Microview

Do you ever get the feeling, when you are involved in bible study or Sunday school classes, that the conclusions which are being reached are just too easy? Too one-dimensional? Too much based on one piece of scripture and not on the whole of the Bible?

Sometimes, looking at one passage of scripture, the conclusions can seem obvious, but even so, won’t feel right.

I was reading a post on the United Methodist Reporter blog, but it was a couple of the comments which caught my attention.

• One of them proposes that there is wisdom and truth in the idea that the book of Ecclesiastes follows Proverbs. “Proverbs is full of great, practical wisdom: be frugal, be diligent, be honest, don't run around on your wife, and you'll live a long and happy life….Turn the page, and Ecclesiastes says, "You know all that stuff about how your virtuous efforts will pay off? Fuhgeddaboutit." Life isn't fair. Stuff happens.” The truth is, we know that both of these are true – we know that there are positive consequences to good decisions, as much as we know that sometimes “stuff” happens, even when we’ve done everything “right.” The truth is that we need both books in order to understand that. Conclusions drawn from just one of them will be too one-dimensional. Life is more complicated than that.
• Another commenter suggested that Romans and James were a combination that offered truth together. Some might say that Paul and James are in opposition to each other, but this writer believes that the two letters do not contradict each other, but that they approach the idea of faith and works just with different emphases, depending on the errors of their audiences. Both are a look at the truth.

I think one of the traps of studying the bible is that our angle of vision can become too narrow. We look at the word of God with a microview. I think that we must listen to those nagging doubts we have, and that we should always ask ourselves the question, “Does this conclusion, based on this one verse, even as perfect as it seems, fit in with what I have learned about God from the entire Bible?” Don’t belittle that question, because it’s important, and it leads to truth.