How Can I Try to Understand and Make Sense of What the Bible is Saying?
The Bible is jammed packed with stories of intrigue, epic wars, famine, healing, love and so much more. One of the most controversial books in history. So how do I go about trying to understand it you ask? Great question!.....
The first thing to note is that everything written in the Bible is important and has something to show you. That said, if you flick through its pages, you might notice that it talks about different situations, using different genres, and written by different authors. This means that there are different things you can learn from each of these sections, as well as different ways of understanding them. The understanding bit just means a bit of context. Don’t stress, this doesn’t mean that you need to be a historian or a biblical expert. These are 3 helpful things to think about when reading a section of the Bible
1. What was the situation?
2. Who was it about or who was it written to?
3. Who wrote it?
Remembering context is a super important thing to think about when you are trying to understand what that piece of the Bible means for you, and helps to avoid misunderstandings. For example, a lot of people mistake things that God said in the Old Testament to mean that God is angry with everyone. A classic example is in Micah, when God says some pretty severe things, like “I am planning disaster against this people, from which you cannot save yourselves” (Mic 2:3). What does that mean for us? Is God planning bad things for us? No way! The situation was that the people of Israel were doing horrible things to each other because they thought God wouldn’t care about justice for the oppressed. That message was written by someone who wanted these people to know that God does care about those who are mistreated.
If we read on, we also see that what God talked about wasn’t the end, but it was God’s way of showing people their mistakes so they could change their actions. In these types of situations, thinking about what is going on helps us to get the full picture.
In other parts of the Bible, we can relate to things that people are going through, or what they say or do. In these situations, we can learn something by putting our own name in there. For example there is a story of a leper Jesus met. This story is recorded in 3 different places in the Bible - Mark 1:40-45, Luke 5:12-15 and Matthew 8:2-4. People thought the man had got that disease because God was angry with him, so they refused to be anywhere near him. Instead of being angry, when the leper asked Jesus for help, Jesus was full of compassion and was happy to heal him of his disease. Even though we might not have a disease, we can put ourselves in the position of the leper because sometimes we think something bad has happened because God is angry with us. If we read it this way, we can learn that Jesus cares and is there to help us.
How about taking some time to pause on parts of the Bible that stand out to you and asking God, “what does this mean for me?” You might want to take some time to write down what God says to you. It’s a fun way of getting to know God better.
No Longer Trapped - a story of hope that started over church and the Bible