INCOMPREHENSIBLE SCRIPTURES THAT ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO OBEY
The Bible is full of enigmatic, incomprehensible scriptures. God calls them mysteries and has not been at all deceptive about the fact that he has hidden their meanings from his people.

Throughout this web site we have provided the interpretation of several difficult scriptures that we think are especially critical to understanding God. Perhaps the most notable difficult scriptures are in the Books of the Law. Many of the commandments, for example, are so obscure that they defy intellectual understanding. The so called “dietary laws” are among those. Here are a few examples:

Deuteronomy 14:1-21 You are the children of the LORD your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave the front of your heads for the dead, 2 for you are a people holy to the LORD your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the LORD has chosen you to be his treasured possession.3 Do not eat any detestable thing.4 These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat,5 the deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope and the mountain sheep.6 You may eat any animal that has a split hoof divided in two and that chews the cud. 7 However, of those that chew the cud or that have a split hoof completely divided you may not eat the camel, the rabbit or the coney. Although they chew the cud, they do not have a split hoof; they are ceremonially unclean for you. 8 The pig is also unclean; although it has a split hoof, it does not chew the cud. You are not to eat their meat or touch their carcasses.9 Of all the creatures living in the water, you may eat any that has fins and scales. 10 But anything that does not have fins and scales you may not eat; for you it is unclean. 11 You may eat any clean bird. 12 But these you may not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, 13 the red kite, the black kite, any kind of falcon,14 any kind of raven,15 the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, 16 the little owl, the great owl, the white owl, 17 the desert owl, the osprey, the cormorant, 18 the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat. 19 All flying insects that swarm are unclean to you; do not eat them. 20 But any winged creature that is clean you may eat.21 Do not eat anything you find already dead. You may give it to an alien living in any of your towns, and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. But you are a people holy to the LORD your God. Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.

STUDY TIP: See Bread, Food and Wine for insights on how to interpret these verses.

Deuteronomy 14:22-29 Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year. 23 Eat the tithe of your grain, new wine and oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks in the presence of the LORD your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name, so that you may learn to revere the LORD your God always. 24 But if that place is too distant and you have been blessed by the LORD your God and cannot carry your tithe (because the place where the LORD will choose to put his Name is so far away), 25 then exchange your tithe for silver, and take the silver with you and go to the place the LORD your God will choose. 26 Use the silver to buy whatever you like: cattle, sheep, wine or other fermented drink, or anything you wish. Then you and your household shall eat there in the presence of the LORD your God and rejoice.27 And do not neglect the Levites living in your towns, for they have no allotment or inheritance of their own.28 At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year’s produce and store it in your towns,29 so that the Levites (who have no allotment or inheritance of their own) and the aliens, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

STUDY TIP: See Sacrifices, Tithes and Offerings and Tithes for understanding of tithes.

Try as you will, you will not be able grasp an intellectual understanding of these literal laws so that you can apply them in your life. Even if you live in an agricultural society, the details will be impossible for you to understand or obey completely. And yet, they are part of God’s laws which we are told to obey. And they are part of God breathed scripture which is useful for training in righteousness. So how do we begin to obey or even understand scriptures like these?

The way we see it, God put these and other difficult scripture in the Bible and in life’s circumstances to test us. They are essential pieces of the Stumbling Block God has placed before us. We need to keep in mind, however that he is not just testing to prove if we can outwardly obey his commandments. He is always testing us to show what is in our hearts. There are three ways we can respond to these tests:

The purpose of testing is this: Choose right and receive life. Choose wrong and receive death. These are very clear choices that demand right responses by people who believe in God but they are complicated by the fact that life and death are symbolic terms and not meant to be interpreted literally.

STUDY TIP: See Death, Resurrection, New Life, Salvation, Forgiveness, Heaven and Hell for understanding of life and death.

The big problem is that religious people (Jews and Christians in particular) only look at the natural, literal meaning of scripture. In making this mistake, they wrongly assume that God is only interested in natural things. They fail to understand that the focus of God’s creative activity is the heart.

 STUDY TIP: See Creation. 

Lacking understanding of Bible symbolism, Jews and Christians believe that God’s standards of righteousness is based on obedience to rules they do not really understand. Furthermore, because they are not understandable and impossible to obey when interpreted literally, people do their best to adjust those laws and make them doable. The result of these adjustments is a wide variety of religions with different religious laws based on differing interpretations and adaptions of scripture.

The problem is further complicated by the fact that God judges religious people guilty of sin when they do not obey the laws perfectly. On the surface this policy does not seem to represent a God of love, but religious people still do their best to obey God’s laws.

This thinking denies the following truths:

Lacking a good understanding of God’s laws, we might conclude that God is a rigid, heartless taskmaster who just wants obedience for the sake of obedience, and who somehow relishes the opportunity to punish those who do not live up to his specifications. It does not allow that he has deep, spiritual purposes behind obedience. And does not allow that what God wants is obedience to his spiritual laws — not man’s religious laws.

STUDY TIP: See Third Commandment for more about God’s purposes.

The other wrong aspect of this approach is that it only involves the mind and body. It does not involve the heart. If the heart is not engaged, rigid obedience to the written law will soon become a program of mindless religiosity. God understands this tendency and warned Israel about falling into prideful rituals (i.e. do and do, rule on rule, precept on precept) that create a covenant with death. Israel did not heed the warning and it was taken into captivity. From what we observe of Judaism and Christianity in these modern days, neither religious has heeded God’s warning about doing religion based on rules and rituals. Thus, they do not understand that God actually hates religion.

