Thoughts On: John 5:45-47

Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?"

John 5:45-47, ESV

I took a Bible class during my first semester of college that terrified me. My professor did not seem to believe that the Bible had much to say to us today, and my fragile faith began to break in half as his lectures continued. I stopped praying, I stopped reading Scripture in the mornings, and I told God that I was too exhausted to try anymore. Scripture confused me, and because I loved it so much the fact that it might not be true broke my heart. 

A lot of my theories about the Bible died in my college Bible classes, and I’m glad. I had a lot of ideas about how God worked that were religious, but not Biblical. I believed a lot of things because I grew up believing them, and my college years reoriented me to a new way of life that looked pretty different than what I’d seen in my earlier years. But those classes also fed into a lie that I had been believing since before I can remember: Scripture doesn’t add up. 

I had a hard time believing the Bible as I grew up. I doubted a lot of it, and what I didn’t doubt I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around, anyways. It wasn’t until I turned 18 and God turned those words into a soothing balm for my broken life that I began to think they were truly anointed. A paradox crept into my life: I did not always believe Scripture, but somehow I was falling in love with it.

The truth is that most of the time I still don’t understand Scripture. But I know, now, that all Scripture points to Christ. Jesus is the resolution to all the mystery, the redemption in all the pain. He is the living, breathing, tangible proof of Scripture’s words, and he is the one I fell in love with as I read those pages. The Old Testament leads straight into the new, and Jesus himself said it clear - it is all woven together. That is why I believe. I believe because it takes faith, and because I think that Scripture is the fairytale we’ve all been looking for. It is the magic that fills our lives with wonder and hope and everlasting love, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.