You can’t go to a church without being aware of the Bible. At every service the Bible is read and quoted and talked about. For Christians the Bible is all-important. So how do we understand what the Bible is?
THREE VIEWS.
View One – It’s all a load of rubbish. Ancient superstitious nonsense from people who were primitive and who believed in God, because they didn’t know any better.
Now today I’m not even going to think about that view. Maybe another time. But I’m going to ignore it simply because Christians obviously don’t take that view!
But there are two other views. And you’ll find there are some Christians who definitely would agree with one or other of them.
View Two – It’s God’s Word – every single bit of it. If something is said in the Bible then it’s just a fact and we need to have faith to believe in it. It’s a record of what God has said. So life is easy – just take the Bible at face value. You don’t need to think and ask difficult questions. And if something is very puzzling or worrying then you just need to have faith. After all, God is bigger than us.
View Three – It’s a record of people’s beliefs and experiences of God. And God speaks to us through these words. God’s word is indeed in the Bible but not every word in the Bible is God’s word. We need to look out for what God is saying. Now that seems a bit harder.
This is my view. And I think that it’s the view that best fits the facts. It might be great to think that God just wrote the Bible word for word, and every word we could just accept at face value. But the reality is different.
There are contradictions in the Bible. For example, at the very beginning of the Bible we have the creation stories. Did you know that there are two different stories? A lot of people don’t know that. In the first, people are created last of all - after the earth and all the animals. In the second, people are created before the animals and Adam is asked to give a name to all the animals one by one as God makes them. Now either people were created before animals or after them. It can’t be both. The two stories don’t join up.
What is God like? – there are contradictions here too. For example, does the same God who loves us and is the greatest Father we could imagine – did that God actually destroy the earth with a flood, and did that God really ask the Israelite people to kill everyone - including women, children and animals in battle? I don’t think so.
Here’s what we need to know.
Humanity is growing up. Just like we all have to learn and grow as we get bigger, there is sense in which as a human family we are on a journey of learning more and more of what it means to be human - to be caring and loving. And we are learning more and more of what God is like. Because God is helping us to grow up as people and God is still speaking. God didn’t stop speaking when the Bible came out. So, we are still learning more and more about being human and about God.
Jesus himself updated the Bible. Jesus would say “You have heard it said..” and he would quote something from the OT. Then he would say: “but now I say to you..” For example the Bible says take an eye for an eye when it comes to getting your own back but Jesus says we should love our enemies. So even in the time of Jesus, parts of the Bible were being updated.
Jesus said some things were more important than others. “What is the most important command?” people asked Jesus in our reading today. Now Jesus could have said: “There is no “most important” command. Everything in the Bible is equally important”. But he didn’t say that. Because Jesus knew that some things are far more important than others.
Jesus said the Holy Spirit would help us to understand what God had to say to us in each generation. Jesus never said to his friends that in the future they would have a book to look up all the answers to their questions. Jesus said that God’s Spirit would help people to see the truth.
So when it comes to reading the Bible, we need God to help us when we read, to understand what God wants to say to us through our reading. We need to remember that every word we read may not be the word of God.
THE PICKING AND CHOOSING DILEMMA.
There are some amazing stories in the Bible. Are they all literally true?
Someone I know who has retired from being a minister but still works as a journalist is Ron Ferguson. He writes every week in the Herald Newspaper and every month in Life and Work the magazine of the Church of Scotland. Recently he was thinking (in that magazine) about the story in the Old Testament where a donkey owned by a man called Balaam suddenly started speaking to him. Ron was considering this question. Did the donkey really speak? “I doubt it” said Ron. According to one annoyed minister, the question should have been “Could God have made a donkey speak?” But that is not the right question at all.
I could tell you that I fell out of a 20 storey building yesterday and I didn’t hurt myself because God helped me. You may say you don’t believe me. Then I say “Oh, so you don’t think that God can do that?”
Just because God may be able to do something doesn’t mean that God has done it.
I am sure that if God can create the world and everything in the world God could make a donkey speak – but I don’t think it’s likely that it happened. It’s not the kind of thing that God seems to do is it?
The stories in the Bible are usually there because they have messages or meanings in them that we can learn from. It often doesn’t matter whether they are literally true or not.
For example, when Jesus tells the story of the Prodigal Son was that a true story that actually happened or a story that he made up? If it was a true story – the point of it is that God’s love does not give up. It it’s a story that Jesus made up – the point of it is that God’s love doesn’t give up. What about the story of the Good Samaritan where the man gets beaten up and different people walk on by? If it’s a true story that actually happened, the point of it is that everyone is our neighbour. If it’s a story that Jesus just told the point is that everyone is our neighbour. In other words, whether these stories are literally true or just stories the meaning behind them is the same.
There are a lot of pretty amazing stories in the Bible. But the Bible is not one book – but a collection of books - and some of the styles of writing are different. Let me give you just two examples of my own personal belief as an example.
Jonah – a story about racial prejudice. I don’t believe Jonah was swallowed by a big fish. (Of course its still a story we can learn from. It’s a story with a message). Easter – I do believe that Jesus was brought to life by God after his death. Why? Because it is the only thing that fits the facts for me. The friends of Jesus were turned from cowards into heroes after Easter. What made that turn around? It was the fact that they had met with Jesus again !
Now there are some Christians who would criticise what I am saying here today. And this is what they would say. “You are just picking and choosing. You are just picking what bits you accept and what bits you don’t”.
Picking and choosing - it’s what everyone has to do. No one takes the whole Bible literally.
Let me repeat that.
No one takes the whole Bible literally.
Even people who say they do. The Bible says that you can’t shave. The Bible says you mustn’t wear clothes made with two types of cloth. The Bible says if you have rebellious teenagers you can kill them. No one takes these things seriously today. I’m sure you’re all glad to hear that!
We all have to ask God to help us when we read and guide us to the truth.
But maybe you are thinking – this is all very difficult. How are we going to know what we should think and what is right and what God is like and what God is saying to us…?
Well there’s some very good news to finish with today. There is a key to it all.
THE KEY TO HELP US.
Have you ever played a game of cards that involves a trump? Or maybe even a game like Top Trumps?
When you have a trump it beats everything. It doesn’t matter what card someone plays. The trump is always the one to win.
Jesus trumps all else. Jesus is the trump. Jesus is God’s most important gift to the world. Jesus - more than anyone (or anything) else shows us what God is like.
So whenever we read the Bible we need to bear Jesus in mind. Jesus says that the most important thing in the Bible is that we love God and love our neighbours. If what we read helps us to do that then that’s fine. If it doesn’t, we need to think again about what we have read.
Jesus is the example that God has given us. If we want to know what God is really like - it has to fit in with what we know of Jesus.
The Bible is so important for us as Christians. The Bible points us to God. But Jesus is the most important of all. And Jesus is the clearest picture of God that we will ever have as long as we live in this world.