And that causes problems. I would very much like to go back and understand my faith the way it was five or six years ago. It is easier that way. I would like to rely on the simple answers of my past, and there is a strong possibility that I am in great error by not relying on that child-like faith. It feels better not to study these things.
Ignorance is bliss, so the saying goes.
But now I have been pushed out farther than my old faith thought was possible, and I long to see a line drawn in the sand that tells me where I must stop. I am sometimes afraid, however, that that line is behind me, that I have crossed into the profane with no hope for my soul. There is more than one Bible scholar who has lost his faith in graduate school. All this to say that I think we often react the way we do because we are afraid that certain boundaries may be crossed. Most scholars have stopped, or at least pause at chapter 12.