We begin our look at the various forms (genres) present in the Bible by looking at narrative, because it is probably the most familiar to us.

Biblical narrative is best understood as a purposeful retelling of historical events. It is a story, designed to be told (not read) and remembered, but one that is historical rather than a fairy-tale. Narrative is the most common biblical genre. It is also the most similar to what we use today, as it is in many ways similar to a movie or a TV drama. In fact, many of the biblical narratives have been made in to blockbuster movies or theatrical productions e.g. The Ten Commandments, Joseph and his Technicolor Dreamcoat, Esther and various incarnations of Jesus’ life and times.

From an early age most of us have been indoctrinated with various story-telling conventions: “Once upon a time… they all lived happily ever after.”; the concept of a narrator; interior monologue (i.e. hearing a character’s thoughts) etc. Hebrew narrative has its own distinct characteristics, some quite similar to our own, some not. Here are some of the common features of Hebrew narrative:

• Narrator: The narrator tells the story, and is responsible for establishing the point of view. Most commonly in the narratives in the Bible the narrator is not identified. In the end, however, it is the narrator’s point of view that gives us our best clue as to God’s point of view on the events being retold.
• Scenes: Hebrew narrative is ‘scenic’ (i.e. made up of, and driven forward by, many ‘scenes’), much like a modern day movie or TV drama. Each scene has its own integrity, but it is the arrangement of them that tells the story.
• Characters: Unlike modern literature, Hebrew characterisation tended to have very little to do with physical appearance. More important are things like status (e.g. wise, wealthy etc.), profession (baker, carpenter etc.) and tribal affiliation (a Benjaminite, an Amalakite etc.). Characters often appear in contrast or parallel. For example, in 1 Samuel we receive a clear contrast between two Kings: Saul and David. Similarly in the book of Esther, Mordecai and Haman are shown to be opposites.

Because they are so similar to what we are used to, it is easy to fall in to treating biblical narrative the way we would treat any other story or history that we might read. It should be noted that biblical narrative:

• Doesn’t usually teach doctrine, although it often illustrates doctrine taught elsewhere.
• Records what happened, not what could or should have happened. We can’t necessarily take what we read as being an example for us to follow. e.g. in Judges 6:36-40 Gideon looks for guidance by laying a fleece outside overnight and interpreting the way the dew fell (or didn’t) on it to be an indicator of God’s will. Some have taken this to mean that we, too, should set out our own spiritual ‘fleece’ – “If someone from Wollongong calls this week it means God wants me to take a job down there”, “If she says yes then it was obviously meant to be,” or even “If iTunes pops out Michael Jackson on shuffle then God is saying I should go out dancing”! Looking at the story more closely, however, leads us to recognise that God answered in spite of Gideon’s lack of faith – after all, who needs signs like that when they’re already talking face to face with God¹?
• Doesn’t always tell us whether described events were ‘good’ or ‘bad’. We must work this out for ourselves, based on what is taught elsewhere. e.g. readers of 2 Samuel 11 won’t find a statement saying, “In committing adultery David did wrong,” but are instead expected to know because it is explicitly taught elsewhere².
• Doesn’t always have a ‘moral’. In this way narratives are different to parables, which always have a point that the listener is supposed to learn from.
• Doesn’t necessarily give all the relevant details. What is given is what the inspired author thought important for us to know.

How not to read Biblical narrative

Here are some of the most common errors of interpretation:

• Allegorising: This is where, instead of focusing on the clear meaning of the text, people instead decide that it is merely reflecting some other meaning beyond the text.
• Decontextualising: This refers to taking a given narrative out of its historical and literary context and studying it in isolation. This leads to us missing interpretational clues, and hence to some very strange interpretations indeed.
• Selectivity: Similar to decontextualising, selectivity involves focusing on particular words and phrases and ignoring the overall narrative. As an extreme example, one preacher reportedly argued that women should never wear their hair up in a topknot (i.e. a ‘bun’) because the Bible says “topknot go down” (“Let him that is on the housetop not go down”³ )!
• Moralising: This is the assumption that all passages contain some sort of principles for living. The narratives were written, however, to show the steady progress through history of God’s plan for redemption, rather than to illustrate principles.
• Personalising: Reading Scripture in a self-centred way, believing that certain or all parts apply to you in a way that they don’t apply to everyone else. e.g. “The story of David and Goliath is God’s way of telling me that I must overcome my own giants.”
  

  It is our conviction that the primary reason Christians have often read the Old Testament narratives so poorly, finding things that are not really there, is… the tendency to “flatten” everything because they assume that everything God has said in his Word is thereby a direct word to them. Thus they wrongly expect that everything in the Bible applies directly as instruction for their own individual lives.⁴

• Misappropriating: Using a text for purposes that are quite foreign to the narrative. e.g. ‘fleecing’ God as described above.
• Falsely appropriating: Reading into the text ideas that come from our contemporary culture that are utterly foreign to the text and context. e.g. some read 1 Samuel 20:41 where Jonathan and David “kissed each other” to mean they had a homosexual relationship. In reality, however, their relationship was one of covenant – read the next verse “Jonathan said to David, ‘Go in peace, for we have sworn friendship with each other in the name of the LORD'” (42).
• Falsely combining: This is taking elements from here and there in a passage, even though they are not connected in the narrative itself, to make a point that isn’t there.
• Redefining: This is where we redefine something to be something else. e.g. in 2 Chronicles 7:14-15, God promises that “‘If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.'” Clearly this refers to the recently built temple, in Jerusalem, but we may be tempted to change “this place” to refer to Australia, or Sydney, or the Shire. The reality, however, is that we are to live as “strangers in the world”⁵, and as those “longing for a better country – a heavenly one,”⁶ not to be caught up in this land.

How to read a Biblical narrative

So far we have mostly looked at what not to do when reading Biblical narrative. Let’s now look at things a little more positively

Biblical narrative occurs on 3 levels:

• Individual scenes;
• Collections of scenes that form a bigger story; and
• Collections of stories that outline a major theme.

In understanding the narrative in its original context, then, we need to understand it on all 3 of these levels. For example, consider the account of Moses and the Burning Bush⁷. The individual scene shows Moses out in the desert tending his father-in-law’s sheep, when he stumbles across a bush that was burning but did not burn up. He then converses with God, who instructs him to go and seek the release of the people of Israel from Egypt. To properly understand this scene, however, you need to know that it is part of a larger story – the exodus (exit) of Israel from Egypt. By viewing it in this context, you learn that Israel had been in Egypt some 400 years, initially as guests and refugees from the famine in their own land, but more recently as slaves. Similarly we learn that Moses himself was a fugitive from Egypt, having killed a man⁸. This is the second level of narrative. The third level is bigger again – the theme is well summarised in Exodus 2:25 “God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them”. God has made promises to his people, and he is faithful to honour them. Those promises don’t involve being slaves in Egypt, and so God is acting through Moses to set them free.

Here, then, are some of the questions to ask of a Biblical narrative:

1. Who are the characters? What do we know about them?
2. What are the events of the passage? Why are they significant?
3. What is the narrator’s perspective on the events and characters of the story? What is God’s perspective?
4. Is the story intended to teach us something? If so, what?
5. Is this story part of a larger story? What is its role in advancing that larger story?

For example, let us consider the story of David and Bathsheba⁹.

Who are the characters? What do we know about them? Clearly the central character of this passage is David. He is the one responsible for all of the actions in this passage – he sends Joab and the army out to war (1), sends for Bathsehba (4), recalls Uriah (6), and orders Joab to have Uriah killed (14-15). We know that he is the King of Israel.

What are the events of the passage? Why are they significant? David, having sent his army off to war but stayed home himself, spots Bathsheba bathing and has sex with her. When he learns that she is pregnant, he first tries to cover it up by trickery, and when that fails he resorts instead to murder. All of this is significant because it show God’s anointed king, David, acting contrary to God’s laws.

What is the narrator’s perspective on the events and characters of the story? What is God’s perspective? The narrator gives us a little bit of implicit commentary right from the start of the passage. “In the spring, when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army.” (1). So David was not acting as the king was expected to act, by staying home. The narrator is also quite clear on the fact that David knew what he was doing was wrong – he knew that Bathsheba was married before he sent for her, and his conscience obviously impelled him to try and cover up afterwards. The narrator also sets David up in contrast with Uriah – Uriah’s self-discipline is emphasised in order to further condemn David’s lack¹⁰.

