my questions and biblical answers

i grew up with the mentality of "if you have a question you will be able to find the answer in the Bible."
well as i became older it was finally time to look all these answers up in scripture. and for the majority of my questions i did find answers. but there were still other questions that i had that the answers were not scripted out in front of us. or the answers became really vague.

we have the answers of "love the Lord with all your heart and to love your neigbor as yourself." this helps us put things in perspective of who or what is the most important. i also have the answer that "God created the heavens and the earth." but i dont have the answer of exactly how or when that came about. we have the answers of "do not murder," but we do not necessarily have the context of what this means pertaining to capital punishment, suicide, abortion or euthanasia.

we have come to the assumption that if we just follow scripture then we are doing God's will. but how can i follow scripture if there is not necessarily something written on certain idea's? how can i know the best case scenario? in college they told us there are 4 things that we can figure these questions out. the first being scripture. well we know that scripture is and should be the first thing we go to. but after this we can go to what does the tradition of the church say?

the more and more i look at something from the perspective of the body of Christ i see that not all churches agree with all the answers to the questions. (now i want to assure all of you that are reading that what i am discussing right now are the minor's of the church so i do not want to get to bent up on them because they are not essentials for salvation. but rather i am just trying to figure out God's heart on these issues.) or the fact that some churches do not actually have a statment pertaining to some of my questions. so i go on the quest of talking to people asking them what they think is black and white. and then trying to decipher if i am just going to have to live with the idea of there being the chance that there is a lot more gray areas then i desire.

i am one that likes being told how it is and how things should be done. it is a lot easier to figure out an assignment if there are instructions and it is a lot easier to drive the quickest route from point a to point b when you have directions.

unfortuantely life is not all cookie cutters and mapquests. but rather sometimes to get the answer we have to work out the problem on paper. we can try and figure it out but sometimes we have to settle for the unknown.

the bible is still the first place i look for answers and will always be direction i head first but i am realizing more and more the third and fourth places to look for answers are a vital part because we might not be able to find them in scripture or tradition of the church. but rather we must look in reason and experience. experience takes our lives on a journey to show us the answers. reason can take all that we gather over those experiences and shows us how we can learn from them and try to decipher what exactly God's heart is on these issues.