“The Bible leaves lots of questions unanswered.”

A thought by Larry Osborne, (2009-04-04) from his book, Accidental Pharisees: Avoiding Pride, Exclusivity, and the Other Dangers of Overzealous Faith (Kindle Location 649). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book)

That is so true. And we have a list of questions that we want to ask God when we make it into his presence, don’t we? But the truth is there are reasons why they are unanswered. God doesn’t think that they are important enough to spend the time on them. He has more important truths to tell us. And maybe we spend so much time on the unanswered because we don’t like the answers he does give us.

Larry says, “Another way of avoiding the discomfort of looking at ourselves in the mirror of Scripture is to turn the Bible into a springboard for speculation. For instance, when I first became a Christian, I was excited to discover all the Bible had to say about God, sin, grace, and how I was supposed to live. But it wasn’t long before my curiosity about how to live was replaced by a less threatening curiosity. I wanted to know who the Antichrist might be, what kind of fish swallowed Jonah, why the disciples on the Emmaus road didn’t recognize Jesus, and why God let Satan talk him into messing up Job’s life.”

He then says, “The Bible didn’t answer any of these questions. But I found lots of teachers, books, and podcasts that claimed to have the answers. I found their theories and speculations to be intellectually stimulating and fun to ponder. For a while I lost myself in them. I became a self-appointed expert on all things unanswerable. But I was deceived.”

He goes on, “The Bible leaves lots of questions unanswered. It wasn’t written to answer everything I might want to know about God, the universe, or the unseen realm. Some things are simply beyond my comprehension, unimportant, or none of my business. The more time and energy I spent trying to answer the unanswerable, seeking to solve every biblical paradox, and digging into complex theological systems that claimed to explain everything that God didn’t explicitly spell out in his Word, the more I missed what God was trying to tell me. And the more I became prideful instead of godly.”

And there’s that word again, pride.

So in your time in the Bible are you missing what God is trying to tell you?

Comments

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