Is the story intended to teach us something? If so, what? Much of the interpretation of this story is found in the next chapter, 2 Samuel 12, but even without reading that chapter we can learn some things:

• David’s decision to stay home from war gave him opportunity to sin.
• Disobeying God’s law (e.g. “You shall not commit adultery.”¹¹) has serious consequences.
• By trying to cover up his sin, David only lead himself to commit more sin.
• … and many others!

Is this story part of a larger story? What is its role in advancing that larger story? Back in 2 Samuel 7, God made some promises to David, including:

• A place for Israel (10)
• A house (i.e. a lineage) for David, who will rule God’s kingdom forever (11-16)

We understand from this story, then, that David is not God’s ultimate king, who will rule forever – he is an imperfect foreshadowing of that king.

Special notes for Acts

In many ways, the book of Acts may be treated in exactly the same way as any Old Testament narrative. However most Christians do not read Acts in the same way they read from the Old Testament. This is because the Old Testament is commonly seen as ‘pre-Christian’, and therefore we do not necessarily consider the customs presented there as being ‘examples’ for us or our church. Even those that we do, such as the ‘fleecing’ of God mentioned above, we treat metaphoriaclly – we do not put an actual fleece out.

Acts is different, though, because it is a part of the Christian era. Many churches today aspire to being able to ‘return’ to the church depicted in Acts. They, rightly or wrongly, consider the Acts church to be normative, that is to say they consider it to be an example that all churches should be modelled on.

Whilst there is some validity in this view, I do not believe it is as easy as that. For example, should we give up all of our possessions to be held on our behalf by the church¹²? Should we expect that God will strike down those who skimp on their giving¹³?

I would encourage you to keep in mind the earlier warnings for dealing with narratives, even when reading the book of Acts. e.g. Not every story has a moral, we are not always told whether actions are good or bad but should interpret based on other Scripture etc.

Further Reading

• Gordon D. Fee & Douglas Stuart, “The Old Testament Narratives: Their Proper Use” and “Acts: The Question of Precedent” in How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (3rd Edition, Zondervan, 2003) pp. 89-125
• Julius A. Bewer, “Early Narratives” in The Literature of the Old Testament (Revised Edition, Columbia University Press, 1933) pp. 21-29.

Endnotes

1. See the rest of Judges 6.
2. Exodus 20:14
3. Mark 13:15 KJV
4. Gordon D. Fee & Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (Third edition, Zondervan 2003) pp. 102-103.
5. 1 Peter 1:1
6. Heb 11:16
7. Exodus 3
8. Exodus 2:11-25
9. 2 Samuel 11
10. Interestingly, this parallel is the reverse of the situation between David and Saul, where Saul is shown as being out of control but David in control of himself – see 1 Samuel 24 & 26
11. Ex 20:14.
12. Acts 4:32-36
13. Acts 5:1-11

Because of its incredible diversity – of background, form and content – it is sometimes difficult to know how to approach the Bible. All of us have, at some time or other, found ourselves frustrated over some obscure reference, comment or ‘problem’ passage. How should a Christian react, for example, to the instructions from Deuteronomy 22 that “A woman must not wear men’s clothing” (v. 5) or “When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof” (v. 8)? Should we take the Genesis account of creation literally, and thus discount more ‘scientific’ explanations? Or consider Psalm 137:

<blockquote>Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried, “tear it down to its foundations!”
O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us –
he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rock.¹</blockquote>
Huh?

Then, too, many of us will have heard (or heard horror tales of!) people misusing and abusing the Bible in order to justify their own theories. These range from the well-intentioned but misguided (e.g. “Take up the 5 stones of… and defeat your personal Goliaths!”) to the truly evil (e.g. those who use the Bible to justify slavery). Satan himself was not above attempting to turn scripture to his own purposes².

It is important, then, that we have some sort of control over the way we use the scriptures to ensure that we hear what God is saying, rather than putting our own words and ideas in God’s mouth. We cannot afford to be Christians who hear only what they want to hear. God desires that we be conformed to his image and will, not that we attempt change him to suit ourselves – that’s idolatory.

The remainder of this course, then, is designed to help us to develop our ability to ‘listen’ to God’s word.

There are two tasks that we must undertake in order to correctly understand any section of the Bible: first we must understand what it meant to its original recipients; then we must translate that meaning across into our own 21st Century context for application to our own lives. Failure to do the first is the most common cause of misunderstanding the Bible. On the other hand, failure to complete the second task of translation across the centuries relegates the Bible to being just ‘another book’, an intellectual and historical curiosity.

By the way, if you’re interested, the fancy-schmancy technical terms for these tasks are <span style=”font-style:italic;”>exegesis</span> (understanding original context) and <span style=”font-style:italic;”>hermeneutics</span> (applying to today’s context).

Let’s examine these tasks in a little bit more detail.

<h2> Understanding in the original context </h2>
Here are some of the questions that would be typical of this task:
<ul><li><span style=”font-weight:bold;”>What is the source of the text? Who wrote it? When? Where? Why?</span> If the passage was written to a particular group of people, or for a particular circumstance then knowledge of that group or circumstance will help us to understand exactly what is being said. </li>
<li> <span style=”font-weight:bold;”>By what process have we received this text? What oral or written traditions are involved?</span> e.g. it is generally believed that the first five books of the Bible were written by Moses… even though he wasn’t actually present in the Garden of Eden! It is probable, therefore, that he learned about creation via an oral tradition (stories told by the campfire from generation to generation). This might lend credence to a suggestion that the Creation account is metaphorical rather than literal, as metaphor is a common device in story telling.</li>
<li> <span style=”font-weight:bold;”>What form does the text take? Is it poetry, narrative, a letter?</span> e.g. we should read a psalm differently to a narrative because poetic devices such as hyperbole (exaggeration) and metaphor are commonly present in psalms but not in narratives. We will be exploring this in more detail later on.</li>
<li> <span style=”font-weight:bold;”>What role (if any) did the editor(s) take in assembling the work?</span> e.g. as you read through Acts, we know that Luke (as a gentile) was at pains to point out that God’s gift of his son was not only for the Jews but also available “in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”³</li></ul>

There are a number of tools available to help you in answering these questions:
<ul><li><span style=”font-weight:bold;”>A good translation:</span> The fact that you are reading the Bible in English suggests that someone, somewhere, has translated it for you. But how do you know it is accurate? Personally I tend to use the New Internation Version (NIV), partly because it is what I have grown up with, partly because it is the most commonly used translation.⁴</li>
<li><span style=”font-weight:bold;”>A good Bible dictionary:</span> A Bible dictionary is good for looking up concepts that you may not have come across before, getting background on particular authors and characters in the Bible, as well as details such as weights, currencies etc. Often you will be able to find some of this information within your Bible itself – I use an NIV Study Bible which contains many of these details.</li>
<li><span style=”font-weight:bold;”>Good commentaries:</span> A good commentary should help you to gain a deeper appreciation of the passage that you are reading. It should not, however, be your first port of call! Take time to read through your passage carefully first and glean what you can first. Going straight to a commentary is like a person who, searching for treasure in a still pond, immediately digs in to the mud at the bottom. In this way, they totally obscure the ‘obvious’ treasures that are otherwise clear to see.</li></ul>

One warning. Always consider the text in context. Don’t read one verse without considering the paragraph, chapter and book it falls within. The better your understanding of the big picture, the better you will understand how that particular verse fits into the whole.

<h2> Understanding in my context </h2>
It is the matter of the here and now, how it can be applied today, that brings us to the Bible in the first place. So why not start with that? Why worry about what it meant then? Can’t the Spirit, who inspired the writing of the Bible, equally inspire me in the reading of it? Well, far be it from me to limit the work of God’s Spirit, or to claim that he cannot or will not work in that way, but it is my belief that that is not his ordinary way. Instead he expects us to be disciplined in the way we approach God’s Word. And that discipline requires us to first understand the original context.

The reason we don’t begin with the here and now is that our only control in application of a given text is found in the original intent of that text. That is to say, a text cannot mean what it never meant.

