Do You Know Your Bible?
How well do you know the Bible? Francis Chan said something recently that really struck me. He said, “A lot of you believe whatever you want to believe. Think of something you believe right now in the Bible that you don’t want to believe.” I’m not saying it’s the end all be all of profound sentiment - but he made a good point. I don’t think we would be naturally inclined to say that’s what’s going on, but often it is. When you hear or read a sermon that you don’t like, how do you respond? Are you able to test it against the scriptures for yourself?
You can look up a bible literacy quiz and test your knowledge. You may be surprised by how much you know, or how much you don’t. Albert Mohler in his article “The Scandal of Bible Illiteracy: It’s Our Problem” gives these survey results:
“Researchers George Gallup and Jim Castelli put the problem squarely: "Americans revere the Bible--but, by and large, they don't read it. And because they don't read it, they have become a nation of biblical illiterates." How bad is it? Researchers tell us that it's worse than most could imagine. Fewer than half of all adults can name the four gospels. Many Christians cannot identify more than two or three of the disciples. According to data from the Barna Research Group, 60 percent of Americans can't name even five of the Ten Commandments.”
He’s talking about the nation at large, but the same could be said for many Christians. For a bible-believing people, with access to more knowledge than any other time in human history, many know very little about it. Yet they still claim, in theory, that it is their authority.
The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth is a book by Thomas Jefferson that came about by him taking a razor and some glue and cutting out parts of the gospels that he liked in order to create his own Bible. Not many Christians are actually going to such physical extremes, but most have the same mindset. Maybe they like the person of Jesus, but don’t like the God of the Old Testament. Maybe they accept most of what Paul says in his letters, but they leave out a couple things. They pick and choose what they like and they leave or ignore what they don’t.
If you’re reading the Bible well, you’re going to come across things you don’t agree with, like, or understand. We are a people who believe what we want, and so when we’re confronted by something that we don’t, our natural instinct is to reject it. The issue is, the Bible is full of things we won’t want to believe. Most close to home, we have the example of marriage Paul gives in Ephesians 5. But maybe you’ve read Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 2:11-15, or 1 Corinthians 14:33-38, and come away asking a lot of questions. Have you read through the books of Leviticus, Judges, or Revelation? They’re each very different in genre, but often taken out of context and very difficult to understand.
It boils down to the fact that we are sinners and God is perfect. When there is a disconnect, the confusion is on our end, not God’s. So when we approach scripture we don’t understand, our instinct needs to be to question ourselves. If not, we are entering dangerous territory. 2 Timothy 4:3 says “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” We live in a world where you can find a teacher who supports whatever you want to believe. They may even know Greek or Hebrew, which, believe it or not, is not the magic answer for understanding context and meaning. But the Bible isn’t a book about you, it’s a book about God. What you want to believe is irrelevant to the truth. As Christians, we must read the Bible in order to know God, to speak to his character, to see how he works so we can identify it and praise him in our lives. We need to be like the Bereans in Acts 17 who were noble because they listened to the word with minds ready to study and examine if what they were taught is true.
We should ask hard questions. It’s part of being discipled. The Bible is truth, so it can stand up to it, as it has for centuries. But for those of us who are professing Christians, it usually isn’t as much confusion over context as it is a dislike for what’s being asked of us. Even when it is a misunderstanding, it often still boils down into being a heart issue. You can test if that’s true for you by asking Chan’s question: What’s something you believe in the Bible that you don’t want to believe? If your answer is nothing, then you are walking in the territory of making God into your likeness, instead of being shaped into His.
We need to approach reading scripture with a lot of prayer because the Holy Spirit is working in us and helping us to understand the things that make no sense to us on our own. Read 1 Corinthians 2 - it states that very clearly. It’s an amazing and a truly miraculous thing that is going on every time we open our Bible and pray for God to reveal himself to us.
At the end of the day, when it comes down to which road to travel, always choose the road that is narrow and leads to life (Matthew 7:14). Don’t just revere the Bible, but read it, memorize it, study it. Immerse yourself in it, so that the Bible isn’t just your authority in theory, but in practice. Ask someone to come alongside you and do it in community. Treat it like your life depends on it because, albeit very cliche, it really does.
If you’re looking for a Boston church to call him, we’d love for you to visit King’s Hill.