All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (II Timothy 2:16-17)
When you try to explain
something, you likely have some idea in mind of what you’re trying to say.
Words come out of your mouth, and unless the thing explained is very simple,
chances are good that what the other person hears (and communicates back to you)
won’t be what you thought you said. At best, the person to whom you explain
something will only understand part of what you meant them to understand.
This is part of the
challenge we tend to think God faces. He’s omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent –
and love. In our finitude and brokenness, we can’t really understand any of
that. We read material written from the perspective of many different cultures
and because it doesn’t mesh with our own, we’re tempted to throw it out the
window or in the fire.
So, when Paul writes that
all Scripture is God-breathed or inspired by God, we get strange ideas. And
when part of what God-breathed material tells us that Scripture is useful for teaching,
rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, our spine stiffens. We’re
supposed to follow Scripture, word-for-word? It just all seems a little – much.
Someone else has the right to teach me? Rebuke me? Correct me? Train me? That infringes
on my queendom. But, we were created in God’s image. How else are we supposed
to learn to live that image if we aren’t taught, rebuked, corrected, or trained?
We can only understand
the little that we understand, but as we look into Scripture, and come to
understand the little that we understand, we make it possible to learn more. And
if what we think we understand doesn’t make sense, perhaps that is because we’re
missing a piece of the puzzle. God hasn’t necessarily deliberately hidden it
from us, but we just can’t see it.
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