Lately I have been in the midst of many discussions on the bible... in studies... at home... at church... and if there is one thing that I have learned it is that we just aren't going to be able to figure out everything! Sometimes I think that we focus so closely on one aspect of a topic that we miss the entire picture... Mickey likes to call this "trying to pick the fly poop out of pepper"... and I like that term.
I find this to be especially true when it comes to the Old Testament, we just find it plain hard to understand why stuff happened the way it did. My question... does it really matter? Don't get me wrong... the old testament is important... after all, if it wasn't God wouldn't have included it in his love letter to us! I look at the old testament as an insight into the character of God... it helps me to understand him better. Do I know why he wiped out entire nations? Nope... I just know that he did. Do I know why David was chosen as the King... and still messed up? Nope... I just know that he was God's choice. What I get out of the old testament is this... God created us for his pleasure... for us to worship him, and to put him first... God gave us chance after chance to "get it right" and we continued to fail. God, who loves us even though we mess up, dropped hint after hint about His son, who would bring us eternal life, and that with his death and resurrection our world would be changed forever... and if I learn nothing more from the old testament than this, then I think I've learned plenty.
There are a lot of unanswered questions in the old testament, and in reality, they don't determine a thing about our salvation, so why expend a great deal of time an energy on them? We won't find the answer this side of heaven. I find it much more important to concentrate on the task at hand... spreading the good news that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that through him one can have eternal life. I think that this is a far better use of our time.... just a personal opinion, and if you don't agree that's fine... I don't mind agreeing to disagree!
3 comments:
AMEN!
So just for the sake of arguing...are you saying that we shouldn't study the old testament?
Not at all... in fact, we need to study it, but when we do we need to remember that we won't get the answers to a lot of questions... for instance who did sons of Adam and Eve marry? Did dinosaurs roam the earth? How did Daniel survive in the Lion's Den? Why was David chosen King? We aren't necessarily given the answers to these questions, and sometimes we just have to read it an say, Okay... God said it so it has to be real... and not try and figure it all out.
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