Remember that these things are mysteries and that if they were such that we could understand them, they wouldn’t be worth understanding. A God you understood would be less than yourself.
Flannery O’Connor, Letters
The more I read the Bible, the more I am convinced that the two best adjectives for it are wonderful and weird.
Let’s start with weird: Despite all the claims of clarity, the Bible is anything but clear. Sometimes it is; more often it’s not. Despite all the attempts to sanitize it, the Bible is not very Sunday-School-friendly. There are bizarre, offensive, downright ugly stories in there. Despite all the assertions that it’s a rule book, it just doesn’t all work that cleanly. Many of the ancient laws are hard for us to even conceive of in our modern societies. Despite all the boasts that Jesus — the central figure of the whole book — was a great teacher, he sure said a number of confusing, strange, and (dare I say) unintelligible things. Despite all the arguments for why the Bible doesn’t ever contradict itself, well… it sure does seem to! All that said — it’s weird.
But it’s also quite wonderful: And actually, I think that its inherent weirdness is part of God’s divine hook to keep us coming back for more. It’s the weirdness itself that keeps us coming back by doing three things:
The Bible invites us into mystery. It causes us to scratch our heads in wonder. “Did Jesus really just say that?” It creates in us a sense of awe, a hunger for more, an anticipation that maybe — just maybe — the next time we read it we will see something in a new light. Mystery, and the possibility that a jaw-dropping reveal is just around the corner, has a magnetism.
The Bible invites us into dialogue. There’s only so long that we can scratch our heads alone in our bedroom before we just have to ask someone about it. The Bible almost demands to be talked about. Every author wants people to be talking about their book. God figured out how to start the longest-running book club in history.
The Bible transforms us. It’s nearly impossible to read the Bible and leave exactly the same. It does something in us that’s often deeper than we can articulate, often more subtle than we’re even aware of. And there’s something attractive about that to our souls.
Remember that these things are mysteries. And that’s what makes them worth understanding.