Why We Don't Need to be Ready to Answer Every Biblical Question Thrown Our Way

1 Peter 3:15 "but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you;"

Christians like to prooftext. We are very good at citing specific verses to prove our points. We like this because it is convenient for us to do. It is very easy to pick single verses out of the Bible and use them to support our arguments. However, prooftexting is a very dangerous (and often blasphemous) way of handling scripture.

I used to be guilty of prooftexting, and in all honesty, I probably still do it. I do it because I like to be right, and when we only have to interpret one verse rather than an entire passage, we can get a verse to say whatever we want. Consider this example given by the late Dr. Chuck Nichols on why we should not prooftext: "So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself." "So there was much rejoicing in that city. “Go and do likewise.” (Matt 27:5; Acts 8:8; Luke 10:37b). This short story is comprised of three different verses, and they make a very frightful argument. Now you may read this morbid short story and think "that's absurd!" Yet, people do this every day when they are misinterpret the Bible by prooftexting.

Perhaps the prooftext that I get most frustrated with is the verse cited above, 1 Peter 3:15. Many Christians interpret this verse as needing to know the answer to every question about the Bible, and if they cannot give a sufficient answer, they are therefore a bad Christian. While there is nothing wrong with wanting to be equipped to answer questions about the Bible, or, even at a more basic Bible, wanting to know what the content of the Bible is, Peter is not suggesting that we need to answer every question about the Bible.

Consider the context of the people he is writing to. They are a first century church who, if they are lucky, has a few Old Testament scrolls. They certainly don't have any copies of Paul's letters, and it is likely that the Gospels have not even been written down yet. Owning a personal copy of the Holy Scriptures was such a far-fetched idea because each individual scroll had to be written down and copied by hand. The Bible as we know it today was an entirely foreign concept to Peter's audience. How then could Peter expect the church he is writing to to be able to answer every question about the Scripture?

The short answer is that he isn't. He isn't asking them to give an answer about Scripture at all! So what could he be asking this church to give an answer about?

Proper interpretation of Scripture always involves the context this passage is found in. In this passage, Peter is urging his followers not to be fearful about the suffering that they face, because they have hope in something greater: the hope of Jesus Christ. It is in this context that Peter instructs his audience to "always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you." The defense that his audience are instructed to give is not a defense of Scripture (whether it be the infallibility, the inerrancy, etc.), but rather what it is that they hope in. All Peter is asking is that they keep Christ as their focus in their suffering, for that is what they hope for, doing so with "gentleness and reverence" (v. 16).

So, in short, it is okay to admit that you don't have all the answers about the Bible. I don't have them all. My pastor doesn't (sorry Chris). My professors don't (sorry Cameron, Randy, and Lissa). But I like it that way, because it means that God is bigger than us. It means that God is smarter than us. It stresses God's omniscience, because we know that he knows things that we do not. And it calls us into humility, knowing that we do not have the last word on Scripture.

So as much as I will continue to study Scripture as my act of worship, I am very okay knowing that I will never have all the answers to the questions people bring up. Because of this, it is my hope that the focus will be directed away from what I know to the only being worthy of all our hope, that is, Jesus Christ.