Why Doesn't the Bible Always Make Sense to Me?

The Bible was written in a different time, a different culture, and a different language. When you read it through a 21st century Western lens, some things are going to feel confusing or disconnected. That is not a faith problem. That is a lens problem. And the good news is, lenses can be cleaned up.

You open your Bible expecting clarity. You know the stories. You have heard them your whole life. And yet sometimes you walk away from a passage feeling more confused than when you started, or like you are missing something you cannot quite name. That is more common than you think. And it is not because you are not spiritual enough or not studying hard enough. It is because you are reading an ancient text through a very modern, very Western, very 21st century lens. And those two things do not always translate cleanly.

How Much Has Culture Changed Just in the Last 20 Years?

Let me show you what I mean about culture changing, because this matters more than we realize when we sit down with Scripture.

In 1999, Destiny's Child released a song called Bugaboo. The hook included lines about throwing a pager out the window, telling MCI to cut the phone poles, and putting a number on the call block. Now try explaining those lyrics to a 13 year old today. What is a pager? What is MCI? What is cutting the phone poles? That was just 20 years ago, and already the cultural references in that song are almost unrecognizable to a younger generation.

Now think about the other things we take completely for granted. The microwave came out in 1967. The first TV in the late 1920s. Netflix launched in 1997. The cell phone was 1973, and it looked nothing like what you are holding right now. Two years ago most of us were going to an actual office to work, and now we have been sitting in the same seat at home for years. Culture changes. Faster than we realize. And every time it changes, so does the lens we bring to everything we read, including God's Word.

Does Language Create Foggy Lenses Too?

Absolutely. And English is one of the trickier ones to navigate, even for people who grew up speaking it.

Take the word clip. It can mean to cut something apart, like clipping a coupon. And it also means to bind things together, like a binder clip. Same word. Exact opposite meanings. That is called a contronym, a word that contradicts itself. We use these all day and never think twice about them because we have context. But someone learning English from scratch? They are going to be confused.

Then there are idioms. It is raining cats and dogs. Literally, what? That is a piece of cake. So the interview was a dessert? As a native English speaker, you filter those automatically. But someone without that background is going to take those words at face value and come up with a completely different meaning than what you intended.

Now take that same challenge and apply it to reading Scripture. The Bible was originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. It was written in ancient Near Eastern culture where the customs, the social hierarchies, the economic structures, the family systems, the religious practices were all radically different from anything we know today. When we read it, we are not just translating language. We are translating culture. And we do not always know what we do not know.

What Does This Mean for How We Read God's Word?

It means that sometimes what feels confusing in Scripture is not actually confusing. It is contextual. It makes complete sense in the original setting, but without that context, our Western lens fills in the gaps with our own assumptions. And that can change what we think a passage is saying.

There is a book called Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes that digs into this in a really powerful way. The whole premise is that we bring assumptions to the text that we do not even know we have. Things like individualism, privacy, personal achievement, our specific relationship with wealth and debt, all of it colors how we interpret what we read.

This is not a reason to distrust God's Word. It is actually a reason to go deeper into it. To read more than one translation. To study the historical context. To sit with passages longer instead of pulling quick conclusions. To be humble enough to say, maybe there is something in this text I am not fully seeing yet.

Proverbs 18:13 (NKJV) says, "He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him." That applies to how we interact with people, and it applies to how we interact with Scripture. Hear it fully before you decide you understand it.

Work reading the same passage in multiple translations. Work curiosity over conclusion when something in the Word feels confusing. And work the humility to consider that the lens you bring to Scripture might be leaving some of God's revelation on the table.

Take this to the Word yourself. Proverbs 18:13, 2 Timothy 2:15, Psalm 119:18, Hebrews 4:12.

What This Means for You

Is there a passage or a teaching from Scripture that has always confused you or felt disconnected from your life? What might it look like to approach it with fresh eyes and a different lens?

This continues the Our Foggy Lenses series. Last time, we looked at why our unique lenses shape every relationship we are in. Next, we will talk about why following God often feels like you are swimming against the current, and why that tension is actually a sign you are reading the Word correctly.

I teach God's Word weekly inside the SheShed Community, and this is exactly the kind of teaching that hits different when you're in the room for it. The replay of this teaching, "Our Foggy Lenses," is available inside the community as well. Come sit with us.