The Bible is not a Magic 8 Ball

This week I want to offer a tip that seems pretty simple but is a little more complicated in practice. It goes like this: when you read the bible, read it for wisdom NOT for answers.

This especially relevant and specific to our time and our society. We live in a time when information has never been more accessible, and yet it is also a time where truth and fact are so closely knit together, that there isn’t much room for movement once something has been decided. It’s an expression of Enlightenment thinking, and even after something has been proven wrong it can take years for that information to be communicated and accepted broadly. Great examples are that sugar makes kids hyper, nothing moves faster than light, the earth is a perfect sphere, or that we only use 10% of our brains: all of which are not true, but are widely believed to be factual.

Too often people approach reading the bible like doing a Google search to do a fact check. And while the Bible does have a lot of answers, it does not have EVERY answer.

For example, what school you should go to, or what job you should take, even who you should marry, are important questions, but you won’t find the answers to them in the bible.

Proverbs 9:10 says that “Fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One results in good judgment.” (side note: fear here means to be in awe of and to have reverence for God, it’s not quite the same thing we think of when we say “I have a fear of heights” (or whatever you’re afraid of)).

The Lord is the beginning of wisdom, God does hold all answers. And since we can best get to know God by reading his Word, we need to read and know the bible in order to start to understand what God’s expectations of his people may be, and then puzzle together from there what and why we should do a thing. The bible offers us a world view, and a way to think about things that should create a framework that helps us to live our lives in a way that is moral, ethical, and tending towards Christ-likeness.

But we can’t know everything, and we can’t expect the bible to have all the answers. It’s just an unreasonable expectation, the bible isn’t a magic 8 ball, you can’t just shake it and hope to get the answer you want.

I want you to go read Deut 29:29: it’s one that I point people to when they want to know answers that seem to be hidden. Basically, it says that what you can know you will know because God will reveal it and what you can’t know you maybe don’t need to worry too much about it because

God will take care of the mysteries of the

world.

Sometimes we need to have TRUST God and his wisdom and just do our best according to the PRINCIPLES that are outlined in the bible. We can do this by treating the bible like the bible, doing the work of reading it and leaving fact checks to whatever search engine you happen to be partial to.

Keep practicing,

P.s. How’s your bible reading going? Any questions on how to do it more effectively? Let me know either by email (meghanlamatthews@gmail.com) or on Instagram (@itsmeghanmatthews)