Feb 15, 2025
Dave Myers
Everyday Faith
Of all the novels that I’ve taught to students over the years, “To Kill a Mockingbird” is absolutely
one of my favorites. Harper Lee weaves a beautiful tale with the main character, Scout, a ten-year-old girl growing up in the South with a complicated situation involving racism. Her father, Atticus, is a white lawyer representing a black man accused of a horrific crime that just isn’t true. The town is in
an uproar over the case, and little Scout is caught in the middle of the town’s racial battles.
As she struggles to sort it all out, she turns to Atticus for advice with all the noise of the situation her family is living through. Atticus, rated the number one literary hero of the 20th century, tells his daughter, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
This line is not only a profound line for Scout in the story, it’s one that I would use time and time again to try to help my students figure out texts that seemed distant or unrelatable to them. Instead of reading a story through their modern eyes, I regularly encouraged them to think of the stories we read through the eyes of the characters who were involved. If it was Julius Caesar, try to think like a Roman. If it was Heart of Darkness, think like a European colonist or a native inhabitant of the Congo. The point is that understanding increases by associating with the characters in the story.
I believe this to be absolutely true throughout all of literature, but with one possible exception.
Reading scripture is no ordinary story. It’s God’s story that reveals his plan for us from start to finish.
I do think that it’s worthwhile thinking about what King David, Moses, Nehemiah, the early disciples, and Paul among many other biblical characters would have been thinking in their encounters with God. They each had a specific context to navigate, and the Bible does span different regions, customs, time periods, and languages. There’s a lot to try to take in when reading scripture.
But, the one area that I’ve discovered where I am absolutely ill-equipped to try to put myself into is God’s position in these stories.
Just as an example, you’ll often hear people in daily life discussing how an organization operates, and people will say things like “If I were the manager in that situation, I would….” OR “If I were the CEO of that company, I would….” OR “If I were that coach, I would….”
You see, our attempt to assimilate with people’s positions often puts us in a place where we question the decisions that are being made by someone in a position of authority. Our attempted assimilations often portray us as having the knowledge that would make everything just right for a given situation.
But, the reality is that we often don’t have the expertise or the background even needed to know why certain decisions were made. It’s not that questioning in and of itself is a bad thing, but it’s about knowing what our role is.
As a student of the Bible, it’s perfectly fine to ask questions about why God did certain acts throughout his story. However, are we legitimately asking God questions where we lean into him and through the Holy Spirit, we are given discernment that helps us understand what he was doing? Or are we asking questions that actually impose, “If I were God, I would have…”?
The first type of question comes from a humble spirit who is seeking to know God at a deeper level while giving honor to God for the position that he holds.
The second type of question comes from a place of arrogance, where we are asserting that in our infinite wisdom, we would have had a better solution to a problem than what God offered. This position stands on dangerous ground.
I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t take me real long to figure out that I’m not God. I don’t have all the answers — not even close.
It’s perfectly fine to ask questions of God, but do it in a spirit of wanting to learn from him, and not one where we are backhandedly accusing God of not knowing what he’s doing.
It’s his story after all, and one thing I do know is that the author of the book is the one who gets to write it.
“…let us run with endurance…looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith…” Hebrews 12: 1-2 (NKJV)
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