Do You Struggle with Keeping Your Balance?
The Bible can be a little confusing from time to time, don’t you think? I have a friend who reads the Bible with a Calvinist lens. His study of Scripture has led him to believe that God’s sovereignty limits human freedom, that is, human beings cannot act contrary to God’s sovereign will. His convictions are based on verses of Scripture, many of which he can quote verbatim.
I have another friend who believes that human beings are perfectly free. In his view, based on his reading of the Bible, God created human beings with freedom of will, to choose their own path, even if that path is not God’s. He, too, cites verse after verse, many of them from memory. He believes just as passionately as my Calvinist friend.
Sometimes, when my two friends debate each other, they quote from the same passages of Scripture but with vastly different interpretations. Fortunately, while each of my friends is convinced he is right, they both also acknowledge, quite humbly, I might add, they may be wrong.
The truth of the matter is, the Bible gives mixed signals when it comes to how the sovereignty of God and human freedom can coexist in our understanding of Scripture. In other words, there is a good bit of ambiguity regarding the degree of God’s sovereignty in Scripture. From Scripture, one can make a strong case that God’s sovereignty is unlimited, but one can also make the case that God’s sovereignty is limited. The most brilliant theological minds have argued this issue for centuries, and I don’t think the debate will ever be settled this side of heaven.
Scripture seems to take delight in ambiguity, as though it purposely keeps us off balance. Take salvation, for instance. If a first century person were to ask Jesus how one might receive eternal life, Jesus would tell him a story, say, the story of the Good Samaritan or maybe the Rich Young Ruler.
If that same person were to ask the Apostle Paul the identical question, Paul would give him three or four concrete points, such as repent, confess, believe, and be baptized. While Jesus would tell a story, Paul would give precise directions. The way Jesus and Paul respond to the same question with different answers can be unsettling, especially if we think Scripture speaks with only one voice.
There are lots of ambiguities in Scripture. The countless number of Christian denominations illustrates that there are many different ways these ambiguities can be interpreted. Ambiguity creates uncertainty and even doubt, something that troubles many Christians and makes them uncomfortable.
It’s understandable that religious people crave order and consistency in matters of faith. After all, there is enough chaos in the world already, and one of the reasons we turn to religion is to find more certainty and balance in our lives. And yet, the Bible doesn’t always provide consistent answers to some of the more challenging questions of faith.
So, how do we respond to the ambiguities that confront us when we read the Bible?
Some people ignore or repress the ambiguities found in Scripture. They pretend these inconsistencies don’t exist. The truth is, all of us have a Bible within the Bible—pet verses, chapters or books we favor over others. While we may voice our confidence in all of Scripture, there are parts of Scripture we never read or pay close attention to.
Still others acknowledge that there are ambiguities in Scripture and, consequently, these people lose all confidence in the Bible. In their view, if the Bible isn’t consistent, then the Bible must be untrustworthy and irrelevant for the modern world. When people turn away from Scripture, despair often takes hold of their lives, and hopelessness usually leads to a nihilistic perspective of the world.
But then there are some people who steadfastly believe that their view alone is the right one, thus erasing ambiguities altogether. These people construct elaborate theological systems that explain away the ambiguities. Anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their view is simply wrong. They surround themselves with like-minded people who believe just as they do, and form religious silos where their views are not challenged or threatened.
In our world today, when so much is uncertain, this assured religious certainty is extremely appealing and comforting. To believe that our teacher or our pastor or our church has all the right answers relieves us of having to wrestle with the thorny problems of faith ourselves. We can let someone else do the thinking for us.
The problem with this view is that the more certain we are about Scripture, the narrower we are likely to become. Grappling with different perspectives of Scripture nourishes faith, and, moreover, when we shut out other views, faith grows self-centered. To think that our understanding is the only correct one is a tad arrogant to say the least. My two friends, who had different understandings of God’s sovereignty, both realized they might be wrong. Humility was the glue that held their friendship together—and, I believe, their faith as well.
There is, however, a fourth way people can deal with the ambiguities of Scripture. We can learn to live with them. Instead of trying to dot all of our i’s and cross all of our t’s, we can simply make peace with the ambiguities found in the Bible. We do live by faith, right? And faith lives with a certain amount of uncertainty. In fact, isn’t that one of the characteristics of faith? Faith is trust in what we can’t know with absolute assurance. My two friends have learned to live with the ambiguities in their faith, while still maintaining their belief system, but it is a flexible belief system, always open to new understandings and enlightenment.
I have learned to read Scripture with an appreciation for the ambiguities. Maybe Scripture has a lot of dangling threads to keep us humble, to ensure that we never become so confident in ourselves that we no longer need to collaborate with others, the only way to develop a larger picture of God. Maybe God intends for us to live in an uncertain world so that we can mature as human beings and take more responsibility for our lives. Besides, when we are a little off balance, we tend to hold on to each other a little more closely, a positive sign that we are growing in faith.
