Words on a page or words of truth?
This thought has been one burning in my mind for a little while now, because it is a thought that is going to become super important with a middle school daughter. And to be honest this next season of life for her, I am excited for! She is smart and dedicated and strong and powerful. My prayer and thought for her, is what will she do with all of that in her life?
So as we begin this thought, I want to say that I believe the Bible, whether you believe it or not, can be boiled down to this:
” In the beginning God created……..” Genesis 1:1a
Those five words can dictate the way that we read the Bible, interact with the Bible and even allow the Bible to interact with our hearts, minds and souls.
” All scripture is God breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God, may be complete, equipped for every good work.” – 2 Timothy 3:16 – 17
The graphic above, you probably have seen floating around your social media feeds over the last few months. It is a graph that shows in detail the cross references of the Bible in its entirety. Not just a few of them but all the references that are used in the bible. As one pastor put it, ” if this was the work on one man, we would think that he is the greatest composer of all time. But in reality, the scriptures were written by over 40 people and over 1500 years of history…” The graph shows that there are 63,779 cross references in scripture.
To be honest with you, this thought is one that over my entire life span I have never asked, is the Bible real or is it just a group of made up stories? I have never once asked myself, why do I believe what is written in these pages? Why do I continue to study these scriptures throughout my life?
The answer……because I believe the first five words of the Bible are true.
I believe that God created the earth and sky and space and heaven and stars and trees and oceans and waters and animals and birds and humans. I believe that when in the garden of eden when humans were left to their own choices, we made the wrong one which brought separation from God who created us to be with him in His creation. I believe that God then set humans, his creation, apart from the rest of creation to be the key piece to reconciling his creation back to Himself. I believe that God used fallen humans to be spokesman for Himself by giving the words of the Bible to men and woman to write down and be taught and remembered and passed down. I believe that God used his creation to send his Son Jesus down to earth to live a life that is worth of emulating and following because that is the way Grace was given to anyone who will listen and believe. I also believe that without the Bible, Christianity would not have a guide that is living and breathing and interacting with minds, bodies, hearts and society….even when society doesn’t know it.
The Bible is the story of God and God’s people. God’s people in the Old Testament being the nation of Israel and in the New Testament we learn that the people of God are not just limited to one group but to any and all that will listen and believe and turn back to God. God working through his creation, even though fallen and separated from Him due to sin, to bring his creation back to himself.
Does the Bible have some crazy stories inside the covers, absolutely! A man being swallowed by a fish and then being spat out in the exact place that he needs to be, or how about the story of a king that is transformed into a donkey because he makes some dumb decisions, or what about the stories of kings going to war for the soul purpose of covering up the fact he slept with the wrong person. The Bible is full of stories that are crazy to the reader, especially when you read in the book of Judges that a man took his concubine and cut her up and sent pieces of her to all over the world at the time.
But here is the key – In the beginning God Created.
There are lots of holy texts in the world, whether it is the Qur’an, the Dhammapada of Buddhism, The Tanahk of Judaism, The Rig Veda of Hinduism, the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible and even the book of Mormon.
Holy texts can be found in all religions across the world. The genuine question that comes back to any written scripture or literature for a religion is…..
Do you believe it?
Whatever the holy text is….that is always the baseline question.
For me, the Bible in all of the craziness and all of the cross references and even the things that I do not fully understand points me this:
A love God, that created everything so that his creation can be perfect with Him. And throughout the 2 canons of the bible, we read God’s story of constantly loving, forgiving, rebuking, teaching, drawing closer, grace-giving and in the end, defeating the power of Sin to give his creation the ability to come and reconcile their relationship with Him. For me, the first five words of the Bible are true. Which means everything else in the Bible, whether I understand them or not, I will wrestle and interact and allow God’s Spirit to work in my life through the study of the Bible and allow me to extend that love and grace that I learn to those around me as I become more like Jesus reaching out to introduce others to Jesus.
Might be the least amount of Bible usage to have a thought on the Bible, but scriptures are something that you have to interact with and come to your own conclusion on whether or not to believe it or whether or not you pick and chose and only believe what you want to believe.
The Bible is full of hard lessons and ideas to comprehend and demonstrations to follow, but that is also why this journey of following Jesus to be reconciled with God in the work of the Spirit is not one that comes to an end or a finish line. It is a journey that will be forever long and however you run the race, the Bible will never change, just like its heavenly author will never change and just like its main hero will never change and just like the love, grace and mercy that is free to anyone who will listen will never change.
The Bible is the written word of God, and God breathed the words into over 40 different people to write the story of how God wants to reconcile his creation to himself. The Bible is the lifeblood of the Christ follower and the authority in which we should live and direct our lives.