Let me give you an example. 1 Corinthians 15:29 says “Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them?” On the basis of this verse, Mormons have a practice whereby they can be baptized for someone who has already died. In fact they have an entire theology whereby there are Mormon missionaries in the afterlife, who continue to preach to those who have not become Mormons in life. (So much for resting in peace if you still have to get up and answer the door to Mormons after death, hey?) But because these dead converts cannot be baptised in the afterlife, someone must be baptized in their stead. They have started with their own ideas about what happens after you die, and have then read 1 Corinthians 15:29 through that filter. In reality, Paul is merely using a contemporary custom as an illustration within his overall argument that if there is no resurrection then all that happens in this life is pointless.

This task of application is the more difficult of the two, and so it is difficult to give much in the way of general ‘rules’. As we go through the rest of this course, however, we will consider some appropriate ways of applying each of the specific genres.

Some final advice. As you read through the Bible, you will come across things that seem impossible to understand. That’s OK – don’t stress about it. As C. S. Lewis writes:

<blockquote>Whenever you find any statement in Christian writings which you can make nothing of, don’t worry. Leave it alone. There will come a day, perhaps years later, when you suddenly see what it meant. If one <span style=”font-style:italic;”>could</span> understand it now, it would only do one harm.⁵</blockquote>

By all means ask people around you, look stuff up etc. Just don’t be upset if you still can’t understand everything you read – in that you are hardly alone!

<h2> Acknowledgements </h2>
I must acknowledge up front that I am indebted to to Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart for their excellent book <span style=”font-style:italic;”>How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth</span>⁶, upon which much of the structure and content of this course is based. I can also recommend their companion volume <span style=”font-style:italic;”>How to read the Bible Book by Book</span>⁷ as an excellent introduction to the form and content of each of the books of the Bible. In addition, I have drawn material from a number of John Dickson’s books and talks⁸.

<h2> Further Reading </h2>
<ul><li>Gordon D. Fee & Douglas Stuart, “Introduction: The Need to Interpret” and “The Basic Tool: A Good Translation” in <span style=”font-style:italic;”>How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth</span> (3rd Edition, Zondervan, 2003) pp. 17-53. </li></ul>

Endnotes

1. Psalm 137:7-9.
2. Matt. 4
3. Acts 1:8.
4. For a detailed description of the translation philosophies and a comparison of the relative merits of the most common translations available today, see Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart’s <span style=”font-style:italic;”>How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth</span> (Third Edition, Zondervan, 2003) pp. 33-53.
5. C. S. Lewis, <span style=”font-style:italic;”>Christian Behaviour</span> (J. And J. Gray, Edinburgh, 1943) p. 60.
6. 3rd Edition, Zondervan 2003.
7. Zondervan 2002
8. Available at time of writing via podcast at the <a href=”http://fm1032.com.au/”>fm 103.2 website</a>.

‘More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John among them.”Who chose which gospels to include?’ Sophie asked.

‘Aha!’ Teabing burst in with enthusiasm. ‘The fundamental irony of Christianity! The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great.’

‘I thought Constantine was a Christian,’ Sophie said.

‘Hardly,’ Teabing scoffed. ‘He was a lifelong pagan who was baptized on his deathbed, too weak to protest. In Constantine’s day, Rome’s official religion was sun worship – the cult of Sol Invictus, or the Invincible Sun – and Constantine was its head priest. Unfortunately for him, a growing religious turmoil was gripping Rome. Three centuries after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, Christ’s followers had multiplied exponentially. Christians and pagans began warring, and the conflict grew to such proportions that it threatened to rend Rome in two. Constantine decided something had to be done. In 325 AD, he decided to unify Rome under a single religion. Christianity.’¹

OK, I’d better stop there before I get struck down by God (or by Rod!) for perpetuating lies. In case you didn’t recognise it, that was an extract from Dan Brown’s bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code. I can tell you, however, that with the exception of the year of the first Council of Nicea (325 AD), not a single one of Brown’s ‘facts’ in that extract checks out.

Brown raises an interesting point though. As he pithily observes just a page earlier:

‘The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven… The Bible is a product of man… it has evolved through countless translations, additions and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.’²

If, as Brown rightly points out, “the Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven” then how exactly did it arrive? If it’s a “product of man” then where does God fit in to the equation? Who decided what should or shouldn’t be in the Bible? If it has “evolved through countless translations, additions and revisions” how do we know that what we call the Bible is the same as what was originally written?

The Bible: work of man or of God?

It is true that all of what we call the Bible was, originally, written by men. In that sense it is a “product of man”. Why then do we call it the ‘Word of God’? The answer has to do with what we call ‘inspiration’.

Inspiration recognises the role of the Holy Spirit in producting the Scriptures. Specifically, inspiration refers to the supernatural guidance of the writers by the Holy Spirit which resulted in every word being accurate and reliable in the original manuscripts. When we talk about the authorship of Scripture, we recognise dual authorship. God wrote the Bible using human authors.

This is not the same, however, as the way a boss might dictate a letter that a secretary then types. There are places in Scripture where this sort of thing happened³; in most cases the style and selection of words reflect the personality and background of the writer. Consider, for example the four Gospels:

• Matthew was a Jewish tax collector, who was most impressed that Jesus was the King of the Jews – hence his Gospel begins with a royal genealogy.
• Mark, a young disciple of Peter, mirrors his mentor’s activism in his writing – hence his Gospel is liberally scattered with the words “straightaway” and “immediately”.
• Luke’s Gospel is more methodical, reflecting his education and his historical interest and integrity.
• John’s Gospel, written by one “whom Jesus loved,” seems to be obsessed with love for Jesus and his love for others.

Though each of the four Gospels reflects a different style and a different perspective, they do not contradict each other. Instead, they harmonise to give us the fully inspired, accurate record of the life of Christ.

Whilst it may seem paradoxical to examine the Bible’s credentials based on what it says about itself, the question must be asked: if the Bible truly is the Word of God, what greater authority can we refer to? Let us consider, then, some of the Biblical statements about the nature of the Bible:

• “For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Pet. 1:21)
• Moses acknowledged the source of his writings: “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” (Deut. 29:29)
• At his trial, Stephen recognised the Scriptures as the revelation of God. After citing the teachings of Moses, Amos and Isaiah he continues, saying, “‘You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!'” (Acts 7:51)
• Speaking of Paul’s letters, Peter writes, “Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom the God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.” (2 Pet. 3:15-16) In Peter’s eyes, therefore, Paul’s letters are on the same level as the Old Testament Scriptures.
• “From infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim. 3:15-17)

The Bible: who decides what’s in and what’s out?

Some religious groups today accept the Bible as on of their religious books but they also accept other so-called “revelations from God”. For example the Qur’an testifies to the Scriptures as being of God, but then goes on to add to them:

Allah! There is no god but He, the Living, the Self-Subsisting, Eternal. It is He Who sent down to the (step by step), in truth, the Book, confirming what went before it; and He sent down the Law (of Moses) and the Gospel (of Jesus) before this, as a guide to mankind, and he sent down the Criterion (of judgment between right and wrong).⁴

Similarly, the Mormons supplement the New and Old Testaments with the Book of Mormon, purportedly a translation of a set of golden plates delivered to Joseph Smith, Jr. by an angel in 1827, and translated by him before being returned to the angel in 1829.

How is it, then, that we do not accept these additions? How do we justify the inclusion of the 66 books that we do have? Who decides what is ‘in’ and what is ‘out’?

The 66 books of the Bible form the completed canon of Scripture. ‘Canon’ is a fancy word that comes from the Greek word kanon, meaning a rule or measurement. A canonical book is one that measured up to the standard of Scripture.

Josephus, a Jewish historian during the time of Jesus, states that the books of the Old Testament were brought together during the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus (464 to 424 B. C.) during the life of Ezra the scribe⁵. In the third century B. C. they were translated into Greek, and compiled into a book since referred to as the Septuagint⁶. (It is this Greek version that gives us the ordering of books adopted in our Bible.)

The New Testament was assembled over time. By the end of the second century, all but 7 of the books we have today (Hebrews, 2 & 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude, James and Revelation) were recognised as being apostolic. By the end of the fourth century all 27 books in our Bible were recognised by all churches, and ‘locked in’ for western churches at the Councils of Rome (382 A. D.) and Carthage (397 A. D.).

The books included were selected on the basis of having been penned by the first generation of Christian leaders i.e. by those whom Jesus appointed (Peter, Paul, John, James etc.) or their immediate colleagues (Mark, Luke etc.)

The Bible: is it accurate?

