Student Connect

How have Christian leaders and/or other Christians helped you deal with unfamiliar and complex teachings in Scripture? Give specific examples.

In the ancient days of the early internet, I used to hang around on IRC chatrooms. I had a lot of unanswered questions on the meaning of life and the contradictory nature of biblical scriptures or narratives. There were some really smart people in the biblical/christian related chatrooms that had actually taught themselves ancient Greek and Latin and could explain more contemporary and arguably more accurate translations within the linguistic and cultural contexts that I couldn't get from just reading the KJV bible. That has been 25 years ago, so I struggle to remember many specific examples. One of the debates concerned the book of Job. Is God a gambler? It's a pretty odd story. The devil just randomly shows up and bets God one of his best followers would turn on him and God says "let's test that theory." The IRC scholars pitched it as a parable trying to philosophically wrestle with the age-old question of why do bad things happen to good people. Whether the reader is to take it at face value that all the events happened literally exactly as described ended up being open to interpretation. No human witness was there to witness the cosmic conversation, so how does the author know what happened and who relayed it to them? Ultimately it doesn't really matter as the book comes to an unsatisfying conclusion that the workings of the cosmos are inscrutable to mankind.