"The Bible says it, and that settles it!"

So my friend and I were talking about the meaning and nature of language over a bowl of red curry today, and I said something to the effect of, "It makes me nervous sometimes when I hear people pick up their Bible, read a short story or a couple of verses, and matter-of-factly say 'The Bible says ____, and that settles it.' We're so far away from the cultural context of the New Testament at the least, not to mention the range of cultural settings in the Old Testament, that if it weren't for the sovereign and active work of the Holy Spirit and all the elements of common grace, it would be very difficult for the Bible to mean anything to us at all."

As I was cleaning my room up a little bit, and even as I am writing this, I think that I had overplayed in my mind the enormity of the influence of such a cultural divide and downplayed the extent of the Spirit's work and of elements of common grace in any and every age and culture. The Spirit has in fact been at work both in the academy and on the streets and in the jungles to enlighten and to teach, to open up the Scriptures as Jesus did on the road to Emmaus, and to cross cultural divides as Paul did on Mars Hill. Truth is not out of reach for anyone to receive and believe, even though our hands are not so big as to hold it all at once.