When the Bible Goes Wrong

During the three years I worked on the eighth floor of Haley Center at Auburn University, my coworkers thought me to be more friendly than I really am. I would often be found wandering the halls of Haley Center, bidding everyone with an open office door good day. Truth be told, I was often lost.

The whole fault lay with the elevator (and the spell of relativism that lay around the English Department). I would often step off it and confidently turn right, only to find myself taking the long, circuitous route to my office, saying hello to everyone. Looking pleasant and purposeful, while feeling flustered and lost.

You might think I exaggerate to say this went on for three years. You do not know me well if that is what you think. If I am given the freedom to lose myself in thought, I am perfectly capable of losing my way home from within my garage. There were even times I would find myself wandering around the sixth or seventh floors of Haley Center wondering where my office had gone.

The only thing that could save me (and seldom did since I rarely looked up as I strode off the elevator), were the brown signs that pointed the way to the offices on each hall. At times, I would step off the elevator with the determination to go right, and the signs would point me left. Often, I would balk at the thought of going left, when I felt so sure I should go right. Sometimes, I would even test the accuracy of the signs and go right, only to find I had gone wrong.

I needed the brown signs of Haley Center because I was often inclined to go wrong. It is for this same reason we need the Bible ... all of it.

In fact, it is probably the passage of Scripture that seems most wrong (offensive, illogical) to us that we need most. There, we doubtless draw nearer to the thoughts of a God whose ways and ideas are vastly higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8-9), and we're confronted with the decision whether we will prefer His revelation to our best instincts.

Perhaps an example will help. A friend asked me recently what I thought about the tension between predestination and free will. I commended to him J.I. Packer's wonderful (and brief!) book entitled Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, and I tried to represent Packer's position, now my own.

The Bible teaches that God has elected some to salvation and they will surely be saved. Yet the gospel message must be preached to all, and all will be held accountable for whether they believe it. There is divine sovereignty and human accountability in the Bible.

The same position can be seen illustrated in Luke 22:22 where Jesus says to Judas, "For indeed, the Son of Man is going as it has been determined; but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed!" Judas was doing what God had predetermined and announced he would surely do; nevertheless, Jesus pronounced a curse on him for doing it. Divine sovereignty and human accountability.

I don't mean to settle the question of predestination or free will in a single blog, I only mean it as an example of following the Bible where it leads. Perhaps you prefer the way predestination answers to the demands of human logic or the way free will answers to the demands of human dignity. What you must not do is prefer one at the expense of the other. You must accept what the Bible says (and, please note, I have under-represented what the Bible says on both these subjects) even where the Bible does not seem to harmonize the two. They are not logically contradictory positions, but they are never nicely conjoined in the Scriptures.

The inclination of the heart or mind must not turn to the left when the Bible is pointing right. The Bible must be reckoned right even when we feel it to be wrong, if, indeed, it represents God's revelation of His thoughts and ways to us.

Other examples could be offered, perhaps many others. (Think, for example, about the Bible's instruction on sexuality, singleness, and divorce.) I only mean to raise the question: What will you do when the Bible seems to confront a belief, desire, or behavior you're inclined to, or to commend one you disapprove of?