When Scripture Refuses to Be Simple

If you’ve ever read the Bible you know passages that do not yield easily to human understanding. These passages resist our simple explanations and our systems. They challenge our principles and standards. Sometimes, they even cause us to be uncomfortable. At times, the Bible presents us with concepts that are difficult things to understand.

For example:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Luke 14:26 ESV

In Romans, the Apostle Paul speaks of mercy and hardening. In one pericope, Jesus compares wealth to a camel and a needle. Revelation shows us a world filled with imagery that feels more like a dream than a blueprint for an eternal paradise.

In Ecclesiastes, Solomon (the wisest man whoever lived) calls everything “meaningless.” And John records Jesus saying words so shocking that some people, like the rich, young ruler, simply walked away.

If we’re honest, these are the verses we’re tempted to explain away or quietly skip over. If you don’t open the door, you never have to see what’s on the other side.

But Scripture isn’t difficult because God enjoys being obscure. It’s difficult because we are flawed and finite. In our sin-stained mind, these difficult things just don’t add up. So we avoid them.

Mystery Is Not a Failure of Faith

Romans 9 unsettles us because it confronts our desire to be in control.
We want mercy to feel predictable. Earnable. Fair by our definition.
But Paul insists mercy is still mercy precisely because it is not owed. You and I are not entitled to God’s mercy.

So God shows mercy where he wants to show mercy, and he makes stubborn the people he wants to make stubborn.

Romans 9:18 NCV

That doesn’t erase our questions of free will. Scripture allows this tension to remain, while inherently, it should cause us to dig deeper.

Jesus’ words about wealth in Matthew 19 don’t offer loopholes or clever metaphors to soften the blow.
They expose how easily comfort becomes captivity.

Then Jesus said to his followers, “I tell you the truth, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 19:23 NCV

Revelation doesn’t explain the future so much as it shakes awake our hope.
A new heaven. A new earth. The sea, often a symbol of chaos, is gone.

Ecclesiastes names what many of us are afraid to say out loud: apart from God, even our greatest achievements feel hollow.

And when Jesus speaks of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, He isn’t being cryptic for shock value. He is confronting us with a faith that is not merely admired, but received, even when it offends our sensibilities.

Some Truths Are Meant to Be Entered, Not Solved

We often approach hard passages asking, “What does this mean?”

Perhaps the better question is,
“What is this asking of me?”

Humility.
Patience.
Trust.
A willingness to stay when things don’t make immediate sense.

The Bible invites us to sit with God, allowing the words to stretch our understanding, without mastering it.

James reminds us:

But if any of you needs wisdom, you should ask God for it. He is generous to everyone and will give you wisdom without criticizing you.

James 1:5 NCV

Friend, wisdom is not the absence of mystery. It is learning how to live faithfully within it.

Personally, I believe the Bible to be the Word of God, holy, and true. That means when I run into something challenging or difficult to understand in Scripture, it’s my perspective that needs to grow and not God’s Word that needs to change.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV

Sometimes the most faithful response to a difficult passage isn’t clarity.
It’s staying around and sticking with it.

A Prayer

Our God of mercy and truth,
Some of Your words unsettle me.
Some confuse me. Some challenge the ways I want faith to work. Please teach me not to rush past mystery, but rather to meet You there.

Give me wisdom where I lack understanding, patience where answers don’t come quickly,
and trust where certainty is not offered. Shape my heart through the life-giving words of Scripture, not just my opinions.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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Until my next post…

Be salty, stay lit.

Rainer Bantau —The Devotional Guy™

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