Why Ask Why?

I love the word "perspicuity". It just flows off the tongue. And the concept of the "perspicuity of Scripture" is a great one. Of course, since I prefer to eschew obfuscation, I'll switch to real words. The idea is simple ... literally. The doctrine is that the Bible is understandable. Yeah, that's it. So why would someone use an obscure word like that?

Ah, well, here's the basic idea: any believer of average intelligence should be able to read the Bible and understand what it is talking about. Careful, now ... here is one thing it does not mean: "All of Scripture is simple to understand." No, there are definitely parts that aren't as easy as others. And here's another: "Scripture means whatever you think it means." Not that either. The doctrine was brought out in the 16th century in opposition to the longstanding position of the Roman Catholic Church that your standard lay person was not capable of understanding the Bible. They needed the learned leaders to tell them what it meant ... and what they told them, it meant. The upshot of this position, however, was that the Church was the primary source on matters of faith and practice rather than the Bible. So the Reformers had a problem with that idea and argued that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, any normal Christian could read and understand the basic ideas taught in the Bible.

Here's where the problem comes in. In our great desire to read and understand the Bible, we begin view ourselves as modern-day Gnostics. We come up with a novel understanding of a passage and see it as "it", "the understanding." Some people like to think that they come up with "new understanding", that they have been taught by the Holy Spirit to see something in Scripture that was never there before. You can't really question the rationale of these folks because it's "of the Spirit" and who are you to question the Spirit? In other words, we might have the tendency to get carried away with this idea that anyone can understand the Bible.

One of the places that I've seen as a most common place to go awry is when we are sincerely trying to understand what we're reading. We ask the common questions. Who? What? When? Where? And, most of all, Why? Most of those questions are answered in the text, but "Why" seems to often be missing. So ... we fill it in. Why did Lot offer his daughters to the men in Sodom? We're not told. The best we know is that he didn't want them to harm his visitors. What was he thinking when he offered his daughters in their stead? We don't know. But there is no end of definitive certitude about what Lot was thinking when he did it -- some positive and some negative. Or how about this one? I just heard it recently. Why did Satan tempt Jesus in the wilderness? It is so easy to guess -- he wanted Jesus to fall into sin -- but we forget that we're guessing. One of the singularly most common questions I've heard from people is "Why did God ...?" We want to know what the thinking of the Sovereign of the Universe was when He ... did what we find odd or objectionable or even miraculous. Most of the time He doesn't tell us. So we guess.

In the Book of Job, Job struggles with the question of "Why?" "Why did God do this to me?" He starts out pretty tame ("The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.") But after awhile it's a different story. ("I demand an audience with God.") When God grants him the audience he demands, we find something a bit strange. God spends chapter after chapter quizzing Job. "Where were you when I was ...?" He calls Job's attention to nature in all its glory, says, "I did that" and demands, "Where were you when I was doing that?" Job, of course, has no answer. He ends up with, "I repent in dust and ashes." You see, God isn't normally in the practice of divulging to His creation why He does what He does. Sometimes He stoops to give us an insight here or there, but it's not His normal approach. And while we know the front story of why God let Satan deal with Job, we don't know the back story. What was God's ultimate purpose? So ... we guess.

Guessing, perhaps, isn't all bad. I would warn you, however, dear readers, to be very careful when you guess. We may have good guesses going on. We may have rationale for what we conclude. We may have logic and support and all sorts of reasons for concluding what we do. However, always keep in mind that your guesses may be wrong. Don't make them doctrine. Keep them as guesses, where they belong. Always remember, "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever" (Deut. 29:29). It's not wrong to say, "I don't know." It's not arrogant to say, "I can't always give you a reason why God does what He does." Indeed, I would think that the reverse would be the height of arrogance. "God often doesn't tell us why He does what He does ... but I have it all figured out ..." Remember, the finite cannot fully grasp the infinite. Let God be God. Be careful when you ask "Why?"