to understand the symbols, and I hear different Bible teachers giving different interpretations.
Revelation and all things last days
I take most of it as assurance that God is in control of history…
Others see it as a specific road map to events….
Proverbs 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing. It is the glory of kings to search it out.
It’s not the fact that I have a hard time accepting what I do not understand, it’s dealing with the people who imply or even worse, declare they “know” what the Bible says, especially as it relates to those issues that are inherently perplexing for finite beings.
I’m anxious to understand all the symbolism in Revelations, and wish it had been written in a more understandable manner. There are messages concerning the end times that I want to understand.
I can use all the help I can get. But if I completely understood all the bible I may not need to be dependent on God, which I hope never happens. AMEN , but I would love to have greater growth in my spiritual formation.
Song of Solomon. For the life of me i can’t get how this book fits into the overall Biblical narrative.
What I have difficulty understanding is wanting to do ministry with particular people who cannot get into the church. My understanding of scripture after four years of seminary is that these people should be reached out to by the church (people of the church in the name and power of Christ). Instead what I hear is that doing ministry with these people poses insurance liabilities and therefore they cannot be brought into the church. They can get CD’s of sermons as requested or get sermons from the computer or hear broadcasts on radio. All in all it is not reading the Bible that is as important to me as doing what is written in the Bible. To speak of reading without doing to me is hypocrisy.
Excellent point, Paul. Reminds me of “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” Matt. 23:13
I am having difficult on coating the verse from the Bible after I read and meditate the scripture.