Have you ever come across a passage of Scripture that makes you uncomfortable or makes you doubt the fairness of God? Well, I know I have. In the past my natural response, rather than just accepting what the passage says, is to try to bend the Word to fit my own sense of fairness.
For example, in (Deuteronomy 20) God tells the Israelites to wipe out the entire Canaanite nation – and this command was to be total, including children and infants. For years, even after understanding some of the reasons why God commanded this event, I still felt uncomfortable with the destruction of infants. So, what did I do – I tried to look for an alternative interpretation to the clear teaching of Scripture, to fit my understanding of what I thought was an unfair act of God. But even after I began to realize that this was an act of capital punishment and not genocide, for the extreme wickedness of the Canaanites, I still felt the killing of infants was unfair. Today, however, I have learned that God is always fair and I must trust His sense of fairness over mine because He is God, and I am not! In the words of Elisabeth Elliot: “We must quit bending the Word to suit our situation. It is we who must be bent to that Word, our necks that must bow under the yoke.”1
In the case of the killing of infants it is important to remember that God’s justice is always fair and we must remember as Creator, God knows when it is equitable to take the life of a person or nation.
Trying to bend the Word of God to fit our situation or idea of what God should do is very dangerous because it presumes we know better than God what is right. Scripture clearly tells us in (Isaiah 55:8-9): “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
In fact, the Bible is full of things that are hard to humanly understand and things that appear contradictory. For example, how can we fully understand the mystery of the Trinity or how can Jesus be fully God and fully human? Or what about trying to reconcile the sovereignty of God, election, and our human responsibility for our salvation.
My friends if the Scriptures are clear on a doctrinal issue rather than trying to fully understand something that our finite minds can’t grasp or to charge God with being unfair, why not just trust God that in His infinite wisdom He is fair and knows best what to do in every situation. Too often we try to analyze God to death, instead of just loving and trusting Him.
In my opinion one of the greatest proofs that God wrote the Bible is that there are things that our finite minds will never be able to fully grasp because they are being orchestrated by an infinite mind that knows the future and the beginning from the end. Just as a human father doesn’t expect his six-month old baby to understand why he does certain things, he does expect that little child to trust him because of his love and care for him. How much more, therefore, should we, the children of an awesome, loving, and caring God trust Him, even when we don’t fully understand His ways.
So, instead of bending God’s Word, why not just trust it, even when it goes against our human reason, because God knows best. For remember what it says in (Proverbs 3:5-6): “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”