A comment I wrote...I'm very wise...

c.t. said...

Another thing that may happen is a person can start to question the fact that the Bible is without error or something similar. There are very persistent writers who want to dispirit people about the Bible in that manner.

Just know that if you know the Bible 99% of such examples they give can be explained easily. I mean if you also know biblical doctrine. But the difficult ones can be explained too. But here is something about that:

At first those types start out by saying the Bible is all Chinese myth and NASA astronaut recordings and Assyrian short stories. I.e. it's all just crazy fairy tale nonsense. Of course that claim doesn't hold up, so they end up saying things like, "Well, why in 1 Kings does it say so and so fought and killed 300, yet in 2 Chronicles it says the same person went against 3000?"

So you see they have come a long way from Chinese myth to the latter. So first of all recognize that.

Second of all even the most difficult challenges like that (asserted mistakes) can be defended when you really get into the text. I use to do it all the time on various hostile websites even asking them to give me the most difficult cases. (I recall the Companion Bible was often very uniquely helpful for such things).

And remember, overall, that once you really begin to see *biblical doctrine* you then see how the Bible is all, from Genesis to Revelation, a unified work. Like a finely cut jewel where each part reflects all the other parts. This realization, or ability to begin to see this, takes you up a level from the level where such attacks as mentioned above can even effect you. (It's like you will have a beautiful woman before you and they will be saying, but what about that toenail on her small toe on her right foot? And you will be thinking, wait a minute, I can see her in the whole, and in any case that toenail doesn't even look so odd to me.)

This is why I point out that systematic theology works probably much more effectively than commentaries in enabling one to see the whole and thus the parts in relation to the whole of Scripture.

C. S. Lewis also stated that doctrine such as you find in systematic theologies is as *devotional* as actual devotional reading. Or more so even. That's because doctrine truly gives you practical understanding of the entire Bible.