Disappointed with the Bible

When I finally read the entire Bible for myself, I realized that I wasn’t going to find what I was looking for.

I thought it would be a detailed explanation of Christianity, containing passages on how the church should be organized and a guide to making perfect decisions, among other things.  I wanted to read about this apocalypse I had heard so much about and to learn exactly how theology was supposed to work.

Instead, I found stuff like this:

It was frustrating for me to find out that the pages of the Bible didn’t answer any of the questions that Christianity had raised for me. But eventually the Bible raised its own questions. I noticed that the Old Testament was a beautiful story of God leading his people through difficult times, and loving them when they were imperfect. It’s not supposed to be read as a book of rules, but as a collection of old documents that, as a whole, help us understand who God is.

In the New Testament, a group of Jews who were hoping for a political leader to lead them to freedom were instead visited by a man who taught them to love their enemies and pursue virtue. This wasn’t what they expected. If I was disappointed in reading about Jesus, it’s because I, too, was looking for something else; I finally understood that I was supposed to be living out Jesus’ lessons before asking my own questions. Charity, kindness, and humility became my new priorities, instead of trying to answer every single theological question. (These are lessons that, I’m finding, will take more than a lifetime to learn.)

Am I learning from the Bible’s wisdom, or am I still looking for answers to the wrong questions?