Have you ever played ‘Chinese Whispers’? It is a game where everyone gets into a chain. The first person whispers a secret message to the second, who in turn whispers it to the third etc. This continues until the message reaches the end of the chain, who then declares the message aloud for all to hear. Depending on the length of the chain and the faithfulness of the individual whisperers, the message often becomes distorted.

The Bible is in some ways like that. Because of the relatively short durability of papyrus and other materials upon which the Scriptures were originally written, the message had to be periodically recopied in order to overcome issues of wear and tear. But how can we be sure that these copyists have not distorted the words they were copying?

Let us return to our game of Chinese whispers. There are 2 things we can do to ensure that we maximise accuracy: decrease the length of the chain; and ensure that our whisperers are accurate in their message reproduction. The first will minimise the number of chances for an error to occur, the second will reduce the likelihood of an error occurring at each transmission.

Similarly, historians develop confidence in the accuracy of a given text (the Bible documents included) by seeking manuscripts for as close to the events as possible (minimising the chain) and by examining the details about how the manuscript came into our hands to understand the copying/transmission methods.

In terms of the first criteria, the earliest Old Testament manuscripts now extant are amongst the much-publicised Dead Sea Scrolls, found at Qumran, in the Judean desert, in 1947. These documents are dated between the middle of the 3rd Century B. C. and the 1st Century A. D., and include portions of the Old Testament. When these were compared with our modern Bibles, the accuracy was clear: what we read today is, in fact, what was written more than 2000 years ago. The earliest New Testament manuscripts are even closer in age to when they were originally written – there is a fragment of John’s Gospel generally dated about 125 A. D., with almost complete New Testament manuscripts dating back to the early 4th Century A. D. In historical terms, this is almost unprecedented – and each new find only serves to reinforce what we already have!

Conclusion

In summary, then, there is no good reason for anyone to doubt the authority and accuracy of the Bible. The impact of the Bible on so many lives, combined with its own testimony about itself, serves to convince us of its divine authorship. The careful consideration of the Canon of Scripture by the early Christians has ensured that we get only what God has inspired and keeps us from being deceived by further ‘revelations’ such as those espoused by Mohammed (the Qur’an) and Joseph Smith, Jr. (the Book of Mormon). The historical evidence suggests that we have received exactly what was written.

Further reading

• Lee Strobel and Garry Poole, Exploring the Da Vinci Code (Zondervan, 2006).
• John Dickson, The Christ Files (Blue Bottle Books, 2006), particularly Chapter 4 “Behind the New Testament” and Chapter 5 “Before the Gospels”.
• John Dickson, “God in a Book: Making Sense of the Bible” in Hanging in there (St Matthias Press, 1991) pp. 26-32.
• Elmer L. Towns, “Understanding the Doctrine of the Bible” in Concise Bible Doctrines (AMG Publishers, 2006) pp. 21-56.

Endnotes

1. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (Corgi, 2004) pp. 313-4.
2. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (Corgi, 2004) pp. 312-3.
3. See, for example, Rev 2:1 – 3:22
4. Surah 3:2-3 (tr. Abdullah Yusuf Ali).
5. Antiquities XI.v.
6. Antiquities XII.ii.

Every week, in thousands of churches and homes across Australia and the world, Christians get together and read a book. Referred to variously as the Word, Scripture, the Old Book or just the Bible, this book takes centre stage in our preaching & teaching, forms the basis of our authority and spells out the message of Christianity in a way that no other book or speaker ever can.

Sadly, however, many Christians have either a limited or non-existent understanding of the Bible and its uses. Even though it is the number-one best-seller of all time, the Bible is possibly the most misunderstood book in history.

For some, it is an ornament or sentimental thing that gathers dust on a shelf, perhaps because it is written off as being an historical (or perhaps even fictional) book, with no real relevance to today. Others dismiss it as being for preachers, pastors and “super-spiritual” people. Still others find the Bible scary because it is hard to read and so not worth the effort, or because they have seen it mis-used and mis-applied.

Just about everyone has something to say about the Bible. Perhaps you’ve heard one or more of these:

• “It’s a pack of lies.”;
• “It’s irrelevant.”;
• “It’s a good story.”;
• “You can make it say whatever you want it to say.”; or
• “It’s been changed over time.”

As John Dickson writes, “It’s interesting to meet people who hold these opinions. I’m often amused to see them blush when I ask if they’ve actually read this ‘irrelevant fairytale’ for themselves.”¹

Well, the aim of this course is to:

• Help you understand what the Bible is, and what it may be used for; and
• Give you some practical strategies for making the most of the Bible.

What is the Bible?

Before we can answer the question of “Why read the Bible?”, we must first understand what it is. People have come up with many answers to this question over the years:

A library

The first thing to know about the Bible is that it is a book. In fact, the Bible is the single biggest-selling book of all time.

Actually, the Bible is a library of books – several books all kept together in one volume. It covers a variety of material: narratives, laws, ritual instructions, poetry, songs, sermons, prophecies, wisdom sayings, parables, letters and genealogies.

A history

Unlike many other religions, Christianity in general and the Bible in particular are set very firmly in the context of history. The Bible records many, many historical events that can be readily verified by independent sources. Even those who reject the Bible’s message find themselves unable to challenge the historical authenticity of the Bible.

A revelation

More important than either of these things, however, the Bible is the way that God has chosen to reveal himself. We can certainly understand some things about God from his creation and from our own thoughts, but we can’t get the full picture on our own. Perhaps an illustration would help. John Dickson writes:

Imagine, if you will, what my wife looks like… Suppose now you draw a sketch of my wife as she appears in you mind, scan it, and email it to me for review.

Even if a thousand readers took part in this odd experiment (please don’t!), the chances of any one of the sketches accurately portraying my wife are pretty slender. Some of the drawings might be beautiful… others may be works of great intelligence or artistry, the sort of thing that, while not accurate, would still be worthy of our admiration. In the end however, unless one of you had met my wife, the sketches would all be guesses. A beautiful, intelligent and artistic guess is still a guess.²

The point is this: we have in the Bible, and more specifically in the person of Jesus, a portrait of God. Whilst we can’t understand everything there is to understand about God from it, it gives us a much clearer picture than just guessing or relying on second-hand stories.

So why read the Bible?

The first reason to read the Bible, then, is that it is the way we get to know God. It is God’s Myspace. (Work with me here!) On his profile, God lists his interests, records his thoughts, puts ‘pictures’ of himself with his friends and advertises upcoming events! But we can only learn about him what he chooses to tell/show us. He even invites us to sign up as his friends!

As if that weren’t reason enough, however, the Bible holds another very practical use. It is a manual for life.

To get a pilot’s licence, you have to get an “instrument rating”. This means that you understand the instruments that your plane is equipped with – compass, altimeter etc. – and are capable of flying your plane using those and nothing else should the need arise. This is important, because otherwise it is easy to become disoriented when flying through fog or cloud. In some circumstances it is even possible for pilots to suffer what is called vertigo – ‘up’ and ‘down’ become confused, and you feel like you’re upright when you’re actually upside down.

To be able to fly using instruments only, a pilot needs the following:

• Good instruments: What’s the point in relying on your instruments if they are telling you the wrong thing? Even a slightly misaligned compass can lead you a long way off course.
• Understanding: You need to know how to use your instruments in order for them to be useful. You could hand me a compass, or a GPS device, but unless I had been taught how to use it it would be nothing more than a paperweight to me.
• Faith: Sometimes a pilot has to believe his instruments, even when they are in direct contradiction to what his senses are telling him.

I believe that Christians, too, need to get an “instrument rating”. Too easily we can get caught up in what our senses are telling us about the world that we are deceived. I believe that this is what happened for John the Baptist, when he sent word to Jesus to ask if he really was the Messiah, or if they should be looking for someone else³. This was a bit of a strange question, really, since John had been one of the very first to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah⁴, and had witnessed “the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting on him.” (16) and the “voice from heaven” proclaiming “‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.'” (17).

Things had taken a bit of a bad turn for John since then, however, and he was now in gaol and facing death. Is it any wonder that he began to think that something must have gone wrong somewhere?

Jesus’ response serves to remind John of his instruments. First, he suggests that John needs to consider more than just his immediate surroundings – he tells the messenger to let John know about all the wonderful things that are happening. The things he specifically directs the messengers to take not of, however, are particularly important as they are things spoken of in the scriptures as being indicative of the Messiah. Jesus is commanding, “Go back to your Bible and compare what you find there with what your disciples report – then answer the question for yourself.”

