A Clearer Bible

"Why isn't the Bible as clear as we would like it to be?" That was the question being discussed on my local Christian radio station on my way home from work the other day. Why doesn't it have a specific doctrinal passage that fully explains the Trinity? Why didn't God anticipate the abortion question and make it abundantly clear? Couldn't God have known the debates we would have over the centuries and simply have addressed them in the book? And callers had a wide variety of answers. "God intended only to cover the things necessary for salvation." "It was meant to cover all time." "Well, it's unclear because God didn't write it." Some answers were decent and some were, well, wrong ... as you might expect. The point is not what their answers were. The point is that it made me think. How would I answer the question?

I had several thoughts on it. One is a general thought. If I were to write a book that would encompass every question and every heresy ever suggested for the last 2000 years, what do you suppose that book would be like? The book would need to have all that we currently have in our Bibles. It would also need to have a "catechism" of sorts, an outlined process that gives line-by-line doctrinal statements. It would need commentaries on each of those statements to preclude confusion, taking into account every possible objection and question. Then it would have to address the vast varieties of questions that would be asked by the vast varieties of people that have used it over the centuries. Should a Christian join the military? Is tithing still required? How exactly is a church to be named, constructed, governed and all that? What do you think a biblical writer would have thought when he penned God's instructions on the ethics of embryonic stem cell research? It would be tough to cover all questions for all times. Then, it would have to address slavery in changing societies. It would have to address women's issues in changing societies. It would have to differentiate. If, for instance, slavery that was practiced by Israel in the Old Testament (which included a 7-year limit and many other rules) was acceptable, but slavery that was practiced by the South prior to 1865 was not, it would have to indicate that. If women prior to the 20th century were not to have pastor roles but women after the mid-20th century could, it would have to indicate that. It would have to take into account language differences and shades of meanings. Consider, for instance, the evolution of the concept of "love" from the biblical version to today's society. This book would need to be able to cross the gap of languages and what words mean to varying groups. In other words, this book would be vast, unreadable, and unusable. Here, picture this. Imagine every single question that you can think of. Now, go to the Internet and find an article that answers the question as fully as you would like. (For this example, it doesn't matter whose side the answer is on.) Now, with your imagination, print out that article. What is it ... 1, 2, 5, 10 pages? Do that for every single question you can come up with. How many pages have you printed in this imaginary exercise? Now imagine the questions that you likely didn't come up with -- you know, questions from other cultures, other languages, other times. How many more pages would be added? At some point it becomes too big, too bulky to even bother with. We might end up with a clear Bible that answers every question and delineates every doctrine ... but who is going to use it?

I suspect that one of the reasons that the Bible isn't as clear as we would like it to be is that it is intended to be that way. We find Paul, for instance, writing about meat sacrificed to idols (Rom. 14). Is it right or wrong? Paul doesn't really say. He says it's not wrong for him. But he also says "whatever does not proceed from faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23) So it's not wrong for him, but it is for others. I suspect that much of everyday Christianity is exactly this vague. It is wrong to drink alcohol and it is not wrong to drink alcohol. It is wrong to smoke and it is not wrong to smoke. It is wrong to dance and it is not wrong to dance. It is an individual thing, and the Bible cannot answer individual things categorically. I also think that there is a "vagueness" to it not because some of it is to be vague, but because we are called to "the renewing of the mind" (Rom. 12:2). That is a process, not an event. Some of it you get now, and some you won't get until later. Who gets what when is very individual. So part of the process of sanctification and renewing the mind includes spending time in the Scriptures and letting the Holy Spirit illuminate your understanding. A book as explicit as is suggested by the question, "Why isn't the Bible as clear as we would like it to be?", would eliminate any of that process. So because of individual requirements and because of the need to learn at an individual pace, I suspect God had it written exactly as clear as He intended.

One of the problems of the clarity of Scripture is unrelated to Scripture. It is related to the reader. It is a simple thing, for instance, to read, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). Plain as day, isn't it? Jesus was both with God and was God -- one of the basic statements on the Trinity. Yet, as clear as that is, it is debated by readers. "No, it doesn't mean that." But ... how can they say that? Because they can. I suspect that no matter how vast, how wordy, and how clearly the Bible was written, readers would still mitigate and debate it. We have many reasons. Sometimes one passage will appear to contradict another. That's a valid reason to suggest that it doesn't mean what it says at face value. You'll have to dig deeper. That's where we get complicated doctrines like the Trinity. There must be a correlation between the undeniable monotheism of the Bible with someone who is both "with God" and "is God". But more likely it's a different reason. More likely the reason for discarding the plain meaning is that we don't like the plain meaning. Surely Paul couldn't be writing about women pastors in 1 Tim. 2! That would go against our current culture! No way! Sure, it seems clear from any surface reading that the Bible is against homosexual actions, but that would mean that some people are wrong in their actions, and that doesn't seem right ... so that can't be the case. It would violate our culture. No way! And the reader mitigates the plain meaning of Scripture.

This leads us to the more specific answer that I had to the question. Most Evangelicals would tell those readers that change the plain meaning of Scripture to suit their preference to leave it alone. Let God say what God wants to say. Take Him at His Word. The truth is that this is the answer to the broader question. The question is, "Why isn't the Bible as clear as we would like it to be?" The comeback is, "Who said it had to be what you would like it to be?" Who made us the arbiters of what is "good enough"? For those of us who might like to think, "God could have made it clearer, couldn't He?" we must settle on the same answer that we would tell those who mitigate Scripture for personal reasons. "Let God say what God wants to say. Take Him at His Word." We all need to learn to take God as He presents Himself rather than as we would like Him to be. The same is true with His Word. The question, in fact, is backward, as indicated by the phrase "as we would like it to be." Instead, we should start from this: "Since the Bible is exactly as clear as God intended it, how can I learn to better understand it?"