How should Christians handle difficult or troubling passages in the Bible?

Every honest Bible reader eventually reaches a passage that troubles them. Maybe it’s a war narrative in Joshua that seems shockingly violent, an imprecatory psalm asking God to shatter enemies’ teeth, a law in Leviticus that feels foreign and harsh, or a New Testament instruction that cuts hard against modern sensibilities. These moments can feel destabilizing, especially for newer believers who expected the Bible to feel comfortable and affirming on every page.

It helps enormously to know upfront that this experience is common, even among mature, lifelong believers, and that it doesn’t signal a defect in your faith. Wrestling honestly with hard texts is part of taking Scripture seriously rather than skimming it. The question is not whether you’ll encounter difficult passages, but how to handle them well when you do.

Many apparent difficulties dissolve, or at least soften considerably, once a passage is read carefully in its full historical, literary, and canonical context. A troubling command given specifically to Israel in a unique moment of redemptive history, for instance, is not automatically a timeless command for Christians today; understanding where a text sits within the Bible’s larger unfolding story matters enormously (2 Timothy 2:15).

It also helps to ask basic questions: who is speaking, and are their words being reported or endorsed? What genre is this—historical narrative, poetry, apocalyptic vision, wisdom literature? The imprecatory psalms, for example, are inspired prayers expressing raw, honest anguish before God about real injustice, not divine commands for believers to curse their enemies; reading them as prayer rather than instruction changes how they land entirely (Psalm 139:19-22; Romans 12:19).

A time-tested principle for handling difficult texts is letting clearer passages illuminate less clear ones, rather than building an entire theology on one obscure or troubling verse in isolation. Peter himself acknowledged that some of Paul’s writings contain things ‘hard to understand,’ which untaught and unstable people distort, urging believers instead to grow in grace and knowledge rather than twisting difficult texts to fit their own agenda (2 Peter 3:15-18).

This means comparing a difficult passage against Scripture’s clear, repeated themes: God’s holiness and justice, his patient mercy, his consistent character across both Testaments (Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8). A reading that makes God contradict his own revealed character elsewhere in Scripture should prompt you to reexamine your interpretation, not to conclude that Scripture itself is unreliable.

Struggling with a hard passage entirely alone often magnifies doubt unnecessarily. Bringing honest questions to a pastor, a trusted commentary, or a mature believer you respect can provide historical background, language insight, or simply the reassurance of someone else who has wrestled with the same text and come through with faith intact. The Bereans searched the Scriptures together, testing teaching communally, not merely in private isolation (Acts 17:11).

It’s also worth remembering that difficult passages have been studied carefully for thousands of years by serious scholars across many traditions; while not every question has a fully satisfying answer, thoughtful, faithful responses exist for the vast majority of common objections, and consulting good resources can save you from reinventing every wheel alone.

Some genuine mystery will always remain, and that’s appropriate for finite creatures reading the words of an infinite God. Moses told Israel plainly that ‘the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us,’ acknowledging openly that some matters remain beyond full human comprehension even while what God has revealed is entirely sufficient and trustworthy (Deuteronomy 29:29).

This isn’t a call to blind faith divorced from reason; it’s an invitation to the same posture of trust you already extend to a good, wise friend whose full reasoning you don’t always see but whose character you know well. God has proven his trustworthiness supremely at the cross, where his justice and mercy meet completely (Romans 5:8). Let that settled confidence in his character carry you through the passages you haven’t fully worked out yet, trusting that the God who gave you Scripture is also patient enough to walk with you through every hard question it raises.

Give yourself permission, too, for this to be a lifelong process rather than something you must resolve in a single sitting. Many believers who once found a passage deeply troubling later came to see, after years of growth, further study, and honest wrestling, that the difficulty said more about their own limited vantage point than about any flaw in Scripture itself. Keep reading, keep asking, keep bringing your honest questions to God in prayer as well as to trusted teachers, and let your confidence rest not on having every answer figured out today, but on the proven character of the God who has never once failed to keep his word.