I’ve heard this question asked a lot and I’ve heard various answers to it throughout the course of my life. This post is intended to encourage you to engage with Scripture in a new way that shines a light on it that ignites a desire to read it, study it, and love it in a life transforming way. To start off, the Bible was not written by God; it did not fall down from heaven, but it was inspired by God and written by the people He chose. Scripture was written by humans, both men and women over a span of roughly 1,500 years, on three different continents—Asia, Africa, and Europe— and the people’s walks of life range from kings and dignitaries, heads of state, important federal government officials, prophets, preachers, teachers. singers, shepherds, fishermen, murderers, adulterers, short-tempered, once unforgiving people, and the list goes on. Whatever sin we struggle with, God transformed someone with that same struggle to communicate who He is and what life with Him is about. All of these people by whom Scripture was written, despite who they were, where they were, or when they lived, were all inspired by the same animating Spirit of Yahweh.
The story of the Bible isn’t pretty though and that’s evident in the people inspired by God to write. The people whom God chose to write Scripture were just like us; flawed and at times fearful, they struggled with sin, and trusting God, they didn’t always have the answers they were looking for in life, but that’s exactly how Scripture depicts life with God. These people didn’t always get God right. They didn’t always follow the path He laid out for them as they should. They didn’t always trust the story of God’s goodness. And that’s part of faith. Faith isn’t something you have, it’s something you do and faith is not linear. The circle of faith looks different for all of us, but for those who have had transformative encounters with Yahweh, we always come back to our starting point: God is faithful and true. The Bible is complex and at times hard to read. It’s filled with stories of people who fail to follow God and they attempt to make things happen on their own. It’s filled with stories of murder, war, sexual abuse and assault, trickery, rivalry, slavery, exile, oppression, racism, classicism, fascism. sickness, death, mental illness, religious corruption, doesn’t the world the Bible depicts sound like ours today? Out of all this ugliness there is a God who wants to rewrite all of that and turn it into something beautiful.
The Bible’s we use today in much of contemporary Christianity in the West is composed of 66 books and is made up of two parts: the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Some Bibles have more than 66 books because they include the Apocrypha. (books written between the ending of the Hebrew Bible and the beginning of the New Testament.) The Bible is a unifying story of God’s plan of redemption and partnership with humanity. The Bible is all about this unique deity we got to know last week whose name is Yahweh and this deity is different in the pantheon of ancient religions in that part of the world. He could speak unlike the other gods. He could act unlike the other gods, and He was alive. This living God is the author of all things and without Him nothing would have been made that has been made. These words are from the opening of the gospel of John, where John described Jesus as not only the Son of God, but as Yahweh incarnate.
A huge question of what the Bible is can be centered around who Jesus is and why He was here. Going back to Genesis, God has been calling different people to partner with Him in His plan for humanity to have unrestricted communion with Him. Each partner He calls fails Him in some way and instead of starting all over again each time someone messes up (because we’re bound to do so), He continues to call different people into partnership with Him. Though they all fail Him, there is a special quality of trust about each person or people He calls that gets us closer to having heaven here on earth, which is God’s plan. Just as early as God is calling people into partnership, He reveals that there will be a human one day who will be a faithful partner in bringing the Kinhdom of God to earth. The New Testament portrays a craftsman turned rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth as that partner. Jesus lived a life honoring God and lived according to the purpose Yahweh had for Him to achieve. What’s lost on so many people is that Jesus was human and in His humanity He wrested with all the feelings, thoughts, and emotions we do, but He mastered them and didn’t allow them to master Him. He didn’t cuss people out when they hurt Him, or try to manipulate responses out of people. He didn’t live one life here and another there. What you got from Jesus was what you got. Although Jesus was faithful, He also faced temptation and He had a choice to make—to follow His own desires and wants or follow Yahweh, even if following Him meant death.
Jesus did not want to die.
But He chose Yahweh over His flesh and that’s what made Him the faithful partner that He was portrayed to be. Jesus trusted that even in death, the story of God’s goodness was true. And that level of faith Jesus lived is the ultimate goal, that even if God brings us to the brink of destruction, He’s still worth trusting. That’s a tough pill to swallow for some and at times myself included, but even if life destroys us, God is able to raise us back up and put us together again. And the Bible is filled with stories that show God’s goodness in light of our ugliness and evil towards Him and each other. The Bible is filled with stories of redemption and emancipation, love, hope, laughter, forgiveness, mercy, reconciliation, multiple chances, miracles, healing, songs, hymns, praise and worship. poetry, resurrection, recovery, transformation, and truth.
So what is the Bible? It’s a quilt. It’s a mosaic. It’s a collection of unique experiences from ordinary people who met the extraordinary God. And He changed everything for them. The people Scripture was written by were a strange group of people with messed up histories, but that’s you and me too. The Bible was written by people who were healed, forgiven, made whole, guided by grace, and inspired by the Spirit of God. The Bible was written by people like us, for people like us, inspired by the God who made us. As messed up as we are, we’re victims of His goodness and mercy. We’ve been chased downs by His love. The Bible tells a story that God matches our ugly with beauty, our evil with good, and our death with His life giving presence. Your life is not too ugly for God to get involved in it. It’s not too bad for God to make something good out of it. It’s not too messed up to help someone else along the way. Go read the Bible and see for yourself.
Until next time, continue to stay guided by grace,
Tra
Guided by Grace 