This blog focuses largely on Scripture. Why might that be worth the trouble? This post, which I expect to revise periodically, notes possible answers.

Madeline L’Engle

So what do I believe about Scripture? I believe that it is true. What is true is alive and capable of movement and growth. Scripture is full of paradox and contradiction, but it is true, and if we fallible human creatures look regularly and humbly at the great pages and people of Scripture, if we are willing to accept truth rather than rigidly infallible statements, we will be given life, and life more abundantly. And we, like Joseph, will make progress towards becoming human. (Sold into Egypt)

Thomas Merton

The truth is that the surface of the Bible is not always even interesting. And yet when one does finally get into it, in one way or other, when one at last catches on to the Bible’s peculiar way of saying things, and even more to the things that are said, one finds that he is no longer simply questioning the book but being questioned by it.

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If we approach it with speculative questions, we are apt to find that it confronts us in turn with brutally practical questions. If we ask it for information about the meaning of life, it answers by asking us when we intend to start living? Not that it demands that we present suitable credentials, that we prove ourselves in earnest, but more than that: we are to understand life not by analyzing it but by living it in such a way that we come to a full realization of our own identity. And this of course means a full realization of our relatedness to those with whom life has brought us into an intimate and personal encounter.

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…the understanding of the Bible is, and should be, a struggle: not merely to find meanings that can be looked up in books of reference, but to come to terms personally with the stark scandal and contradiction in the Bible itself. It should not be our aim merely to explain these contradictions away, but rather to use them as ways to enter into the strange and paradoxical world of meanings and experiences that are beyond us and yet often extremely and mysteriously relevant to us. (Opening the Bible)

Simone Weil

For it seemed to me certain, and I still think so today; that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms. (As cited in L’Engle’s And it was good)