The Wonder of the Bible
The Bible is absolutely amazing! There is nothing else like it.
But it’s not for the reasons I was taught when I was younger. It is so much better than that.
The general impression I got from my early years about the significance of the Bible was that it was special because it was the Word of God* spoken to humanity and written down over thousands of years and perfectly preserved from generation to generation. The impression I had back then was something like God had used people in history like a typewriter to write out letter for letter what God wanted to say. To question anything about the Bible, or to question the interpretations of the Bible being handed down to me, was very near to questioning God and the very foundations of the Christian faith – a thing I was implicitly tought should not be done.
This was all taught by some of the most loving, intelligent and well-meaning people you could ever hope to meet. I am grateful for all of my teachers, but they didn’t get everything right – and neither will I. The truth about the Bible is so much better, so much more alive, and so much less fragile than the view of it I once had. There is nothing else like it!
The Bible is a living, ongoing conversation between God-seeking people and a people-seeking God throughout time, culture, and context.
Let me explain.
Look at the graphic at the top of this post. It is an image of the conversation that is happening within the Bible. It was created by two men, Christoph Romhild and Chris Harrison. They explain:
“The bar graph that runs along the bottom represents all of the chapters in the Bible. Books alternate in color between white and light gray. The length of each bar denotes the number of verses in the chapter. Each of the 63,779 cross references found in the Bible is depicted by a single arc – the color corresponds to the distance between the two chapters, creating a rainbow-like effect.”
This is graphically displaying that this compilation of writings and their authors we call the Bible are actually talking to each other. The closest similarity to anything like this might be a modern hyperlinked internet webpage. Unlike a hyperlinked internet page though, the Bible was written by dozens of different authors over thousands of years from different geographies, cultures, and languages. There is nothing else like this.
And what is this ongoing conversation about? Fundamentally the conversation centers around the relationship between God and people. This central conversation spills over into other sub-conversations like the meaning of life, finance, politics, history, leadership, etc.
The reality of the Bible gets even better. WE get to join in on that conversation. We get to open the Bible, listen in and add our own thoughts, insights, and connections. We get to listen in for God’s voice, the voices and insights of the wise elders who came before us, and share our own thoughts, questions, and even concerns.
Christians all around the world do this regularly, both individually and in groups. So in some ways, when we open the Bible and engage this ongoing conversation between God and people over thousands of years, spanning geography and culture, we are also joining with all the other God-seekers around the world who are doing the very same thing. Some of them we can hear their voices if we want to and they have written books, articles, or made podcasts. Mostly though we can’t hear the billions of other voices, but we know they are there listening in, thinking, and asking questions too. It gives Bible-reading, God-seekers around the world a common language and worldview, even when we’ve never met.
The older I get the more I believe that the Bible is more wonderful than we know. It is a unique and precious gift. And it isn’t fragile. This living, ongoing conversation between God-seeking people and a people-seeking God throughout time, culture, and context isn’t afraid of your questions or concerns. It welcomes them. You and your thoughts are welcome to join in. After all, you are one of the reasons they keep on talking.
*The Word of God, or the logos, reason, logic, or the appeal of God is actually Jesus. See John 1.
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