Don't Jump to Conclusions !
So what is all of the above about? Hopefully, you took a little time to look it over, and to consider it. Given enough time (about a minute), it should have changed a little from when you first looked at it.
At the very top, is what appears to be a phrase, with the letters partially obscured. Most people who look at that, I assume will make a conclusion of what the phrase says. However, since there is some obscurity, not total revelation, it is possible to assume something that is not true.
We can do this in the Bible. When you looked at the "phrase", did you make an assumption on what was meant - what the meaning was behind the obscured letters? When you did not have "all of the picture", was your assumption correct?
When we read, we do not just perfectly see letters, and perfectly understand. We come to sentences and make judgments, based on things we have learned it the past. It is hard for us to read scripture, without importing our pre-conceptions to it's pages. This is what I am trying to illustrate above.
There was also the little graphic, many people perceive that there is a different shade on letter "b" than on letter "c". That image has a sort of 'context' to it. We perceive two objects, or two parts of one object, and it might appear to us, the the two objects are different, due mostly to the different background. Sometimes we might do this, for example, when comparing scripture of the Old Testament to the New Testament. Sometimes we might be right, and the nuance is different. Good exegesis, takes a lot of things into consideration.
Some people see the Old Testament, and see a lot of rules that need to be obeyed, and might even conclude that salvation depends on following those rules. They might look at the New Testament, and perceive that as having more tolerance, being more relaxed, less rigid, and tend to say it is the 'age of grace', where God forgives us, and the rules are not as important.
In that picture though, when you can compare the two objects to something in common to both (the band of grey overlaid when the image changes appearance), we see that both objects are the same shade of grey.
If we are familiar with scripture sufficiently, we can see that salvation was never earned, not even in the Old Testament. It is the same God in both testaments, and it is His grace that saves his people no matter when, where or who they are.
Finally, there was a paragraph with a lot of "f"s in it. Were you able to correctly spot them, accurately count them? If not, why not. Many people fail to see them all, and count to the low side. They miss a few, because they do not pay enough attention to details, again, making unwarranted conclusions.
So, my point here is "don't jump to conclusions", and try to learn disciplines that help you discover things (in the Bible) that are not always easy to see. You can read the Bible casually, and derive benefit from that, but getting the most out of it, might take a little work sometimes.
(for a little help on exegesis, studying the Bible to get more out of it, see my topic on that!)
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