Until this year. This year I agreed to read four chapters of Bible every day. And it turns out it’s not as scary as I thought. It can even be fun. Here’s five things I’ve found about the Bible:

1. It’s not magic. The Bible is a book just like any other book. It isn’t a magic book that answers every question or makes you more Christian. It’s a normal book; it just happens to be the book about God and what he’s done.

2. It’s not big. The Bible isn’t one big book; it’s lots of little books. Actually, most of them aren’t even books. They’re all sorts of different writing, from letters to poetry, from history to fables.

3. You don’t need to get it. The Bible is more like Lord of the Rings than a maths textbook. You don’t have to puzzle over it until you ‘get it’. You can just read it. Immerse yourself in the story and enjoy watching it unfold.

4. Read it like a novel. You can’t just read a few pages of Lord of the Rings and know what’s going on. The Bible isn’t any different. Don’t just read a few verses. Read a whole book, or at least a few chapters at a time. Then you’ll get what’s going on.

5. It’s not boring. This is the most surprising – sometimes the Bible really is unputdownable. When you read the Bible like a normal book, you can really get into the story. Sometimes I find I’ve read more than my four chapters, and I want to keep reading.

The Bible is a normal book. It’s not magic, it’s not big, it’s not hard to understand. Don’t let your Bible sit on the shelf shouting insults at you. You wouldn’t take it from your flatmate, so don’t take it from a book.

The philosopher Joseph Budziszewski discovered this, too. He explains his sin as “getting stupid to get away from God”:

I have already noted in passing that everything goes wrong without God. This is true even of the good things He has given us, such as our minds. One of the good things I’ve been given is a stronger than average mind. I don’t make the observation to boast.  Human beings are given diverse gifts to serve Him in diverse ways. The problem is that a strong mind that refuses the call to serve God has its own way of going wrong. When some people flee from God they rob and kill. When others flee from God they do a lot of drugs and have a lot of sex. When I fled from God I didn’t do any of those things; my way of fleeing was to get stupid. Though it always comes as a surprise to intellectuals, there are some forms of stupidity that one must be highly intelligent and educated to achieve. God keeps them in his arsenal to pull down mulish pride, and I discovered them all. That is how I ended up doing a doctoral dissertation to prove that we make up the difference between good and evil and that we aren’t responsible for what we do. I remember now that I even taught these things to students…now that’s sin.

It was also agony. You cannot imagine what a person has to do to himself to go on believing such nonsense.  Paul said that the knowledge of God’s laws is “written on our hearts, our consciences also bearing witness.” The way natural law thinkers put this is to say that they constitute the deep structure of our minds. That means that so long as we have minds, we can’t not know them. Well, I was unusually determined not to know them, therefore, I had to destroy my mind. I resisted the temptation to believe in good with as much energy as some saints resist the temptation to neglect good. For instance, I loved my wife and children, but I was determined to regard this love as merely a subjective preference with no real and objective value. Think what this did to my very capacity to love them. After all, love is a commitment of the will to the true good of another person, and how can one’s will be committed to the true good of another person if he denies the reality of good…denies the reality of persons…denies that his commitments are in any sense in his control?

Visualize a man opening up the access panels of his mind and pulling out all of the components that have God’s image stamped on them. The problem is that they all have God’s image stamped on them, so the man can never stop. No matter how many he pulls out, there’s still more to pull. I was that man. Because I pulled out more and more, there was less and less that I could think about. But because there was less and less that I could think about, I thought I was becoming more and more focused. Because I believed things that filled me with dread, I thought I was smarter and braver than the people who didn’t believe them. I thought I saw an emptiness at the heart of the universe that was hidden from their foolish eyes. But I was the fool.

Taken from the the essay Escape from Nihilism by Joseph Budziszewski. Photo by the trial via Flickr.

The day before Jesus was executed, he celebrated the ancient Jewish festival of Passover with his disciples. At Passover, Jews eat a meal together to remember the time, centuries before, when God took the life of every first-born son in Egypt, but passed over the houses of the Israelites, who had sacrificed a lamb in place of their son. It was this first Passover that led to the Israelite’s escape from slavery to the Egyptians.

Jesus and his disciples celebrated Passover as Jews had done for hundreds of years, with unleavened bread and wine. But when it came time to eat, Jesus did something extraordinary. As he handed the bread around, he said, “This is my body.” If you’ve heard these words a thousand times in church, they probably don’t sound strange. But imagine how it sounded to the disciples. This bread is his body? What?

It’s a strange thing to say in itself, but the disciples had greater reason to be confused. Jesus was identifying his body with the Passover meal, and the disciples wouldn’t have missed the implication. He was saying that his body would be a sacrifice which would rescue a people from slavery.

