Bible Students vs. Willingly Ignorant Baptists

...and they never will agree till the end of the world. Literally.

It's so plain and simple. Some people haven't grown up past the baby Christian view of the Bible. They think the whole thing is written directly to them, so they get confused and misapply Scripture.

Only an open-minded student of the Bible will learn that God has written some Scripture TO us, and other Scripture FOR us. The majority of Scripture is written FOR us. We can learn doctrine (and who it's for), history, and spiritual applications from all Scripture. When you study doctrine, you must learn which doctrine applies to us and what applies to someone else. (it's pretty easy to figure out that we're not required to sacrifice goats and bulls in the Church Age). When you study history in the Bible, you get to know God. (history = His Story) When you study the spiritual applications in Scripture, you learn how to live a life that is pleasing to the Saviour.

Most Baptists are still at the baby Christian stage of seeing the Bible. Most of them don't know better. That's fine, someday the Lord may allow someone to come into their lives and teach them how to study the Bible, or a few might be intelligent enough to figure it out on their own.

Then you get the willingly ignorant Baptists. These are the Baptists that have been viewing the Bible the same simple way for SO many years that they can't change. Either that, or they became firmly hardened in their view quickly (like cement... they were soft in the beginning but dried too fast). These rock-hard Christians are completely unwilling to accept that the Bible is deeper than they perceive it to be. They'll tell you that they know they can't understand everything in the Bible, and that it's a deep Book, but their attitude betrays them. These Christians will probably never change and never have the joy of the Lord showing them the deep and amazing things hidden in His Book. Why would He bother with someone who thinks he/she already knows it all, anyway?

As far as I know, there isn't a true Bible student who ever goes back to that baby Christian view of the Bible and "rightly dividing". Once you've matured in your understanding of the Bible, why would you ever go back? That would be as stupid as a high school student in Algebra asking to be put back in 1st grade math.