Kendall Smith, No-Div
Kendall is an elementary science teacher and an avid lover of books, nature, and long walks. She is easily distracted by thunderstorms and loves a good conversation over coffee.
Early in my thirties, I decided to read through the Bible in a year. Great idea, right? I actually highly recommend this spiritual discipline because it gives such a full picture of how God created a people and faithfully led them. But reading through the Bible also means you read the whole thing. All of it. Every. Last. Word. And you know what? There is some hard stuff in there...especially the Joshua-through-2 Chronicles section. Spoiler Alert: the Israelites finally made it to the Promised Land after wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. After crossing the Jordan River, they were free to go and settle in the land (echoing the creation narrative again)--which meant taking it back from people who already lived there. Occasionally this meant killing and collecting the plunder. This is hard stuff to read. It’s even harder to reconcile this God-of-the-Old-Testament with the Jesus we read about in the New Testament. I struggled through this stuff for years--and to be completely honest, still wrestle with it each time I read through the Bible.
It seems to me that when we come across difficult passages, we have a couple of options. One, to give up in frustration and proclaim that Christianity and all who believe in a living Jesus are crazy. Two, to accept that, since the Word of God is inspired, it must all be equally applicable to us today and that this God that it reveals is just really complicated. Or three, to wrestle. To wonder at how this God that we read about in Joshua and parts of the Jewish Bible could seem so different than the God revealed in Christ Jesus.
If you have left the Christian church because stuff doesn’t make sense, I can’t blame you. The Church has not always been a kind place to struggle. If you have pushed through and landed in camp two, I also understand. I lived in that place for years. And you know what? One day, I realized I wasn’t equipped to try to be God’s defense lawyer. Now that’s obviously not an actual position that I held. But I, like you, desperately wanted to understand God and the Bible and at the same time had lots of nagging doubts about the answers I had received. I spent so much time and energy trying to hold the whole thing together that I was just sure that if one piece of the puzzle went missing, the whole darn Christian faith fell apart. And that is an exhausting battle to fight. Choosing to wrestle came because I couldn’t in good conscience live in denial or atheism.
Voicing my questions aloud actually relieved the fear in my heart. Reading good, thoughtful books from authors who knew more than I did helped, too. Pete Enns’ “The Bible Tells Me So” is my favorite on this particular topic. More recently, I heard a quote from Dallas Willard which says, “Never believe anything bad about God.” Although that concept is simple, it has transformed how I read tough passages. My purpose in this post is not to resolve the tough issues (genocide, murder, conquest and war). There is too much there, and I am still learning. But I am in a place now where I can live in the messy in-between--the gray space--where I understand that there is much that I don’t understand. We are in good company--Jacob, Abraham’s grandson--wrestled with God. Genesis 32 explains how he was renamed because of that wrestling--Jacob became “Israel” meaning, “the people who struggle with God”. Genesis 35 even tells us that Jacob was to set up an altar “to the God who revealed himself to [him]...” (Gen. 35:1 MSG) Could it be that, in our wondering and wrestling, God is revealed more fully to us? Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), and He is my anchor. If I start from an understanding of who Jesus is, I can wrestle with those frustrating passages and not lose hope that the entire house of cards will fall.