March 3rd, 2026

By Rebecca Vickery


Have you ever taken the time to read through the entire Bible?  I’ve been told recently that this isn’t something most Christians do.  The idea of this fascinates me, because ever since I became a Christian at the age of 16, I have not stopped devouring it.  I went through some time where I was reading it less, but I have read through the entire Bible cover to cover multiple times, so the accusation felt incredibly false.  We Christians also don’t tend to think about the Old Testament—or so I’m told.  It is rife with things that we cannot comprehend.  

I kind of agree with that last part.  It does contain many many things I do not understand.  The God of the Old Testament (I know, same God) hands over victories over civilizations that those who dare to judge God will call unreasonable.  Of course, if you take the time to read or listen to the Bible in context, He talks to the Israelites about not committing the same crimes as the people who were there before them.  The list of offenses is quite impressive, and I find myself aware of the fact that God created the world, and that He has the right to put an end to the horrible offenses that they are committing in whatever way He sees fit.  

Nevertheless, it is understandable that someone who does not know God would find the God of the Old Testament, well, incomprehensible.  And yet, God makes himself knowable.  We no longer have to look to prophets to hear from God.  Instead, there is a bridge between heaven and earth that happened in the birth of a Savior.  The God that we failed to comprehend throughout the Old Testament, the Author of all creation suddenly enters the scene and all of our preconceived notions must be put aside.  The unknowable God (who told us he was knowable) is suddenly up close and very much personally in our space—our world.  

Every question that I have about who God is can be answered in the person of Jesus.  When God talked to Abraham in Genesis, I saw his warmth and his compassion.  When we see Jesus talking to almost everyone, we see the same thing.  Atheists who decry how the God of the Bible is unjust fail to account for Jesus.  The same people who take issue with the treatment of women in the Old Testament cannot explain away Jesus’ actions with the woman at the well.  Jesus’ behavior and words were revolutionary.  He set the standard for everything we know.  

It is seemingly easy for people to cherry pick verses out of context from a modern standpoint.  But where do we get our moral outrage?  If we have no basis for right or wrong, how do we declare what is or is not?  We falsely assume that the world that we live in provides the proper lens through which we can make our assumptions, but the world we live in has been influenced by Jesus for over 2000 years.  Our modern sense of justice is infused by a history of Christian thought.  So when we declare that we know better because we’re so beyond Christianity, we’re beyond the need for a Savior, we fail to recognize the redemption that has already taken place by our democracies and our republics because of God’s law, because of Christ’s redemptive work.  
That is not to say that Christians have always been responsible for faithfully handling God’s ways throughout the past two millennia.  Religiosity and disobedience have a way of influencing things that isn’t pretty.  Crusades, witch hunting, killing off scientists, fear mongering remains a chief way to influence even the most devout people and setting them on the wrong path.  But many of our most revolutionary thinkers were Christians.  

The abolition of slavery came about with the biblical understanding that loving our neighbors as ourselves doesn’t allow for enslaving others.  (Yes, I know that the old testament allowed the Israelites to take slaves from conquered nations, but they also had strict rules for care that set them apart from other nations.)  Christians were given instructions for how to treat their slaves (most of whom were more like indentured servants who were paying off debts by their servitude).  But Christians led the charge on emancipation and freedom for all.  

Jesus is the driving force behind the good and goodness in our customs, in our marriages, in our homes, etc.  Subjugation of women becomes a thing of the past.  The Bible tells women to submit to their husbands, but shortly before, it tells us to submit to one another.   It tells men to love their wives as Christ loves the Church.  It sets the highest standards.  

Jesus tells us to love our enemies, to bless and not to curse them.  It tells us how to treat outsiders.  The Samaritans were constantly being looked down upon by the Jews, and yet Jesus speaks to a Samaritan woman and offers her living water—himself—and she goes off and becomes one of the earliest evangelists.  He tells one of his followers a story about the Good Samaritan to show that what they think of as their neighbor is too narrow a margin.  Revolutionary stuff.  

Even today, when people see the crazy things happening in the news, they don’t say, “Oh that Jesus, he’s stirring up trouble in his followers again.”  They say, You guys aren’t acting enough like Jesus.  So many people can take issues with his followers, but with Jesus himself, they need to write him off as a good moral teacher to reconcile their lack of responsibility towards him, but they cannot criticize Him beyond that.
Here’s the missing piece.  Jesus is God in the flesh.  He is the one making the Father known to us.  He is the One reminding the prodigal that he can return home and be welcomed.  He’s the One reminding us that God is not just the God of the Jews, but the God of the gentiles also.  He’s the One telling the prodigal’s brother that he can ask him anything as well.  He’s the One chastising and calling out the religious rulers for making it too hard for people to come to know the Father.  He’s the One casting out demons and healing people.  He’s the One setting the captives free and breaking down barriers to our relationship with God.  He breaks the idea that God is unknowable and makes a way for us to know Him personally.  He surrenders his place in heaven to step down into a corrupted and broken world to establish his kingdom and to ultimately die on the cross to reconcile us to him.  He DID what we could never do.  But he also conquered death, rendering it powerless over us.

Jesus reconciles that which I do not understand about God from the Old testament in such a way that I can wait to ask him about those things when I meet him face to face.  I can reconcile what the Old Testament was not fully able to convey.  

My hope is in Him.  My life is in Him.  Jesus said that he IS the way, the truth and the Life and that no one comes to the Father except through Him.  John 14:6 (paraphrased) All to Jesus I surrender.  All to him, I freely give.  Whatever I do not understand, I submit to his hands.  When politics don’t make sense, when things are not harmonious and righteous, when my friends are arrested without just cause, when there is disunity, I can have peace that passes understanding because I don’t need to know what God is doing in a movement, in an era, because I know Jesus.  I know the unknowable God.  I know that He is just and that He will bring about justice.  And I can rest in this knowing.