What if the issue isn’t that the Bible is confusing…
What if the issue is how we’ve been taught to read it?
That’s not a comfortable question, especially if you’ve spent years in church, studying Scripture, and trying to live it out faithfully. But it’s an important one because for many people the Bible feels inconsistent. A number of passages feel irrelevant to the lives we live today. And for many, the "power" we read about doesn’t seem to match our experience So we’re left trying to reconcile what we read with what we don’t see.
Eventually, one of two things happens: 1) we lower our expectations, or 2) we walk away altogether.
But what if neither of these are the right response?
Despite what you may have been taught, the Bible wasn’t written as a rulebook, a collection of moral stories, or even a system of religious obligations.
It was written to reveal something specific: The Kingdom of God.
When you read Scripture without a Kingdom lens, you can understand the words and still miss the message. And this is the problem with how so many Christians interact with the text today.
While I can't speak for everybody, most of us were taught to read the Bible as a flat, linear text, for which all we need as a face value, surface level reading to extract meaning for our lives. But Jesus didn’t teach that way. He taught through imagery, parables... through layers. And even then, people still didn’t get it.
"Seeing, they do not see."
That should tell us something...
You can read Scripture and still miss what it’s actually saying.
Not because it’s hidden from you, but because it requires a different kind of seeing.
One of the biggest gaps in modern Christianity is that we have reduced the Bible to this world, when it’s actually revealing another one. There are two realms—the seen and the unseen—and the unseen is the source of the seen.
This means that authority isn’t symbolic, it’s the functional expression of a higher realm impacting upon ours. Accounts of divine healing aren’t just inspirational stories, but a higher realm impacting upon ours. And to flip this principle, it means that faith isn’t just belief; it’s our realm tapping into the higher realm to access what already exists there!
If you read Scripture as metaphor, you’ll never engage it as reality. You'll live a life beneath your Kingdom potential.
This is where people struggle. We read about all of the miraculous, supernatural things in the Bible, and we either dismiss them because we haven't had such experiences ourselves, or we eager hope for the experiences, while never actually having them.
As a result, we start to wonder:
And the answers are: No and yes, in that order. But what you're missing isn't what you probably think. It's not that you're not trying hard enough. It's that you've been taught to read without learning how to see.
Jesus didn’t just explain Scripture. He demonstrated what it looks like to live from the unseen. He was a model for acting from what He perceived spiritually, for bringing Heaven into earthly situations.
He said, "I only do what I see the Father doing." It's easy to skim past this verse without catching the significance of it. Scripture isn’t just something you read. It's giving you keys for how to participate in what we're reading about. Jesus gave us a key—see what the Father is doing, and then do it!
Imagine the possibilities if we read Scripture on a treasure hunt for these Kingdom keys, and then began putting them into practice!
Not just for information, legislation or instruction. We should be reading it for invitation, inspiration and revelation. This means asking different questions.
Instead of:
Ask:
When you read Scripture differently:
And that’s when things begin to click.
Maybe the Bible isn’t the problem. Maybe the frustration, confusion, and disconnect you may be feeling about it is coming from trying to read a Kingdom book with a traditional, church-shaped mindset.
Believe me. You’re not alone in your frustration. Most people were never taught how to see what Scripture is actually revealing. It's become a rule book and liturgical tool, and that's far below its intended purpose.
Explore deeper Kingdom-oriented relationship with Scripture, and be trained how to read it through a different, empowering lens. Join the Academy now!
Founder, Thy Kingdom Came Academy
Overseer Romell is a theologian and spiritual leader (aka pastor) dedicated to leading people out of tradition and into a transformative relationship with God. He holds a Master of Divinity (MDiv) degree, and has over 20 years of spiritual leadership at the church he founded in 2002, The Sanctuary. His teaching centers on Kingdom theology and justice, helping believers move beyond religious familiarity into the lived reality of the Kingdom, and of their heritage as its citizens.
Romell Parks-Weekly
