Mark Twain once said, "Most people are bothered by those passages in Scripture which they cannot understand; but as for me, I always noticed that the passages in Scripture which troubled me most are those which I do understand."
Irreligious skeptic though he may have been, Twain seems to be saying some thing important to Christians. What a disproportionate amount of time we spend analyzing difficult scriptures that Biblical scholars through the centuries have found impossible to fathom! How eagerly we develop (and adamantly defend) intricate explanations for some obscure text! How easily we bypass the extensive body of Scripture that plainly delineates an unwelcome duty or rebukes a darling practice!
While there are unplumbed depths in even the most apparent Bible passage, and while we are to be serious students of the Word, delving ever deeper into the mysteries of revelation, shall we not admit that the majority of texts are not equivocal, and that we miserably fail to implement even a fraction of the truth we already know? Is our basic problem a lack of knowledge or is it a lack of faith and love?
The key to knowledge in spiritual things is a willingness to accept what the Spirit validates as truth (see 1 Cor. 2:11-14). The apostle Paul speaks of those who are "always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth" (2 Tim. 3:7, N.I.V.).* God forbid that such a description should ever characterize a Seventh-day Adventist minister!
If we were troubled more by the texts we already understand, and less by those we don't, perhaps we would even come to better understand the latter. —B.R.H.
