I was at a Bible study recently and we were discussing the importance of doctrine. The guy leading the Bible study suggested we get a book called Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem. It's basically a synthesis of what the Bible says about 60 different topics and it's absolutely huge, which to a geek like me is gold dust. I've had Grudem's volume for a few years and it is fantastic, well written and incredibly informative – I would recommend it. But something has been bugging me slightly for a while. Whilst I can't stress how important doctrine is (we need to know what we believe the Bible says about the divinity of Christ, the Church, regeneration...), I can't help asking myself: is that what the Bible actually is? Is it basically a list of doctrines, or a book of proof-texts which we can gather into different categories to help us through life? I'm not convinced.
In fact, I am convinced that the Bible is actually a story, a massive drama, and in order to understand it properly, we need to read it that way. We can't simply be content with cherry-picking verses out of context and pasting them together into some kind of coherent list. The people who wrote the Bible, like most people in the world, thought in terms of a grand story; A story that they were actually part of, which had a beginning, characters, a plot, ups and downs, and a climax. I am convinced that until we start reading the Bible that way, we will be missing out on so much!
So if the Bible is a story, what is that story? In other words, how do you summarize the message of scripture? Let's imagine we ask an average western believer, Grace Christian, to explain the message of the Bible in a paragraph:
God created the world to be perfect, but mankind sinned and was separated from God (so far so good), then erm, something to do with a big flood, a guy called Abraham who had many sons (oh dear), something to do with Israel, er ... battles, there's a law which shows us that we're all bad … oh yes king David was a good guy, but I don't really get what all those stories are for, they were fun in Sunday school though. Anyway, then Jesus comes, dies for our sins and we get to be forgiven and go to heaven when we die!
Ok, that's a massive (and probably unfair) caricature, but I reckon a lot of people can resonate with Grace's confusion (Ok, she's not a real person; I made that up too). That is probably how I would have summarised the Bible a few years ago. Because we don't get how the whole Bible fits together, we get frustrated and confused by the majority of it (particularly the Old Testament). One of my kidsworkers' summarised most people's confusion in a nice pithy statement: “What the heck Dan! We're talking about Isaiah!!!” Is that how you feel when you read the prophets, or 1-2 Kings, or Revelation?
Over the next couple of posts I'm going to briefly summarise what I think the central story of the Bible is. I suppose you could see it as a whistle-stop tour of the Bible. I hope it provokes some of you to read the Bible differently, and maybe those of you who love stories but aren't to sure about doctrine will start to find that you can actually enjoy reading God's word!
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