lot of people think the bible is gibberish

If the Good News we preach is hidden behind a veil, it is hidden only from people who are perishing. (2 Corinthians 4:3)

A lot of people think the Bible is gibberish. They claim to see inconsistencies and mistakes and all that and think that it is impossible to understand anything written that long ago. They just do not understand this stuff.

There are a lot of reasons people do not understand the Bible.

I believe people don’t understand a lot of times because they use an extremely outdated translation. They will read a King James Version with all the thees and thous and words like wist and shew. They do not understand because of the simple fact that the translation needs a translation itself.

They don’t understand too because they start out not expecting to.

My son would decide he didn’t like a food before he tasted it. I would say, eat some anyway. He would pick up the spoon of whatever, shake his head, take a bite and shake it again. Of course he didn’t like it. He decided from the beginning that he wasn’t and it became a self-fulfilled prophecy. He hated it because he expected to hate it.

Somebody tells someone else that the Bible is hard to understand and sure enough, it is. In the Middle Ages, there was one Bible in the whole town. It was usually in Latin and chained to the pulpit in the church.

The priest went on at length to tell everybody that the words God gave us were so difficult that there needed to be an interpreter. And sure enough, what do you know, he was it. Then he would tell you whatever he wanted you to hear.

Any time you expect something to be too hard, it will probably be.

But the main reason they do not understand it is because they do not have the mind of God in them to help them understand.

I understand the Bible. I don’t understand it because I am so smart, or educated, or because I have studied the Greek and Hebrew. In fact, sometimes that can stand in the way. We try to do it ourselves.

I understand it because God is in my heart. He shows me the answers. As convoluted as my thinking is, I do not think I could understand it at all if not for him. I always make too much of stuff and try to read too much into things.  I would have something that was so strange figured out.

But I don’t. I sit back and allow him through the power of his Holy Spirit to open all of this to me. I let him tell me what it says.

It is not some weird process where I access the divine database, or say the key words and get my mantra right or anything else. I just read it and wait for what it means. It isn’t really done on any conscious level necessarily. I just do it.

I read it and figure out what it means. If it makes sense, it is from God. If it doesn’t, it isn’t. it is that simple. His mind has worked so long in my mind that there is not a conscious delineation between the two. It just is there.

If the mind of God is not in you, all you will read is gibberish.

People who do not want to understand it and read it only for “the beauty,” of which it has a lot, will read an older translation. That way it sounds good and, since it is so old, they can’t understand it anyway. They do not have to try.

I firmly believe that a lot of people use old translations so they do not have to understand. They love the Bible, that is true, but their love is for a combination of sounds and rhythms, not what is said.

In fact, one man I was corresponding with over the internet confessed that his relationship was really with the King James Version anyway, not necessarily the Bible. His excuse? He was Church of England and they loved tradition.

People who do not have God cannot fully understand the Bible. And if they read it baffled without understanding it at all, they need God in their lives. He will show them the answer.