Have you ever been reading the Bible when, all of a sudden, WHAM!, you run into a verse, paragraph, or section that straight-up baffles and/or offends? (If you haven’t experienced this, then you’re either a biblical savant or you aren’t reading the Bible much!) When that happens, we only have a certain number of responses available to us: 1) Pretend we totally understand and move on, 2) Admit we don’t understand and move on, 3) Admit we don’t understand and give up, or 4) Admit we don’t understand and dig in.
On this episode of the podcast, Andrew and Josiah discuss strategies for handling, interpreting, and understanding the difficult passages of Scripture. Andrew has recently been writing a series of blog posts on our website in which he models what he does when he, like all of us, arrive at passages of Scripture that seem to confuse.
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Andrew is the Associate Pastor at Oakridge Bible Chapel. He grew up in a Christian home, and spent time serving in churches of varying sizes and denominations before landing at Oakridge with his wife in 2017. He likes to verbally process theological issues he finds challenging and is always ready to learn something new. He has a passion for teaching the Bible, and seeking to explain confusing passages in a clear way, preferably with a good illustration or two.
Josiah has served the Oakridge Bible Chapel family as one of its elders and one of its pastoral staff members since September 2018, before which he ministered as an associate pastor to a local congregation in the Canadian prairies. Josiah's desire is to be used by God to help equip the church for ministry, both while gathered (edification) and while scattered (evangelization). He is married to Patricia, and together they have five children—Jonah, Henry, Nathaniel, Josephine, and Benjamin.