Is common for most westerners to approach the Bible from their own personal perspective of culture and language. We often forget that the Bible was written by ancient Jewish thinkers, not in English but rather in Hebrew and Aramaic for the First Testament and Greek for the Second. Foreign concepts of Middle Eastern lifestyle, traditions, archaic language and idioms of that time period are not easily understood by modern readers today.
The Church has developed a mindset that was passed down by our Greco-Roman Church Fathers. Christians rarely realize that Yeshua, and all of His disciples were speaking and thinking from a Jewish mindset called “block thinking” which is quite unfamiliar to non-Hebrew speakers.
Greco-Roman thinking is based on linear or sequential thoughts. The Greeks taught us to move from point A to point B and come to a calculated conclusion. We have also learned from the Greeks that opposing positions of a matter can’t both be true. However, block thinking is different. Opposite ideas are actually considered in order to derive a conclusion. This kind of “dynamic tension thinking” seems to be contradictory to westerners—which is why so many think the Bible contradicts itself.