A Practical Walk

Have you ever been reading your Bible and all of the sudden, you’re like, “Wait, what?? That can’t be right!”

The Bible has some things in it that don’t seem to make sense, but I still firmly believe in it. Why? I’m so glad you asked, let me illustrate by telling you about algebra.

As a homeschool mom to high schoolers, I sometimes have to help them when they get stuck on math problems. We sit down and try to work the problem together, figuring out why we’re getting a different answer than the answer key. Countless times my kids have declared, “Mom, I think the book is wrong!”

Now what are the chances that the mathematicians, who have dedicated their lives and studied for years, calculated the problem wrong? And on top of that, the editors in charge of looking over the books before being published, also missed their mistake. Or maybe a teenager and their mom who hasn’t done algebra in years (and wasn’t that great at it back then anyways) is misunderstanding how to do the problem. Yeah, it’s way more likely that we’re the ones making an error.

Most of the time, we keep working the problem, and have an “ohhh!” moment when we realize the step we were missing and why we were getting the wrong answer.

I remember as a kid looking at my big brother’s homework and totally not getting how you could have letters in a math problem. It didn’t make a lick of sense to me. But since then I’ve learned why those numbers are there. Now when I look at a crazy math problem, I might scratch my head not knowing exactly how to proceed, but I’m confident that there is an answer, and if sometone can explain it to me, I might eventurally be able to understand it too.

I’ve read many portions of Sripture that seemed weird and I didn’t understand. When I would encounter these sections before it would shake my foundation and set doubts swirling in my head.

Over time, some of those sections have become clearer to me. Maybe it’s seeing them in context, learning about the culture of the time, or another factor that helps me understand the meaning. The more I dig into the Word of God, the more of those seemingly mismatched pieces fall in place like a puzzle.

I still come across bewildering verses, but now it doesn’t unwravel me like before. I no longer wonder if the Bible is wrong, instead I think, “It must be me. There’s something I’m not getting.” Just like it’s more likely I’m not understanding the algebra equation right, I’m probably not understanding the Scripture passage right and need to dig deeper to uncover the meaning.

Do you ever have doubts about the Bible?

What has helped you to better understand it?