Jews and Christians have a twisted appreciation for God’s hatred of religion. Christians are known to criticize Jews for their legalism, and Jews criticize Christians. The way we see it, however, Christians have no grounds to be smug about their professed freedom when they accuse the Jews of being legalistic. Christians also have their rules and precepts that they religiously follow. Christians would not agree that their rituals are done out of legalism, but their definition of legalism is not the same as God’s definition. They just have different rules, precepts and rituals. The only real difference between Jews and Christians is that they base their religious traditions on different parts of the Bible. They both lack a comprehensive view that would guard them from legalism of any kind.

STUDY TIP: See The Law is A Stumbling Block for more about religious legalism:

If we have even a little fear of God, we know that obedience to God’s laws is good for us, so we will try our best to obey whatever we can understand. This is the natural tendency of man because we live in the natural world and that is where we tend to function best. If we respond to God’s tests by employing our natural abilities (i.e. flesh: body, mind intellect), however, we will miss the teaching, reproof, correction and training in righteousness that God says is the purpose of all scripture. If we think that his purpose is to train our flesh for obedience to religious laws we will miss that he is in the business of training our hearts — not our bodies.

STUDY TIP: See THE HEART IS THE PLACE and GOD DOES ONLY ONE KIND OF MIRACLE

The basic problem is that a good share of the Bible that are difficult to apply for training in righteousness:

Luke 19:11-27 11 As they heard these things, he proceeded to tell a parable, because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. 12 He said therefore, “A nobleman went into a far country to receive a kingdom and then return. 13 Calling ten of his servants, he gave them ten pounds, and said to them, ‘Trade with these till I come.’ 14 But his citizens hated him and sent an embassy after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us.’ 15 When he returned, having received the kingdom, he commanded these servants, to whom he had given the money, to be called to him, that he might know what they had gained by trading. 16 The first came before him, saying, ‘Lord, your pound has made ten pounds more.’ 17 And he said to him, ‘Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.’ 18 And the second came, saying, ‘Lord, your pound has made five pounds.’ 19 And he said to him, ‘And you are to be over five cities.’ 20 Then another came, saying, ‘Lord, here is your pound, which I kept laid away in a napkin; 21 for I was afraid of you, because you are a severe man; you take up what you did not lay down, and reap what you did not sow.’ 22 He said to him, ‘I will condemn you out of your own mouth, you wicked servant! You knew that I was a severe man, taking up what I did not lay down and reaping what I did not sow? 23 Why then did you not put my money into the bank, and at my coming I should have collected it with interest?’ 24 And he said to those who stood by, ‘Take the pound from him, and give it to him who has the ten pounds.’ 25 (And they said to him, ‘Lord, he has ten pounds!’) 26 ‘I tell you, that to every one who has will more be given; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 27 But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them before me.'”

At the simplest level of understanding, this story appears to be about financial stewardship because the parable is about handling money. There is a sense, of course, in which this is true, but to relax with that understanding is lazy Biblical scholarship. Remember, this is a parable. Jesus is using the example of natural things to represent spiritual things. Money is important to people who are concerned about worldly things, but it is less important to those who are concerned about spiritual things. So we are challenged to not only understand the spiritual intent of the story but to apply it in our lives.

Recalling that all scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness so that we are equipped for every good work, we have a clue about the spiritual intent of this story. The hardest part of seeking God may be in the challenge of applying what we learn. It is especially hard when so much is vague, mysterious, and full of symbolism. Our intentions may be good, but if we can’t grasp the meaning, we can’t apply it. And if it is beyond our comprehension, why bother learning?

Lacking experience in plumbing the depths of the mysteries of God, and lacking modeling and training from religious leaders on how to be content with the mystery of it all, we tend to discount and ignore what we do not understand. And what we do not understand or ignore we amend with traditions and theologies that make sense to us while appearing to be based on scripture. The Jews call this the Oral Law. Christians call it doctrine. No matter what it is called, it comes from the minds of men — not from God.

Lack of complete understanding should not deter us from searching for understanding and applying what we do understand with trust that God will give us more understanding when we are ready for it. In the meantime, we should act on what we do know and not worry about what we do not know. We should not let our limited understanding of literal truth inhibit our understanding and application of spiritual truth. And the main point of spiritual truth that we need to keep in mind is that God is God, and being God he knows what he is doing even when we do not.

This may seem upside down, but in our experience it has happened that we understand a bit of the spiritual essence of a scripture before we have a good intellectual understanding of it. In those cases, we need to step out in obedience, by faith, to do what we think is the right thing to do, as we spiritually understand the right thing to do, no matter how poorly we may understand it with our natural intellect. We do this remembering that God is more concerned with trust and obedience than He is with understanding. Being natural people who put a high value on understanding, however, we think that the understanding should come before obedience and that we need a perfect and complete intellectual understanding of a scripture before we act on the little bit of spiritual knowledge that we think we do have. That is man’s way, but it is not God’s way. His way always requires trust, and we apply trust when we act without knowing fully why we should do what he is telling us to do. There needs to be a measure of risk and uncertainty in our obedience or else trust is not at work guiding our actions.

If we expect that full intellectual understanding is necessary before we do what we think God might be calling us to do in a particular scripture or in life, we are putting our trust in our intellectual understanding and not in God. In such instances, we are effectively walking by sight and not by faith.