More than that, Jesus was saying that the Passover wasn’t actually about God rescuing the Israelites from Egypt at all; he was saying the Passover was really all about him. Not only was this confusing, it was insulting. The Passover was the most sacred festival in the Jewish calendar, and for Jesus to say it was all about him was outrageous.

Jesus, of course, knew something the disciples didn’t. He knew what was going to happen on Good Friday. He would die in our place, like the lamb that died instead of the Israelite son. His death would rescue us from slavery to sin and death. The first Passover was a momentous act of rescue for the Israelites, but it pales in light of the rescue that Jesus’ death would perform. The Passover really was all about Jesus. Maundy Thursday explains what Good Friday means.

Bonus fact! The name Maundy comes from the Latin word Mandatum, which is the first word in the phrase, “Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos”. If you went to a Maundy Thursday service back in the day, you would have heard the priest say this phrase, and so the day came to be named after it.

Challenge! Ten points to the first person to accurately translate the phrase.

Photo by Paurian via Flickr

On Thursday mornings I get to help out with a Bible study group for people who are learning English. They come to practice their English, but also to learn about Jesus and western culture. We’re going through a series of studies answering questions like ‘How do we know there is a God?’ and ‘Who is Jesus?’

Last Thursday we did ‘What is a Christian?’ and it’s amazing how many things you can rule out- you can do a lot of ‘Christian’ things without being a Christian. For example, believing in God, going to church, feeling that God is with you and leading a good life – none of that makes you a Christian.

To show the truth of what a Christian is we told the students the story of the Lost Son (Luke 15) and they were blown away! The couldn’t believe the father welcomed back the son who had treated him so so badly, and not only welcomed him back but ran to him and celebrated his return! The looks on their faces were fantastic, and a great reminder of how ridiculous (in the best way) God’s grace really is. Sharing the great news about God’s lavish love is such a revelation to people, and such an encouragement to Christians. How often we take grace for granted, but how good is God that he involves us in revealing this treasure to others.

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to encourage you from a great Bible study I had a couple of weeks ago on Ephesians 1:1-14.  As God is challenging me, so I would like to challenge you!

God has given us every spiritual blessing “in Christ” (Eph 1:3).  In Christ, God has chosen us (4,11), given us his grace (6), redeemed and forgiven us (7), revealed the mystery of his will (9), and marked us with a seal (13) – all “in Christ”.  Why not just say “from Christ”? Because Jesus is the source of all these things.  Even more, he is the only source.

If all my money is in my BHP shares, then I have a vested interest in what happens to BHP.  BHP’s fate determines mine. It means I’m all-in. Similarly, we are relying totally on Jesus for these things – they are inseperably bound to Christ. If we separate from Christ, we also separate from the blessings and promises.  If we unite with Christ, they immediately become ours.

If you say “I am in love”, or “I am in the garage”, then there is no doubt about the issue – it’s crystal clear.  You’re saying something black and white about your state of being.  Likewise, we have these
things completely in Christ, not just partially.  If you are in Christ, they are already yours, right now!

Now all that can sound a bit airy-fairy, but the question for us is, do we act like this is the reality?  Do I live as if I already have everything I need in Christ?  Do I react to circumstances, make decisions, and treat other people like this is the case?  Do I view myself as if I am already bought and redeemed by Jesus, or do I still live in fear of God’s wrath?  Or do I feel too weak and sinful to do anything great for God?

Read Ephesians 2:10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before-hand, that we should do them.”  It’s not our plan that we’re following, it’s God’s.  And he chose you before you were born, to do his work.  That means that, no matter what your weaknesses, God can use you incredibly – he’s already planned it!  He just wants you to believe that, and to start acting like it’s true.

The God of our minds is so much smaller than the Almighty God of reality. He’s already given us everything we need to do his will.  Let’s start believing it and acting like it!

Blessings in Christ,

Adrian

1. If you want to say that a story containing miracles isn’t historical because it contains miracles, you need to return to your doctrine of God. If God created all things and if he upholds the Universe by the word of his power, then surely it’s no problem for him to keep a bloke alive in a fish for three days, or to cause a whole city to repent, or whatever. The presence of strange events is no reason to deny its historicity.

2. I think it’s a good instinct to assume history until proven otherwise.

3. Nevertheless, we are used to parts of the Bible that tell the truth without telling historical truth. So for example the story of the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan are true, but not in the sense that they tell the truth about history. We all get that they are telling a different kind of truth (“what happens”, as opposed to “what happened”), and they lose none of their power or truthfulness when we discover that they “never happened.”