The Bible is Jesus’ answer to not knowing which way is up and which way down. When being tempted in the desert⁵, it is scripture which Jesus relies upon in overcoming Satan. If he allowed himself to be caught up in his own situation (I love the subtly understated “After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry” (2)!) then Satan’s suggestions would no doubt have seemed like good sense – after all, how could he possibly be any good to anyone if he starved to death? Perhaps it would be easier to accept the world from Satan’s hand as a gift, rather than pay the price to buy it back. But Jesus knew the scriptures and trusted that the words spoken there were truth, even though his senses and his understanding of the world he was in right then and there were screaming there was a better way.

We need that instrument for ourselves. We need to know what the Bible says in order to know what is right. We need to rely on scripture to navigate us through the fog of this life. We need to trust God’s word, even when it seems totally contrary to what our senses are telling us.

This course is designed to help you become an “instrument rated” Christian. It won’t tell you everything there is to know about the Bible (if we had 3 years rather than 3 weeks I still don’t reckon we’d reach that!), but hopefully it will give you a sound basis for reading and understanding the Bible and then applying it into your own life.

Endnotes

1. Hanging in there (St Matthias Press, 1995) p. 26.
2. John Dickson, If I were God I’d make myself clearer (St Matthias Press, 2002) pp. 56-57.
3. Matt. 11:2-6
4. Matt. 3:13-17
5. Matt. 4:1-11

When I was little, few things could make me happier than to bring a smile to my parents’ face. I used to love Fathers’ and Mothers’ days, because they meant that I could get a present and enjoy watching them unwrap it, and could bring them breakfast in bed then crawl in beside them and enjoy their company. Whether it was because of something I said or did, just knowing that I had brought them joy, that they were rejoicing in their love for me brought me great pleasure. Which is not to say, of course, that this was always foremost in my mind. Plenty of times I made them sad, angry or disappointed too, and that generally wasn’t so fun.

Nowadays, I particularly enjoy delighting and surprising my wife, Katrie. I love to surprise her, to express my love for her in as many different ways as I can think of – I might cook a special meal, or plan a special night out or organise some time when we can just do something entirely random. Once or twice I’ve even bought her flowers, but I tend to save that up for really special occasions!

I remember when we were dating, we used to leave notes for one another in innocuous places – in books, on the computer, in the microwave – just for the knowledge that it would be appreciated by the other person. I once heard of a couple who did the same thing, and she unrolled an entire roll of toilet paper so that she could write him a note on the last square. I just hope he wasn’t in too much of a hurry to appreciate it!

The Bible describes this kind of pleasure using the word ‘delight’, and tells us that God responds that way to us. We are his children and we delight him. True, sometimes we make him sad, angry or disappointed, but the fact remains that he loves us, and we bring him great joy – he delights in us, rejoices in us, cherishes us as his precious, precious children.

This week and next week, we’re going to look at some of the things that the Bible tells us delight God.

Psalm 147 – The Lord Delights in those…

1 Praise the LORD.

How good it is to sing praises to our God,
how pleasant and fitting to praise him!

2 The LORD builds up Jerusalem;
he gathers the exiles of Israel.

3 He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.

4 He determines the number of the stars
and calls them each by name.

5 Great is our Lord and mighty in power;
his understanding has no limit.

6 The LORD sustains the humble
but casts the wicked to the ground.

7 Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving;
make music to our God on the harp.

8 He covers the sky with clouds;
he supplies the earth with rain
and makes grass grow on the hills.

9 He provides food for the cattle
and for the young ravens when they call.

10 His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his delight in the legs of a man;

11 the LORD delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love.

12 Extol the LORD, O Jerusalem;
praise your God, O Zion,

13 for he strengthens the bars of your gates
and blesses your people within you.

14 He grants peace to your borders
and satisfies you with the finest of wheat.

15 He sends his command to the earth;
his word runs swiftly.

16 He spreads the snow like wool
and scatters the frost like ashes.

17 He hurls down his hail like pebbles.
Who can withstand his icy blast?

18 He sends his word and melts them;
he stirs up his breezes, and the waters flow.

19 He has revealed his word to Jacob,
his laws and decrees to Israel.

20 He has done this for no other nation;
they do not know his laws.

Praise the LORD.

- Psalm 147

Psalm 147 is a psalm of praise to God, the creator and Lord over all – possibly written for the dedication of the rebuilt walls of Jerusalem¹. It is a psalm that touches on the ways God has blessed Israel, building it up, gathering exiles, healing the brokenhearted and binding their wounds. God is revealed as a God of great wonder, great power and great mercy.

Yet the key to understanding this psalm, the very heart of it, lies not in his power, his wonder or his mercy but in his delight.

11 the LORD delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love.

In verse 11 we are told how we should respond to all the other stuff in the psalm. If we want to please the LORD, we need to fear him. If we want to delight him, we must put [our] hope in his unfailing love.

But what does this mean?

God, because of his love for us, desires relationship with us. What’s more, he loves it when we seek him out, when we turn to him and pursue relationship with him in turn. He loves it.

Jesus gives us the beginnings of insight into God’s delight when he tells the parable of the Lost (or Prodigal) Son². Picture for a moment the son, finally returning after being all but given up for dead, being embraced by the father who, “filled with compassion for him” (20) orders that a massive party be thrown in his honour – how’s that for delight? As he later explains to his other son, “‘We had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'” (32). The son was not loved because of his actions – after all, by asking for his inheritance he effectively said to his father, “I wish you were dead” – but because of who he was and because of the relationship between them.

I’m fairly certain that my parents’ delight when I brought them presents was not directly because of the presents that I gave. Let’s face it, a $2 piece of slice wrapped in cellophane and all but destroyed by that peculiar mode of transport we call the school bag cannot have been all that appealing!

I remember that one time I decided to make breakfast in bed for both Mum and Dad. The only trouble was that I had never made either tea or coffee before… but how hard could it be? Now Dad used to drink instant coffee, but Mum used to have tea leaves. I knew that the strainer came into the whole thing somewhere, but wasn’t quite sure where… and so I put the coffee in to the strainer and poured hot water through it, and put the tea leaves in the bottom of a cup and poured boiling water in on top. Needless to say, Dad ended up drinking what was, to all intents and purposes, hot water, whilst Mum’s hot water had floaties in it! They both smiled, though, however crookedly, and thanked me profusely, heaping me with praise for my kind actions – you see, they were interested not so much in the gift as they were in the heart of the giver. They knew that my gifts were merely a token of the love that I bear for them, and the I was expressing that love the best way I knew how.

In the same way, God is more interested in our attitude as we approach him than in our actions. Some Christians have conceived this idea of God as being like some elderly relative who, so long as you say the right things, suffer your cheeks to be pinched and write a nice thank-you note for them to show to their friends, will give you presents (at least) twice a year. But God is not like that at all. If I’m singing half-hearted praise to him, if I pray with my lips but not with my heart, if I insist on trying to conform God into my own image and plans then that is abhorrent to him. God will not tolerate people who seek him out trusting in their own righteousness, nor will he put up with braggarts or boasters. The Lord sustains the humble but casts the wicked to the ground (6).

Instead, the psalmist spells out the attitude that we are to have when we come into God’s presence – one of fear, and of hope.

… who fear him

Fear is a word commonly used in the Bible, particularly in relation to God. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom”³ we are told. It usually has one of two meanings: terror; or awe.

Terror is the kind of fear we are most familiar with. We’re afraid of many things: snakes, spiders, sharks; heights, depths, small spaces, large spaces, empty spaces; separation, commitment, rejection. In fact, I looked up phobias on the internet and found a site⁴ where they are listed from ablutophobia (the fear of washing or bathing) all the way through to zoophobia (the fear of animals) – some 530+ in all! Indeed, we make and watch entire movies whose sole purpose is to scare the wits out of us!

Psalm 147 alludes to many things of which we might rightly be afraid: a God of piercing knowledge, able to count the stars and call them by name (4, 5) surely knows all of our secrets, the ones we’d rather stayed buried; a God who can cover the sky with clouds and supply the earth with rain, who makes the grass grow on the hills and provides food for the cattle(8,9), well, what happens if he decides to stop doing those things? Who can withstand his icy blast? (17)

Is it God’s desire then that we should cower in fear whenever we are in his presence?

