Why Use the Bible to Answer Everything?

Question 0.

Why do I keep going to the Bible for answers when the world is full of other voices? It is a fair question, and it sits right at the heart of everything we do here. Why not simply reach for common sense, or science, or philosophy, or the accumulated wisdom of clever people, when life throws up its hardest questions?

I do not ask this to be awkward. I ask because the habit of turning to the Bible for answers is either the most reasonable thing a Christian can do or a strange piece of stubbornness, and I think it is worth showing you why I am persuaded it is the former. So let me lay out the case as plainly as I can.

Why I Go to the Bible for Answers First

I go to the Bible for answers first because of what the Bible claims to be. It does not present itself as one opinion among many, a wise old book worth a respectful nod. It claims to be the word of the living God. ‘All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness’ (2 Timothy 3:16). If that claim is true, then to put Scripture on the same shelf as every other source is already to have misunderstood it.

Think about it for a moment. If God has actually spoken, then His word is not just the best human wisdom available. It is a different kind of thing altogether, truth from outside the system, from the One who made the system. That is why I do not treat the Bible as a useful supplement to my own thinking. I treat it as the foundation my thinking has to stand on.

So the choice to go to the Bible for answers is not a refusal to think. It is a decision about where thinking should begin. Every person begins somewhere, with some final authority that settles the hard cases. For one it is reason, for another it is feeling, for another the mood of the crowd. Mine is the word of God, and I have never found a better place to stand.

That is not arrogance about my own understanding. It is the opposite. It is the humility of a creature who admits he cannot reason his own way to God and needs God to speak first. Going to the Bible for answers is how I confess that I am not clever enough to be my own light.

The Question Underneath the Question

There is an older question hiding behind this one, and it goes all the way back to a garden. The serpent’s first move was not to deny God but to query Him. ‘Did God actually say?’ (Genesis 3:1). The whole of the fall turns on whether the word of God or the judgement of the creature gets the final say. Eve looked, weighed it up by her own lights, and decided she was a better authority than what God had spoken.

We have been repeating that decision ever since. Every time I set my own reasoning, my feelings, or the spirit of the age above what God has said, I am back in Eden making the same swap. So when I go to the Bible for answers, I am not being intellectually lazy. I am refusing the oldest temptation there is, the temptation to be my own final court of appeal.

That is also why this is not a minor housekeeping matter. The question of where I go for answers is really the question of who is God in my life, the Lord or me. Going to the Bible for answers is a daily way of saying that He is God and I am not, which is precisely the confession Eden lost.

Where Else Would We Go?

When a lot of Jesus’ followers drifted away over a hard teaching, He turned to the twelve and asked whether they would leave too. Peter’s answer has stayed with me. ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life’ (John 6:68). That is exactly the right instinct. The alternatives are not actually better. They are just other voices, and they contradict one another endlessly.

Science is a marvellous servant for telling me how the physical world behaves, but it cannot tell me why I am here, whether I am loved, or what happens when I die. Philosophy asks splendid questions and then disagrees with itself for centuries. Public opinion changes with the weather. None of these can bear the weight of a soul. So when I go to the Bible for answers, it is not because I despise the others, but because only one voice claims to be God’s and backs the claim up.

I have tested the alternatives, as most thinking people do. I have read the philosophers and listened to the experts, and there is real value in much of it. But on the questions that actually keep me awake, none of them speaks with authority, because none of them speaks for God. Only when I go to the Bible for answers do I hear a voice that has the right to settle the matter.

Peter had felt the pull of the alternatives too. He could have followed the departing crowd and saved himself the trouble. But he had tasted something the crowd had not, and he could not unhear it. That is often how it goes. Once you have heard the voice of God in His word, every other voice sounds thin by comparison.

Not Anti-Reason and Not Anti-Science

Let me clear away a misunderstanding, because people hear all this and assume I am asking them to switch off their brains. I am doing nothing of the kind. God has given a real, if partial, witness to Himself in the created world. ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’ (Psalm 19:1), and Paul says God’s eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived in the things He has made (Romans 1:20). I have written about this wider witness in the difference between general and special revelation.

So reason and observation are gifts, and I use them gladly. The point is not that creation tells me nothing, but that it does not tell me enough. It can show me there is a God of power and beauty. It cannot tell me His name, His character toward sinners, or the way home. For that I need Him to speak, and He has. To go to the Bible for answers is to let general revelation send me to special revelation for the rest of the story.

In fact, going to the Bible for answers is the most reasonable thing I do, not the least. Reason itself, left to its own devices, cannot reach across the gap between a creature and his Maker. It can take me to the door. Only God’s own word can open it. So I am not setting faith against reason. I am letting reason do its proper work and then humbly listening when God speaks.

Sufficient, Even Where It Is Not Exhaustive

I am not claiming the Bible answers every question I might ever ask. It will not tell me which job to take or how to fix my boiler. What I am claiming is that it is sufficient for everything it sets out to address, which is everything to do with knowing God and living before Him. ‘His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness’ (2 Peter 1:3). That is a remarkable claim, and I take it seriously. I have unpacked it further in whether the Bible is sufficient for faith and practice.

