Truth Is Elusive -- Bible Too Complex To Accept Simple-Minded Interpretations

Thomas Hart Benton was a distinguished United States senator from Missouri, noted for his integrity, sense of justice and common sense. Serving in the Senate from 1821 to 1851, he was defeated because he did not want Missouri to secede from the Union.

Benton did his best to be a capable senator, but he complained that within his constituency in Missouri was a veritable epidemic of a disease he called "the simples." His constituents expected him to take problems that were inherently complex and find answers that could be written on a postcard or understood while standing on one foot and solved without effort or pain on their part.

I can understand the senator's frustration in having to deal with this sort of disease. But I can also identify with those folks from Missouri, for again and again, I have come down with a case of "the simples" and have looked for some way to eliminate complexity from my life. How great it would be to get everything reduced down to the place where there was no struggle or uncertainty, and everything flowed smoothly without effort or conflict.

Perhaps you have experienced "the simples." The desire to have life made simple and completely understandable is one of the most powerful forces at work in the human heart. We love to have everything neatly boxed, ribboned, and tied with a bow.

But we all know that's not the way life is. I have counseled with enough people to know how involved and tangled situations can be. There are at least two sides to every problem, and things are rarely as simple as they may appear.

Religion, too, is more complicated than some will admit. The "simple gospel" is an expression of peculiar appeal, which strikes our ears like the welcome sound of an old familiar hymn wafted down from the carillon of a cathedral tower amid the noise of a city's traffic. But the "simple gospel," simple to understand in many places, is, in its entirety, not so simple.

The Bible is a complex and complicated book that has been used to some bizarre ends, and its truth distorted to produce incongruous actions. For instance, I once talked with a man who refused to work for peace because the Bible says, "There will always be wars and rumors of war." What a travesty to lift that verse out of context and make it an excuse for no effort. Jesus also said "blessed are the peacemakers" - not peacekeepers. But the person with whom I was visiting didn't choose to recognize the difference.

Fanatics in Scotland for many years would not eat potatoes because they were not mentioned in the Bible. How literal can you get?

There are many lay-led Bible study groups across our land. In the main, this is good, but there are risks involved. If the groups do not test their conclusions by the best biblical scholarship, they may leave their meetings carrying erroneous conclusions and propagating ideas far removed from what the Bible actually teaches.

No mind is so good that it does not need another mind to counter and equal it; and to save us from conceit, blindness, bigotry, folly and error, we need better minds and trained teachers to teach us. Why blunder along when near at hand are commentaries from the minds of eminent scholars who help us unravel some of the mysteries of the Scriptures? The best scholars admit it when the meaning is obscure and no simple answer can be found.

Like many of my colleagues in ministry, I depend on top scholars, theologians who have the highest credentials to help me understand some of the more complicated parts of the Bible. Critical biblical analysis is not disbelief. It is an earnest effort to discover what the Bible actually says.

It is a mark of maturity to be able to live with uncertainty and complication. Many religious movements have failed because they demanded certainty about uncertain things and left no room for reticence, growth, and a sense of awe and mystery. The greater the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.

Faith is learning to live with what we do not fully understand, and faith we must have, for life is not so simple.