We’ve all been there. You’re sitting down to spend some quality time with God, and you’re in the mood to read life-giving Scripture that you desire to change your heart.
You know that it has the power to do so, because you’ve experienced it yourself, and you’ve seen what reading the Word of God has done for other people.
So, you take a deep breath, crack open your Bible to the section you planned to study, and you start reading… and re-reading… and re-reading the same section over and over again because you can’t make sense of it.
If this is God’s Word, why is it so difficult to understand and even explain? Why does it seem to require a Ph.D. in biblical scholarship to be able to read it ourselves, without the help of an app or a pastor?
I will outline my handful of theories on why the Bible can be so difficult to understand and explain. But the reason that might surprise you is this: I think that it is supposed to be.
It’s incredible to come to terms with the differences between millennials and baby boomers. They seem to view everything through completely separate lenses: financial stability versus pursuing passions, material things versus experiences, teamwork versus individual growth, etc., etc. I could go on.
And that is just a difference of 20-30 years. When we’re dealing with the Bible, we’re talking about a difference of 3,000 plus years.
This isn’t to say that the Bible isn’t full of universal values that withstand the test of time, but it is just as helpful to recognize that the group of people that the Bible was written to is a completely different set of people than we are today.
And this set of people had a separate lens than we do today — one that requires us to spend time in the text to come to an appreciation of it.
Not only was the Bible written to a people many, many generations before us, but it was written to a different culture. It’s not the same as reading history books of older generations of Americans to be able to relate to them today — sure, they may have driven different looking cars than us, but we can mostly still relate to their desire for the American Dream, 2.5 kids, and a white picket fence.
But that is not the case with biblical characters.
For example, here is a shortlist of facts about the culture of the New Testament that differs from ours, but it could deepen our understanding of Jesus and his teachings:
Much of the differences in culture comes down to values. And when you can understand a people’s values, you understand why they emphasize certain things or leave certain things out that we, in this culture, would insist on.
“A difference in values” won’t answer every question that we have about the Bible, but it will clear up a lot of confusion and frustration.
When we read or try to explain the Bible without understanding the context of the people it was written to, we are setting ourselves up for confusion; or worse: misinterpretation that could lead ourselves or others astray.
But there is so much beauty in recognizing that the cultural context this was written in is not our context, meaning there is a richness to be held when we uncover these values and start to think like they would have thought back in AD 30 or the fifth century BCE.
One of my favorite examples of this richness is in understanding that in Jesus’ day, for a Rabbi, it was unheard of to talk to a woman in public.
But the longest religious discourse that Jesus has with anyone is with a woman, the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4! Knowing this cultural premise sheds light on how radical Jesus was; and how radically loving.
The Bible only gets more lovely and profound the more that you understand its context.
Not only do modern Westerners and ancient Easterners differ in their values, but they differ in how they even conceptualize the world.
A paradigm is how you think about something. Not just a set of facts, but how you would approach those facts, weigh those facts, and defend those facts.
So, it is important to note that the way that Westerners teach information is totally different than Easterners.
Westerners are concerned with evidence. To teach someone something is to say, “Here is this fact, here is this evidence that proves that fact.”
But Easterners are concerned with discovery. To teach someone something is to say, “I have something to show you. Let me take you on a journey where you can discover it for yourself.”
You can see this paradigm in a biblical literary technique called a chiasm. A chiasm is a “...literary device in which ideas are presented and then subsequently repeated or inverted in a symmetrical mirror-like structure.” For instance:
A No one can serve two masters;
B for either he will hate the one
C and love the other,
C′ or he will be devoted to one
B′ and despise the other.
A′ You cannot serve God and wealth (Matthew 6:24).
Westerners are taught that the emphasis of a statement is found at the beginning and the end, whereas the middle is largely just supportive of what is at the beginning and the end. But Easterners, in chiasms, read whatever is in the center as the emphasis.
Whatever is in the very center of a chiasm is like a key that unlocks the rest of the passage; it brings the true meaning of the rest of the passage.
This is how we know that the real richness of the creation story in Genesis 1 is really all about the sabbath, resting in God’s character!
It’s not that it isn’t about creation, too — but the idea of the sabbath, which is found in the very middle of Genesis 1, unlocks the real heart of the passage and what the Israelites, who would have just gotten freed from slavery under the Egyptians, would have needed to hear.
This difference in paradigm can be frustrating to a Westerner because we just want the facts. We just want to be told what is true and to be told it clearly. But what if that was never God’s intention with his Word?
In Genesis 32, we see Jacob wrestle with God. What he takes away from this experience is “...I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared,” (Genesis 32:34).
When we wrestle with God and beg him on our knees to give us understanding, we get to experience him in a real, tangible, life-giving way that would never happen if we were just given facts about God to learn.
When we don’t understand something in Scripture, and we do the research to understand its concept, but we still don’t know why God let something happen or didn’t act like we would have expected him to, we have a beautiful opportunity to go to God in prayer, and wrestle.
Ask him why. Tell him your thoughts and feelings and fears about the passage. Ask for his guidance, and he will certainly give it. And then, you will see him face to face in a way you never could have otherwise.
Not only can we do this in our own Bible study, but we can wrestle with Scripture together in community. The Bible was never meant to be written to an individual, but a whole group of people that is learning about God together.
It’s incredible what can happen when Scripture is read out loud and people are given an opportunity to share their perspectives and what resonated with them.
The Spirit meets our individual needs when something in Scripture resonates with us, but we can share that wisdom with those around us.
When you encounter something that you don’t understand in Scripture, learn to do what the ancient Jews did: dance! Because you are being given an opportunity to learn more about God than you currently know. And that is always something to celebrate.
For further reading:
How Can We Trust the Bible We Have Today?
Why Can it Be Hard to Understand the Bible?
Why Can the Bible Only Be Understood Through the Spirit?
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The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
Kelly-Jayne McGlynn is a former editor at Crosswalk.com. She sees the act of expression, whether through writing or art, as a way to co-create with God and experience him deeper. Check out her handmade earrings on Instagram and her website for more of her thoughts on connecting with God through creative endeavors.