So when I go to the Bible for answers, I am not pretending it is an encyclopaedia of plumbing and personal finance. I am saying that on the questions that actually decide a life, who God is, what is wrong with me, how I can be put right, and how I should now live, it speaks with complete sufficiency and final authority. On those matters I need no second opinion.

This distinction spares me a lot of foolishness. I do not embarrass the Bible by demanding it answer questions it never set out to address, and I do not insult it by going elsewhere for the questions it answers perfectly. Knowing what to bring to it is part of learning to go to the Bible for answers wisely rather than clumsily.

The Bible for Answers in Real Decisions

This is not theory for me. It is how I try to live. When I face a moral choice, I do not first ask what feels right or what everyone else is doing. I ask what God has said, because His word is ‘a lamp to my feet and a light to my path’ (Psalm 119:105). The lamp does not light up the whole road at once, but it lights the next step, and the next step is usually all I need.

When I am anxious, the Scriptures steady me with the character of God. When I am tempted, they give me something firmer than willpower. When I am grieving, they put words to hope. Going to the Bible for answers is not a cold rule I obey. It is where I have learned to find the One who actually helps.

Over the years this habit has quietly reshaped me. I notice that my instincts have slowly changed, so that I reach for Scripture more naturally than I once did. That is what happens when you go to the Bible for answers long enough. It stops being a duty you perform and becomes a reflex you trust, like a hand reaching for a familiar rail in the dark.

When the Bible Seems Silent

What about the times Scripture does not speak directly to my situation? Here the Bible itself is wonderfully practical. It hands me principles broad enough to cover the cases it does not name, and it gives me the gift of wisdom for the rest. ‘If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all’ (James 1:5). So even where I cannot find a chapter and verse, I am not left to guess in the dark.

I bring the mind shaped by Scripture, the prayer for wisdom, the counsel of godly people, and the providence of an unfolding life, and I trust God to guide a heart that genuinely wants to obey Him. That is still going to the Bible for answers, only now the answer comes through a character the Bible has formed rather than a single proof text.

So the silence is never really a dead end. A believer soaked in Scripture carries its wisdom into the very situations it does not directly mention, and that is by design. God gave us a book to make us wise, not a rulebook to save us the trouble of becoming wise. Even here, going to the Bible for answers shapes the answer I finally reach.

When Other Voices Sound Convincing

I am not naive about how persuasive the other voices can be. A confident expert, a clever book, a friend who seems to have life sorted, can all make going to the Bible for answers feel old-fashioned and narrow. The pressure to defer to the spirit of the age is real, and it is often dressed up as open-mindedness.

But I have lived long enough to watch the confident certainties of one decade quietly abandoned in the next. What everyone knew to be true a generation ago is often an embarrassment now. The word of God does not move like that. ‘The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever’ (Isaiah 40:8). That stability is exactly why I keep coming back to it.

So when a voice sounds convincing, I do not simply ask whether it is clever. I ask whether it will still be standing in a hundred years, and whether it can forgive my sins and raise me from the dead. Tested like that, going to the Bible for answers stops looking narrow and starts looking like plain good sense.

None of this means I stop my ears to everything outside the Bible. I listen to doctors, read historians, and learn from people wiser than me in their fields. But I weigh it all against the word that does not fade, and where they conflict, I know which one has the final say. Going to the Bible for answers does not silence the other voices. It simply puts them in their place.

A Word to the Honest Sceptic

Perhaps you are reading this and you are not yet persuaded the Bible is anything more than a human book. I do not despise that honesty, and I would not ask you to pretend a confidence you do not feel. But I would ask you to do one thing. Do not dismiss the book before you have actually read it and let it speak for itself.

Jesus made a striking promise to those willing to test His teaching. ‘If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God’ (John 7:17). In other words, the proof is in the doing. Come with a genuine willingness to obey what you find true, and you will discover whether this word carries the ring of God about it.

That is how many of us came to trust the Scriptures in the first place. We did not begin with every question answered. We began by going to the Bible for answers honestly, and we found a voice that knew us better than we knew ourselves. The invitation is open to you on exactly the same terms.

And you will not be the first to be surprised. Sceptics far sharper than I have sat down to dismantle the Bible and found themselves disarmed by it instead. There is no risk in reading with an open heart, and there may well be everything to gain.

So, now what?

So why go to the Bible for answers? Because God has spoken, and the alternatives, for all their cleverness, simply cannot do what His word does. They cannot forgive me, they cannot raise the dead, and they cannot tell me with certainty that I am loved. Only one voice can, and it is His.

If you have never really tested this, I would gently dare you to. Take a real question you are wrestling with, open the Scriptures, and ask God to speak. To whom else would you go? He still has the words of eternal life, and He is not in the habit of staying silent toward those who come to Him in earnest.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 (ESV)

For Further Study

If you want to dig deeper into why we trust Scripture as our final authority, the evangelical tradition offers rich help. Charles Ryrie writes accessibly on the nature and authority of the Bible, Millard Erickson gives a careful systematic treatment of revelation and inspiration, and Lewis Sperry Chafer roots the whole discussion in a high view of the written word. For the dispensational framework that shapes how I read Scripture as a unified yet unfolding story, J. Dwight Pentecost and Arnold Fruchtenbaum are worth your time. Read them with the Bible open, and let the word itself do the convincing.