We’ve already established that he is a God of love, that he rushes to meet us when we return to him. Indeed Psalm 147 gives more evidence (as if we needed any) of God’s unfailing love for us… he builds up Jerusalem’ he gathers the exiles of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (2, 3), and He grants peace to your borders and satisfies you with the finest of wheat. (14). No, this is not the picture of a God bent on intimidating us into cowering submission and incoherent terror!

Instead, it is God’s intention that we should approach him with awe and respect.

Imagine for a moment that you were presented with the opportunity to meet with your greatest hero, or someone who you respect above all others. What would you do to prepare yourself? Who here would rock up drunk to a meeting with the Queen? Or would go to a wedding or a funeral wearing stubbies and thongs? Even if you did, you would know it was wrong, right? Why? Because there are certain people and certain events that demand our respect.

In certain people, both of these aspects get mixed. For example, when pulled over by a police officer, most of us are able to respect that he or she is doing their job. At the same time, however, we know that the officer has the power to take away our licence, impound our vehicle or even to imprison us – and this leads us to fear that they might do so. Similarly, imagine yourself in front of a judge, who has the power to fine you, imprison you or even (in some places) condemn you to death. Even an innocent person might be afraid in such a setting, because what if the judge got it wrong?

But if there was ever a person for whom fear and respect were in order, it is Jesus. When the time comes, and all the peoples of the earth stand before him, Jesus himself tells us that “‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God'”⁵. Note what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say “some knees”, or “most knees”. It doesn’t even say “every Christian knee”. No, when Jesus comes again, and is revealed in his glory as the Judge of all the Earth, everyone will acknowledge him as their Lord. I assure you that, when that happens, both kinds of fear we have talked about will be present to some extent or another in every mind. Who can doubt that we will be in awe of Jesus, who “will come like a thief in the night”⁶ and yet will be undisguisable in the same way that “lightning that comes from the east is visible in the west”⁷? Who can even imagine standing before Jesus and not harbouring the tiniest amount of fear – even an innocent man standing before a judge has his doubts and fears, how much more should we who are far from innocent and standing before the One who knows everything we ever did?

There will be a difference, however, between those whose uppermost thought is one of fear and those who are overcome with awe. That difference will be where they have placed their hope.

… who put their hope in his unfailing love.

Now we’ve come to the heart of the matter.

Picture, if you will, the scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and friends finally reach the Emerald City. As they are escorted through the city, drinking in the wonders of a horse of many colours and the grandeur of the great city, their trepidation steadily builds, climaxing as they are ushered into the vast chamber of the Wizard himself. As the Wizard’s voice booms out, all of them are afraid, not least the cowardly Lion whose knees are almost visibly knocking together. And yet they don’t turn tail and run. Why? They have heard the tales of a Wizard who is good, who is able to help them out of their various predicaments. They have come in hope that he will do so, and their hope overcomes their fear.

One guy describes it like this:

There is a beautiful relation between hope and fear… They are like the cork in a fisherman’s net, which keeps it from sinking, and the lead, which prevents it from floating.⁸

Together our fear and our hope keep us with a proper attitude towards God. Psalm 147 is drenched in this balance: on the one hand you have the LORD, counter of stars, mighty in power, with limitless understanding (4,5), who hurls down his hail like pebbles (17) and is, above all others, worthy of fear; on the other hand stands the LORD whose lovingkindness for Israel stretches across generations, whose provision brings prosperity (8,9), who has revealed his word to Jacob, his laws and decrees to Israel (19) as a sign of his covenant with them, his special promise that he will be their God, and they will be his people – cause for hope above all others.

Let’s take a moment to consider what kind of hope we’re talking about here. Hope as the world would describe it is something of chance. “I hope I win the lottery,” “I hope you have a nice day,” or “Hopefully it won’t rain.” We are expressing a desire that something will (or won’t) come about. Usually it is something we have no control over. And usually we have some sort of backup plan in case it doesn’t happen.

That’s not the kind of hope Psalm 147 talks about. Listen again to verses 10 and 11:

His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his delight in the legs of a man;
the LORD delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love.

Horses and the legs of men represent cavalry and infantry, the armies of ancient times. The psalmist is deliberately setting up a contrast between those who rely upon their own strength rather than God’s mercy and love. This is particularly poignant if, as is speculated, this psalm was written for the occasion when the returned exiles had just finished rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. In that light, God is saying through the psalmist, “Even though you now have walls, even though you have kings for friends (for the moment), don’t rely on them. Rely on me.”

This is a reminder for us as a nation. How much do we Australians rely on our strength, easy-going natures, tolerance and our relatively peaceful and democratic society? We define ourselves by who we are friends with, we go to war overseas to prevent war coming to us. We feel safe because of our physical distance from other nations. Let me ask you, is our hope in our horses and men, or is it in God’s unfailing love? When the chips are down, do we turn to God? Or to the Americans? When we consider our world in chaos, climate change out of control, floods, cyclones, fires, hail storms, tsunamis – where is our hope in these things? In God’s love? Or in our own efforts?

More than just a message to our nation, though, I believe that Psalm 147 challenges us to consider our own attitude towards God. Let’s play a game. In your head, I want you to finish each of these sentences:

• When things are hard, I am encouraged because…
• When things go wrong, and not according to plan, it’s OK because…
• When I screw up, when I let myself and everyone around me down, I tell myself that…
• When the chips are down, when all other hopes have disappeared, the one that will remain is that…

How’d you go? What kinds of things came to mind? Here are some of mine: I have an education; I have a job; I am resourceful, and will find a way through somehow; I have friends and family who love me; I’m an Australian. Perhaps you came up with some others: I’m a good person; I’m attractive; I’m healthy (or perhaps I have the right doctors); I know the right people; I have the right girlfriend/boyfriend; I come from the right family; I’m financially secure; I’ve done this before. Some of you might even have “spiritual” answers: I go to church; I pray; I read the Bible.

Your answers to each of those questions reveal where your hope lies. And unless your first word in finishing each one was “God”, your hope is in yourself – your qualities, your possessions, your relationships, your actions. But what happens when those things are taken away? What will you do for hope then? Compare this with placing your hope in God’s unfailing love, a love that will not ever be taken away, a love backed by the power to transform your life, a God who makes “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future”⁹, both in this life and the next. God loves us. Unfailingly. He preserves our inheritance for us in heaven, and he shields us until the time comes for us to receive it¹⁰.

I was reminded recently of the story of Jairus and his daughter¹¹. Jairus, a “ruler of the synagogue” (41), was an important man whose job would have included reading the scriptures in the synagogue and perhaps preaching from them; he would have prayed with and for the sick; he would also have been responsible for protecting the people under his care from ‘false Messiahs’, of whom he no doubt considered Jesus to be one. When “his only daughter, a girl of about twelve, was dying,” (42) he would certainly have prayed for her – after all that was his job. But that didn’t work. I can imagine him there on his knees, pleading with God: “I have served you all these years, I have studied your word, I have cared for your people – haven’t I earned the right to have you heal my daughter? Whatever I have to do, I’ll do it! Just, please, please, save her.” All of his hopes had been stripped away. None of them were any good now. Can you imagine his confusion when God’s response was, “You need Jesus” ? Can you imagine the mixed feelings as he “fell at Jesus’ feet, pleading with him to come to his house” (41)? How about the emotional yo-yo as Jesus first says he will come, then stops half-way there for some seemingly trivial matter of someone touching him, the arrival of messengers to inform Jairus that his daughter is dead? And then come Jesus’ words, “‘Don’t be afraid; just believe and she will be healed.'” (50) How would you be after a day like that? I suspect strong drink might be involved!

In the end, Jairus had to believe Jesus and take him at his word. What choice did he have? But believe he did, for he went in with Jesus and witnessed his daughter being healed, indeed being raised from the dead.

Here’s the point: Jesus didn’t come because Jairus was a good man, although he probably was; he didn’t heal the girl because Jairus was well respected, or well educated, or popular, or pious, although he was probably all of those things; Jesus acted because Jairus had chosen to rely upon his love and his power, he had chosen to acknowledge that he was helpless in himself and was utterly reliant upon God’s unfailing love to be sufficient for him and for his daughter.

