confused?

I have to say, this class never ceases to frustrate me. (I mean that in a good way) Today as we were discussing the Bible as a "bright shining story," it got me thinking. In the past I have been captivated by how God seems to be making history into a great story, and I have always been taught that the Bible has all we ever need to know, but lately I've been seeing many ways in which the Bible doesn't give us answers. True, I would say that the bible, in it's own way, displays a story. But so much is left out of the Bible, that if it were supposed to be a big manual to life, or some grand story by which we can make sense of our lives, i think it falls short. Perhaps the Bible combined with other things (ex: the Holy Spirit) can do that, but when looking that the scriptures as just a text I don't think it's got all the answers. I was very relieved to her Prof. Leeper saod that he believed that the Bible was designed to raise questions, because for me that's what is has been doing most of the time for me.

The issue of Jesus is a parellel topic. I used to think that Jesus taught people the "truth," you know. But as I've been looking through the New Testament, it seems more like he just came to shake things up. I can't recall any stories where after Jesus finshed preaching, everybody was like "wow, it all makes sense, now i'm a christian!" Most of his teaching seemed not to be telling everybody how to be a christian, but instead focus on deliberately contradicting the peoples' ways of thinking.

I guess now i'm feeling more at peace with this, but at first I felt like "why would God do this?" Like to me, Jesus just seemed like, well, evil, especially in Matthew 13:10-17. Here it seems blatently obvious that Jesus was just trying to confuse people. Just another evidence that I have no idea what God is doing.