4. Therefore, the question of Jonah and history is not “this is weird, maybe it didn’t happen?” It is rather: “What kind of literature is this?” If, like 1 and 2 Kings or the Gospel of Luke it presents as history, then we believe that part of the truth it is tell us is historical truth. If, however, there are clear literary indicators that it is a parable (or poem or whatever) like the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan, then there may be grounds for thinking it is telling the truth in a different way to the way history tells the truth. Follow?

5. On these grounds (literary, not weird-factor) I tend to think Jonah is probably more of a parable than history. That is, it is telling us the truth about what happens (people lose sight of God’s grace for the lost), but maybe not what happened. I don’t hold this view with much passion, and could easily be persuaded the other way. Feel free to give it a go.

Finally, things can be even more complicated! Have a look at the parable of the Tenants in Mark 12:1-12 and ask “What sort of truth is this telling? Stuff that happened, or stuff that happens?” See, not as easy as you think, is it?

Obviously the different options all have advantages and disadvantages and the best choice will depend on what you would use it for, your level of technical expertise and ability to make use of what the programs offer, your computer’s hardware capabilities, and available funds.

Perhaps the place to start would be – why use bible study software at all? The ink and paper variety functions very well so why bother? That’s certainly worth asking before you go throwing any cash down on something. If your only use of the bible is in personal reading, taking it to church or Hub then you have little use for Bible software. It’s just not as good for sitting down and reading, and it’s not transportable with the exception of PDA/smarthphone versions.

On the other hand, if you want to study the bible and not just read it; if you lead a small group and want to really come to grips with a passage, to contrast all the different english translations, to explore how it connects with the rest of scripture, do word studies on key words, see how commentators have grappled with a passage, use other reference books – dictionaries and so forth; and if your skills allow, grapple with the text in its original languages and do sophisticated grammatical and syntactic analysis; you’ll either need a large free table, a pile of books and plenty of hours to scour through finding the information you need… or software.

Over the next weeks I’ll try to give you a snapshot of what’s out there, what it can do and who it would be useful for.

In Wright’s opinion—which I suspect is correct—many Christians have unthinkingly accepted our culture’s hope of dying and going to heaven as a disembodied spirit, instead of realising that our final hope is to be resurrected on the last day to worship God forever in the new creation.

Wright points out that when our final hope is to die and go to heaven we start misinterpreting parts of the Bible like Philippians 3:20a and Ephesians 2:6. We read these verses (and lots of others) as saying that our hope is to go to heaven. But for Paul ‘heaven’ isn’t so much the place people go when they die as “the place where the divinely intended future for the world is kept safely in store” until the new creation when they will be a visible reality. In Wright’s words, “If I assure my guests that there is champagne for them in the fridge I am not suggesting that we all need to get into the fridge if we are to have the party.”

Can anyone think of any other verses that talk about heaven as the warehouse for things that will become visible realities in the new creation?

In context Paul is dealing with some in the Corinthian church who are ridiculing the idea of a future resurrection by asking, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” (15:35). In other words, “Get real Paul, there’s no such thing as resurrection. I mean, we can’t even imagine what a resurrected body would look like!” Presumably they think that Christians will just die and go to heaven to live out eternity as disembodied spirits.

Paul will have none of their objection, pointing out:

1. It’s not so crazy to think that a body that dies will be transformed by resurrection into another type of body, after all that’s sort of what God does with seeds. You don’t have to plant a whole flower to get a flower, you just plant a seed and that turns into a flower. Same sort of thing with us when we ‘get planted’.

2. There are lots of different types of body. Animals, birds, fish, sun, moon, stars, all have ‘bodies’ and they all differ from one another. So why should it be so hard to believe that we will have resurrection bodies that are somehow different from our current bodies?

But then we get to verses 43–44 where Paul states that our body “is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” What does he mean by a ‘natural body’ (soma psychikon) versus a ‘spiritual body’ (soma pneumatikon)? Is Paul talking about a physical body versus a spiritual body (as the RSV, NRSV, and NEB translations say)? No, he isn’t!

When Paul talks about a natural body (more literally a ‘soulish body’) versus a spiritual body he isn’t talking about what they’re made of, but what they’re powered by. It’s like us talking about a steam engine versus a diesel engine. The engines aren’t made out of steam or diesel, they’re powered by them! Paul is saying is that our resurrected bodies won’t be powered by the normal life-force that powers us now, they’ll be powered by the Spirit of God.

So, three questions:
1. Do you expect your body to be resurrected, or were you—like some of the Corinthians—expecting to become some sort of disembodied spirit?

2. Where do we see our culture (Christian or otherwise) get it wrong?

3. What difference does it make?

Found this nice little article in The Times from an atheist who is a keen supporter of missionary evangelism in African because of the change it brings to people’s lives. Can be found here.