How about it? Is that the kind of hope that you need, the kind that can bring the dead to life, the blind to see, the captive to freedom? Are you ready to give up the uncertain hope found in your own power, privilege, position, performance and piousness? Do you hear God’s voice saying to you, “You need Jesus”? The good news is that God loves you, and his love for you is unfailing. He invites you to put your hope in his love. [Possibly pray some sort of sinner’s prayer here, explaining that it is not the words themselves that are special, but rather the attitude – a mixture of fear and hope.] The choice is yours. If you have made that choice tonight, I would love to hear from you, to pray with you and encourage you to take hold of the hope that God is offering to you.

One final note. Our hope in God’s unfailing love is for now – he loves us now, he cares for and tends his flock now. But that is not all. The hope we have now is like the promise of the time just before dawn: light appears in the east, and we know that the darkness is on the way out, even before the sun is revealed in all of its glory. But it is the Son that we are hoping for, who is the answer to and completion of all our hopes. It is the Son who will chase away the darkness and imperfections of this world, who will judge the world according to true justice. It is God’s Son who is our hope, who is the gift of God out of his unfailing love.

Our hope is anchored in the past: Jesus rose! Our hope remains in the present: Jesus lives! Our hope is completed in the future: Jesus is coming!¹²

Endnotes

1. See Ne 12:27-43
2. Luke 15:11-32
3. Proverbs 1:7
4. http://phobialist.com
5. Romans 14:11, quoting Isaiah 45:23; cf. Philippians 2:10-11
6. 1 Thessalonians 5:2
7. Matt 24:27
8. George Seaton Bowes, In Prospect of Sunday, quoted in C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David (Hendrickson) Vol. 3, p. 430.
9. Jer 29:11
10. 1 Pet 1:4-5
11. Luke 8:41-56
12. Clowney, The Message of 1 Peter, IVD, p. 46.

One of the hardest questions to deal with in life runs something like this: Why is there (so much) suffering in the world? Each of the major religions has something to say in response to this question. In this article, I will attempt to capture the kernel of each of these responses for Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and (not a religion, but still worthwhile considering) atheism.

Hinduism: Suffering brings balance

Most of us will have come across the concept of ‘karma’, the universal principle by which all events in the past balance out with present and future events. This balance spans not only your life, but all of your past and future lives (i.e. incarnations). When you die, according to a Hindu, you will continue being reincarnated until your personal karma allows you to escape physical existence altogether and reach a state of nirvana.

As a result, a devout Hindu encountering a person suffering from disease, illness or poverty will consider it to be ‘payback’ (to put it crudely) for that person’s actions, either in this life or in a previous one. Similarly, a child who dies at birth was obviously wicked or cruel or unjust in a previous life. Which is not to say that Hindu people are any less compassionate or humane than their counterparts who subscribe to other world views; rather this is how, philosophically speaking, a devout Hindu would explain the presence of suffering.

The solution offered is to seek to improve your karma, until such time as you are able to achieve nirvana.

On the one hand this is a brilliant explanation: it is intellectually satisfying and all but impossible to gainsay. On the other, however, such a world-view leaves little room for consolation. Granted, Hinduism emerged well before our therapeutically intensive society, and so does not share what John Dickson calls our “modern Western fixation with consolation,” (John Dickson, If I were God I’d end all the pain [Matthias Media, 2001] p. 21) this remains cold comfort to those suffering under oppression, persecution, poverty, illness or grief.

Buddhism: Suffering is an illusion

Buddhism arose in direct response to the problem of suffering. Sometime around 500BC a man named Siddhartha Gautama, the Prince of a regions near the present-day borders of Nepal and India, left his palace and stumbled across 3 examples of human misery on his doorstep: a man withered by age; a man incapacitated by illness; and finally a dead body. On returning to his palace he decided to devote the rest of his life to understanding the problem of human suffering.

After searching diligently for 7 years, lived in self-denial and asceticism, he still did not have any answers. According to legend he vowed to meditate day and night under a Bo Tree until he had gained the insight he sought. One night, under a full moon in the month of May, Siddhartha found what he was looking for: all pain is an illusion through which we must train ourselves to see. According to Gautama (known to later generations as the ‘Buddha’ or Enlightened One, in honour of this insight) suffering is directly related to our desires and affections for the things of this world. Thus the pain of losing a loved one is caused not by the loss itself but by the affection I feel towards my parent, spouse, child or friend. If I lose my job, my anguish is brought about by my desire to be employed. If I desire intimacy then being single will bring anguish.

To overcome suffering, therefore, you must follow the Buddha’s eightfold path in order to purge yourself of all desires and affections.

There is little doubt in my mind that the Buddha’s solution is an insightful one: who can argue that our experience of suffering is unrelated to our desires. But does this ‘solution’ provide us a way forward? Is it possible to live this way, to isolate myself of all desire and affection? What kind of life will I be left with?

Islam: Suffering is the will of Allah

Unlike Buddhism, Islam deals with questions of suffering only peripherally. Nevertheless the Muslim position is clear: all events in history, from the least to the greatest, occur according to the will of Allah. The word Islam translates as ‘submission’ (to Allah’s will) and the word Muslim translates ‘one who submits’. Suffering becomes an opportunity for the devout Muslim to ‘submit’ to Allah’s will; to do otherwise, to cry out ‘Why God?’, is to presume to question the Almighty, and therefore all but blasphemy.

Thus, all that happens in this world – good or bad – is attributed to Allah: a young woman dies of cancer; chemists develop a life-saving drug; a family breadwinner dies of AIDS, plunging their family into poverty; a couple get married; a child is born with a heart problem… all these things are according to Allah’s will.

Perhaps of more importance, however, is Allah’s reaction to all of these things: none. According to standard Muslim theology, Allah is the ‘unmoved mover’. He causes all things to happen, but is impacted by none of them.

The Muslim solution, then, is to train yourself to submit to the will of Allah.

Atheism: Suffering is natural

For an atheist, the question “why does God allow suffering?” is meaningless as God does not exist. Instead, suffering is purely according to chance, and is the outworking of the interplay between our actions and the laws that govern the universe.

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and we won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good; nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

- Richard Dawkins, “The Evolution of the Darwin Man”, published during 2000 in The Sydney Morning Herald and cited in John Dickson, If I were God I’d end all the pain, (Matthias Media, 2002) p. 29.

There is no point searching for meaning or purpose in life, because there is none to be found. That’s just the way things have always been and will always be. There is no solution to be found.

So, we have now looked at 4 of the main approaches to understanding suffering in the world today. Next time, we will look at how Christians understand both the problem, and its solution.

I love the apostle Peter. I love the way he always knows exactly what not to say, and exactly when not to say it. I mean, come on, if there was anyone of whom the saying “he doesn’t open his mouth except to change feet” were true, it’s Peter. Many of you, like me, would have been amused at Stephen Hilaire’s Black Stump renditions of “Jesus and his Merry Men” – with poor Peter the butt of every joke and the source of much frustration and headshaking on Jesus’ part.

As we read on in the Bible, however, we start to get a glimpse of a very different Peter indeed. Here is a man confident to speak in front of huge crowds¹ and courts², to heal cripples³, to pronounce judgement leading to death⁴ and even to minister to his gaoler. What could possibly change a man who is afraid even to be associated with Jesus( (Luke 22:54-62)) into one who can rejoice at being flogged because he had been counted worth of suffering disgrace for the Name⁵?

• What do you think could cause such a change in you?

I believe that Peter reveals some of his secrets in his first letter. Throughout the course of this and the next couple of studies I reckon we should get a picture of exactly what motivated this change in Peter… and what can bring about the same kind of change in you!

Background to 1 Peter
The first thing to know about 1 Peter is who it is written to and why. Peter, probably writing from Rome, is writing at a time when Christians are just starting to enter a time of intense persecution. The emperor Nero had recently come to power, and tormenting, torturing and killing Christians was starting to become the in vogue thing to do. History tells us that people lost their jobs for being Christians, were shunned by their society, cast out of their houses, deprived of all their possessions. Many ended up running for their lives and hiding in tombs just to stay alive, whilst others were cast into the Circus Maximus to do battle to the death with gladiators or lions for the public amusement. Peter himself was crucified (upside down, because he did not consider himself worthy of suffering in the same way Jesus did) under Nero. Peter no doubt had some insight into all of this, and so he writes to those who are strangers in the world (1:1), for whom the world has no love but rather hatred and enmity.

• Imagine that you were facing such horrific prospects. Where would you look for strength? What would give you hope?
• On the flip side, what kind of things would you offer as encouragement to Christians today who are suffering persecution?

