The Necessity of Scripture

I live in the Central Valley of California, which is known for its lush green fields and orchards. The fields stretch out toward towering mountains. In spring, the almond orchards are covered with countless delicate almond blossoms that fall to the ground like snow. If it were like this all the time, I think people from the frozen upper Midwest would move here. While we’re enjoying “almond blossom” cruises, the rest of America seems to be shoveling snow. But living here comes with a price, and we pay it every year from July to September. We pay it in the amount we owe the electric company after running our air conditioners nonstop for 12 weeks.

During the summer, another strange thing happens. Our long, flat roads appear to stretch into a hazy, shimmering distance. Your eyes will convince you that up ahead, there is a large pond of water where the road seems to go. It’s impossible, though, because it hasn’t rained in four months. Still, it looks like there’s a lake just below the horizon. By now, you know I’m describing a mirage, an optical illusion created by the heat. But wait! If my eyes can be fooled by what they see, what about my other senses? Have you ever thought you heard someone call your name but no one was there? Or ever felt water running down your leg, even though you know you're dry? The point is, our senses—those tools we use to understand the world—can be wrong. They are usually right, maybe 98% of the time, but it’s those 2% mistakes that lead to misunderstandings. Our senses aren’t perfect, and if they’re faulty, our understanding of the world will be too. This means we can’t know anything for sure if we rely only on our senses. It's like looking through a cracked windshield: you can still see, but the cracks make the view unclear.

Christians have an answer for why things are the way I’ve described. We call it the doctrine of the Fall. Humanity was created to be like the perfect God. But when people chose to follow their own way instead of God's, they “fell” from a good relationship with God and others into a broken one. This fall has affected every part of human life. It doesn’t mean all people are as bad as they could be, but it does mean that every part of life is now damaged. Even our senses don’t give us a true understanding of the world.

So, if we want to know something for sure, it has to come from somewhere outside ourselves. All knowledge we get from our senses is flawed because our senses are flawed. This is why I believe in the importance of Scripture. The source of true knowledge has to come from outside the “fallen” nature of humans and the world. This is exactly what Scripture says about itself. The Apostle Paul wrote to his student Timothy that “all Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16). In 2 Peter, we learn that the authors of the Bible were “moved along by the Holy Spirit.” This means that the Bible writers weren’t just writing from their own experiences; they were writing what God revealed to them. 2 Corinthians 2:11 puts it this way: “So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God…Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.”

Because the Bible is the mind of God, revealed through the Holy Spirit to the writers, it is without error. Therefore, it gives us accurate knowledge of God’s thoughts. This is where true knowledge begins—knowledge that comes from outside our flawed world. It’s different from the knowledge we get from our senses and thinking. But just because Scripture reveals perfect knowledge doesn’t mean we can’t misunderstand it. In fact, because of human pride, people often try to ignore or reject what the Bible says about God (Romans 1:18). This isn’t just a choice; it’s a sign of human nature, as Jesus explains in John 3:19: “Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” This tells us that people deliberately reject the knowledge of God because of their sinful nature.

So, the Scriptures are necessary if we want to know anything absolutely and accurately. With this knowledge as our foundation, we can make accurate observations and conclusions about the world. Even though our senses and minds are still flawed, Scripture helps correct the errors in how we see the world. It’s possible to see things clearly in a flawed world, to know what’s true in a broken world—but only through the lens of Scripture, also known as the Christian worldview.