Is it okay to question the Bible?
There’s an intentional and probably obvious play on words in my title. I don’t at all question the authority or inspiration of Scripture. But I think it’s not only okay, but essential to question the Bible in an interrogative sense. There’s probably no better way to study the Bible.
Recommending this approach to Bible study, John Piper asks a probing question:
Can any of us at one reading grasp the logic of a paragraph and see how every part relates to all the others and how they all fit together to make a unified point? How much less the thought of an entire epistle, the New Testament, the Bible! If we care about truth, we must relentlessly query the text and form the habit of being bothered by things we read.
Do at least some of the things you read in Scripture bother you? They should. Piper goes on to give examples of things that ought to bother us and force us to ask questions:
More recently I have asked, What does it mean that Jesus said in Matthew 5:39 to turn the other cheek when struck, but said in Matthew 10:23, “When they persecute you in one town, flee. . .”? When do you flee and when do you endure hardship and turn the other cheek? I have also been pondering in what sense it is true that God is “slow to anger” (Ex. 34:6) and in what sense “His wrath is quickly kindled” (Ps. 2:11). (Read the whole article.)
Stephen Altrogge recently posted a great list of questions (taken from a hermeneutics class) that are designed to help you get the most out of your Bible study:
1. Who is the author of the passage?
2. Who were the recipients?
3. What is the historical background of the passage?
4. What is the outline/structure of the passage?
5. Are any words repeated? Any significance to the repetition?
6. Are there any unusual words in the passage that call for more exploration?
7. How does the passage fit into the surrounding paragraph? Chapter? Book?
8. Why did the author place the passage here and not somewhere else?
9. In one sentence, what is the main point of the passage?
10. How would the original audience have been affected by the passage?
11. How does this passage connect to the overall storyline of the Bible?
12. How does this passage reveal Jesus as savior?
13. How does God want this passage to function in my life?
14. What kind of response does this passage call for?
There are also some helpful additions to those questions in the comments, including this list by Rick Gamache geared more toward personal application of a passage:
What does this mean for me today?
What does this mean for me for how I spend my money this week?
What does this have to do with what I look at on television and on the Internet and in a movie theater?
What does this say about how I spend my leisure time?
What does this have to say about how I love my wife (or husband or child or neighbor)?
What does this have to say to me about how I honor my parents?
What does this mean about the clothes I choose to wear as the weather gets warmer?
What does this have to do with how I respond to people who sin against me?
Question your Bible to get the maximum benefit from it!
Barry Wallace
theoparadox
pijohnson
Good stuff! If you are not questioning what is in the Bible to understand it better, if you are not uncomfortable with what you are reading from time to time, you are not reading it right.
It was written to God’s standard which we can never meet. It is God’s revelation, which we cannot fully comprehend in all it’s complexity in this world.
Great post…
I love the new theme as well.
I promise to not steal this one!
This is a very helpful post, Barry. Thanks.
One of the very first things that attracted me to John Piper’s teaching was that he clearly asked the same questions of Scripture that I did. The same things seemed to puzzle him that puzzled me. I’d been in and out of church for years and never heard anyone do anything but skirt difficult passages, leaving me puzzled and uncertain. It also left me feeling distrustful at times – as if there was something someone was hiding from me. (For instance, why did the God of the OT seem so “mean” and Jesus so “nice”? How is there continuity? I thought He was always the same….) I also appreciated that he didn’t abandon the clear logic of texts. I’d often heard sermons that seemed even to disregard plain rules of grammar. Piper taught me that it was okay to take normal, rational, and logical arguments and questions to the Scripture to gain understanding. The Scripture speaks to us, for the most part, in plain speech directed to human minds and reason. I think it not only invites, but requires, plain reason to respond. (And no, I am not in the least disregarding the work of the Holy Spirit here. Not one bit. I am saying that the Holy Spirit works in and through such means.)
Piper has helped me a lot in that regard, too. He never backs away from a problematic text, and he doesn’t try to force it to say or mean something it doesn’t. His chapter in The Pleasures of God with the title, “The Pleasure of God in Concealing Himself from the Wise and Revealing Himself to Infants” is incredibly good. I wish every Christian would read that particular book.
That is one of my favorite books of all time and definitely my favorite Piper book. I’ve read it twice and will likely read it again.
All true. God is too deep for us to understand Him on the first pass.Some things yes,but for example, some of the things that Paul wrote are way too deep to get the first time around.We must study and meditate on the word before God can give revelation.
These are good questions to ask a text to help you understand it further. I need to spend more time in Bible STUDY and not just Bible READING, but I’ve gotten lazy on that point.
I think that’s a battle we all have, Ronnica. But it’s an important battle to fight.