Living Hope
Read 1 Peter 1:1-5

• How could the words of Peter in the opening verses of his letter (1-5) bring comfort and hope to people who had been driven from their homes and exiled to foreign lands?
• God has offered a storehouse of treasures for all who follow Him. What are some of the treasures Peter highlights that can never be taken away? How have you experienced one of these treasures in your own life?

Our “inheritance is kept for us, and we are kept for it”⁶. Not only will it not perish, spoil or fade, but we ourselves are shielded by God’s power until we receive it.

Read 1 Peter 1:6-12

• Peter describes some of the fruit that is born in our lives through times of trial. What grows in the life of a follower of Christ through times of struggle, loss and trials? (vv. 6-9; cf. Romans 5:3-5)
• Tell your group about a loss or time of struggle you have faced. How did you experience God’s presence and work in your life through this time?

Footprints in the Sand

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.
Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.
In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.
Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,
other times there were one set of footprints.

This bothered me because I noticed
that during the low periods of my life,
when I was suffering from
anguish, sorrow or defeat,
I could see only one set of footprints.

So I said to the Lord,
“You promised me Lord,
that if I followed you,
you would walk with me always.
But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life
there have only been one set of footprints in the sand.
Why, when I needed you most, you have not been there for me?”

The Lord replied,
“The times when you have seen only one set of footprints in the sand,
is when I carried you.”⁷

• Peter promises that hardships lead to “praise, glory and honour” to Jesus. Do you believe this? Have you seen it happen? How?

Read 1 Peter 1:13-21
Verse 13 signals a big shift in Peter’s train of thought. The first 12 verses have been focused on the hope that God provides us, but now he is more interested in how we are to respond. He is calling us to have right attitudes and actions.

All of us have faith that may be mixed with improper attitudes or sinful motivations… In the crucible of life, God our Goldsmith skims off our impurities. Through trials, God burns away our self-reliance and self-serving attitude, so that our genuineness reflects his glory and brings praise to him.⁸

• What are some of the attitudes and actions that Peter calls us to?
• How is God challenging and growing you in one of these areas? How can your group members encourage and pray for you in this area?

Christians look toward the return of Jesus, when pain will end and perfect justice begin. Faith will be rewarded and evil will be punished. But what should we do until then?

The Bible’s answer is simple but not easy: Because we know the future, we must faithfully server God here and now. If today that means resolving a conflict, mending a hurt, working a dull job, confronting a belligerent child, rebuilding a marriage, or just waiting for guidance – do it all with the joy of God, who will return with his reward!⁹

Some prayer suggestions

• Pray for group members who shared about a trial they are facing.
• Pray that God will show you how to respond to Peter’s call to right attitudes and actions, particularly the specific areas that God is challenging you in at the moment.

[Parts of this study were adapted from 1 Peter: Stand Strong by Bill Hybels (Zondervan 1999)]

Endnotes

1. Acts 2:14-41
2. Acts 4:1-22
3. Acts 3:1-10
4. Acts 5:1-10
5. Acts 5:41
6. Edmund Clowney, The Message of 1 Peter, IVP 2006, p. 47
7. Mary Stevenson, “Footprints in the Sand”
8. Life Application Bible Commentary: 1 & 2 Peter and Jude (Tyndale 1995) p. 32
9. ibid. p. 33

I just read an article on boundless.org about discernment in grey areas of our lives. I found it to be full of useful insights. From the article:

Does Scripture address R-Rated movies? Music styles? Not directly. But God has provided principles in his Word to help us discern how to live, what to choose, and what to reject. We need principles from Scripture to inform how our practice of living.

So here are five principles for growing in discernment that have implications for our daily lives:

• Imitate God
• Distrust your heart
• Think biblically
• Involve others
• Decide to worship

(Read the full article for more details.)

What kind of ‘grey’ issues have you come across? How did you go about resolving them? Do you think that the suggestions in the article (Imitate God, Distrust your heart etc.) are useful? Can you think of a circumstance in which you would apply them?

If you have answers to any of these questions (or perhaps some questions of your own) leave us a comment – we’d love to have your input!

It was six men of Indostan
    To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the elephant,
    (Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
    Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the elephant
    And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
    At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the elephant
    Is nothing but a wall!”

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
    Cried “Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
    To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an elephant
    Is very like a spear!”

The Third approached the animal,
    And, happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
    Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the elephant
    Is very like a snake!”

The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
    And felt about the knee:
“What most this wondrous beast is like
    Is mighty plan,” quoth he;
“‘Tis clear enough the elephant
    Is very like a tree.”

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
    Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles mos;
    Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an elephant
    Is very like a fan!”

The Sixth no sooner had begun
    About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
    That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the elephant
    Is very like a rope!”

And so these men of Indostan
    Disputed loud and long
Each in his own opinion
    Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was plainly in the right,
    And all were in the wrong!

So, oft in theologic wars
    The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
    Of what each other mean,
And prate about an elephant
    Not one of them has seen!

- John Godfrey Saxe

When it comes to God, we are all blind, and he is even bigger than your average elephant. So be very careful about the image of God that you profess and believe, as chances are you don’t have the full picture.

In fact only one man in all of history – Jesus – has ever understood God in his entirety. He is like a man with sight coming and telling the blind men all about the elephant, and walking them around him until their understanding was more complete. Not fully complete, certainly, but a much bigger picture. If we want to know God, we can only do so through Jesus.

Here’s a modern day parable from Charles Swindoll:

On a dangerous seacoast notorious for shipwrecks, there was a crude little lifesaving station. Actually, the station was merely a hut with only one boat. But the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the turbulent sea. With little thought for themselves, they would go out day and night tirelessly searching for those in danger as well as the lost. Many, many lives were saved by this brave band of men who faithfully worked as a team in and out of the lifesaving station. By and by, it became a famous place.

Some of those who had been saved as well as others along the seacoast wanted to become associated with this little station. They were willing to give their time and energy and money in support of its objectives. New boats were purchased. New crews were trained. The station that was once obscure and crude and virtually insignificant began to grow.

Some of its members were unhappy that the hut was so unattractive and poorly equipped. They felt a more comfortable place should be provided. Therefore emergency cots were replaced with lovely furniture. Rough, hand-made equipment was discarded, and sophisticated, classy systems were installed. The hut, of course, had to be torn down to make room for all the additional equipment, furniture, systems and appointments.

By its completion, the lifesaving station had become a popular gathering place, and its objectives began to shift. It was now used as sort of a clubhouse, an attractive building for public gatherings. Saving lives and feeding the hungry and strenthening the fearful and calming the disturbed rarely occurred by now.

Fewer members were now interested in braving the sea on lifesaving missions, so they hired professional lifeboat crews to do the work. The original goal of the station wasn’t altogether forgotten, however. The lifesaving motifs still prevailed in the club’s decorations. In fact, there was a liturgical lifeboat preservers in the “Room of Sweet Memories” with soft, indirect lighting, which helped hide the layer of dust upon the once-used vessel.

About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast and the boat crews brought in loads of cold, wet, and half-drowned people. They were dirty. Some were terribly sick and lonely. Others were black and they were “different” from the majority of the club members. The beautiful new club suddenly became messy and cluttered. A special committee saw to it that a shower house was immediately built “outside” and “away from” the club so victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up “before” coming inside the club.

At the next meeting there were strong words and angry feelings, which resulted in a division among the members. Most of the people wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities altogether and place all involvements with shipwreck victims somewhere else. “It’s too unpleasant,” they said. “It’s a hindrance to our social life. It’s opening the doors to folks who are not ‘our kind’.”

Well, as you would expect, some still insisted upon saving lives, that this was their primary objective. Their only reason for existence was ministering to “anyone” needing help regardless of their club’s beauty or size or decorations. Well, they were voted down and they were told if they still wanted to be involved in saving lives of various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast! And so they did.

As years passed, the new station experienced the same old changes. It evolved into just another club. And yet another lifesaving station was begun. History continued to repeat itself. And if you visit that coats today, you’ll find a large number of exclusive, impressive clubs along the shoreline owned and operated by slick professionals who have lost all involvement with the saving of lives.

Shipwrecks still occur in those waters, you understand, but now most of the victims are not saved. Every day they perish at sea, and so few seem to care… so very few.

- Charles Swindoll, Swindoll’s Ultimate Book of Illustrations and Quotation (Thomas Nelson, 1998) pp. 89-91