I’d love to have a single book that explained how God brought the universe into being…

I’d love a book that told us everything about the nature of the soul…

I’d love to be able to pick something up, read it, and know all there is to know about God…

The Bible, perhaps sadly, perhaps not, is not this book. There are many questions that the Bible leaves unanswered. There are topics it doesn’t address. I’ve been cruising around the internets having discussions with believers and non-believers for many a moon now. People have told me that if I would just really read the Bible the way they recommend that one of two things would happen, both involving seeing the light. The first comes from non-believers. They say if I would just open my eyes I would see God as a horrid being unworthy of worship (should he in fact exist at all). Some of my fellow believers argue that if I but read the Bible their way (oddly enough the same way some non-believers encourage) without baggage or preconceptions, that I would see the literal truth of the Flood or the Six Day Creation for instance.

Oddly enough I can’t manage either result, no matter how hard I try.

The Bible itself says in 2 Timothy “15 from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

So that seems to me that the main thrust of the Bible is to instruct us on how we are to be saved eternally and how we as Christians are to be righteous and do good works. We spend too much time using it to tell non-Christians how unrighteous they are and what bad works they do and I don’t see that here. It also seems based on this list that it’s not there to answer all of our questions about God and his nature, the age of the Earth, how we should “do church”, or a number of other topics that we go round and round about on a daily basis. Having those discussions is fine and good (to a degree) but I don’t think being dogmatic on them (since they’re basically solely based on our interpretations of the Bible and not on explicit teachings) is going to bear good fruit.

I suspect that if you want to argue these points you can find a book that will help you with them. It’ll be in the bookstore, written by your favorite saint/church father/pastor of the moment. Or maybe you can just make stuff up and blame it on the Holy Spirit (or angels, or God “giving you a word”, or whatever*). That seems pretty popular. How much weight you give that is between you and your conscience, just don’t try and make me believe it.

*hat tip to Jon.