By Timothy D. Holder

            I was working on a study of I Peter chapter one for a Wednesday night service at church, and I remembered something a professor told me in graduate school.  He said that Peter’s letters contradicted Paul’s letters.  The professor based his comment on Peter’s emphasis on holy living by Christians and Paul’s focus on salvation being based on God’s grace.

            The problem with my professor’s point of view was he didn’t take into account everything that both men wrote.  Though Peter stressed holiness, he also made it clear that salvation was the result of Jesus’ sacrifice.  And though Paul focused on God’s grace, which resulted in Jesus’ sacrifice, Paul frequently admonished his readers to stop sinning and instead do things that were good, noble, and pure.  Thus, a careful reading shows that Peter’s books and Paul’s books don’t really contradict after all.

            I think this is worth writing about because sometimes people have problems reconciling certain passages of Scripture, and it makes them nervous.  If the Bible doesn’t all fit together then maybe it isn’t true, these people fear.  Yet they don’t want to go to other Christians with their hard questions because they are afraid to be labeled troublemakers or heretics.  They swallow their questions and try to ignore their fears.  This is not the recipe for a strong and vibrant Christian soul (or a strong and vibrant Christian witness).  They need to see that there are explanations for their issues.

            Perhaps a bigger problem for Christianity, though, is not that Christians are baffled by the complexities of the Bible; it’s that Christians are oblivious to them.  We’re increasingly a culture that doesn’t read.  There are so many external stimuli that entertain us that many people in our culture are out of the practice of reading books.  And this lack of reading extends to the Bible.

            Christians are being entertained into apathy.  This applies to a lot of areas in people’s lives, including Bible reading.  We need to read our Bibles.  And we need to not be afraid to ask questions.