Why I am a Christian (15)

The Bible’s Message Is Incredibly Consistent with a Striking Running Theme

In 2012 I jotted down all the reasons I could think of why I am a Christian. I found 26 so I decided to serialise them in a blog every fortnight for a year.

I have so far explored themes linked with science, philosophy and theology before looking at five different facets of Jesus (I could have written about many more. I find everything about Jesus utterly convincing). 

For the next three posts I am going to look at the Bible and why I think it is inspired like no other book.

Firstly, I am struck by its extraordinary unity and coherence.

As you read those words, I admit that they may not generate that much of a “wow” factor but when you think about it, they really should.

Think of it this way. Imagine you were asked to select and assemble into one volume 66 assorted pieces of literature, covering a 1,500 year timespan, authored by legislators, historians, poets, farmers, royalty, manual workers, political commentators, songwriters, tax administrators and family doctors, written in three different languages and from the cultures of three different empires on three different continents. However hard you tried, it would be no surprise if the result was a ragbag assortment of miscellaneous and often contradictory texts.

Now consider the Bible. It is a collection of 66 quite different writings, some quite long, some very short, in over a dozen distinct genres* written over one and a half millennia, by about 35-40 different authors (most of whom didn’t know each other or consult together), from all the social backgrounds listed above and more besides, and immersed in cultures as disparate as the Egyptian (Africa), Babylonian (Asia) and Roman (Europe) empires. Not one of those authors knew they were writing for the same anthology.

The result though is decidedly not the weird jumble of unconnected ideas you might reasonably expect from such widely diverse sources. In fact, though hundreds of themes are explored in the Bible from a bewildering array of viewpoints, it speaks with one voice. I think that is humanly inexplicable.

For example, from Genesis to Revelation there is absolute agreement on the nature of God; his wisdom, his power, his truth, his love, his holiness, his justice, his patience, his authority, and his consistent righteous hostility to sin that is called his wrath. Throughout the 66 books a completely uniform picture of God emerges.

Furthermore, from beginning to end, there is also absolute agreement on the condition of humankind. Our species is consistently presented as lovingly created, superior in moral responsibility to all other animals, yet, - unlike them - inevitably sinful and flawed, always dependent on God's grace to initiate and maintain any relationship with God.

And throughout Old and New Testament the reader is constantly reminded that there will be a Day of Final Reckoning when God will judge the world in perfect fairness. There is no hint of reincarnation, only resurrection in a restored creation.

That's just three examples. There are many more. 

But the Bible does much more than just not disagree with itself (if you’ll excuse the awkward English). The Bible has, in addition, a profound coherence with a distinct sweeping narrative and clear central plot.

The overarching story in the Bible has been neatly summed up as the tale of three trees.

Firstly, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis 3 is the explanation (however literally or figuratively you read it) of how things got to be so messed up on our beautiful planet. In theological terms, it’s about how sin entered the world.  

Secondly, the cross on which Jesus was crucified, taking upon himself the penalty for sin, is referred to twice in the Acts of the Apostles literally as a tree (Acts 5.30 and Acts 10.39). This is the explanation of how God stepped in to repair everything.

And thirdly, the Bible ends in Revelation 22 with a vision of a restored creation, centred round an evergreen, permanently fruitful, Tree of Life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.

Basically, the Bible is the story of a beautiful and perfect world that is ruined, then rescued and finally restored. That basic narrative is the golden thread that runs through every book in the Bible. Every subplot, however self-contained and interesting in its own right, contributes to and finds its deepest significance in that central theme.

It would take far too long to illustrate how this is so all the way through the Bible. But here are just a few examples.

- Right from the start in the story of The Fall, there is the promise that a male figure, the offspring of a woman, would come to crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). One day, the wrong of the Garden of Eden would be righted. Then right at the end of the story, in the book of Revelation, Jesus, born of Mary, finally subdues and conquers “that old serpent, the devil” before sending him to his everlasting punishment.

- The Old Testament Law with its laborious system of blood sacrifices in the Old Testament expressed the seriousness of sin and the penalty of eternal death it deserved. Its repetitive nature showed our powerlessness to decisively deal with the world's most incurable problem – the human heart. But, more than that, the massive cost in the life of livestock also prefigures the perfect and permanent atonement that Jesus would make for the sins of the world when the blood of his innocent life was shed on the cross.

- The Old Testament Prophets repeatedly called for a response of righteous living and from the people of their generation - and they were rejected time and time again. This depressing reading consistently matches the observation in the New Testament that absolutely no one is justified (declared ‘not guilty’) because absolutely everyone falls short of God’s standard.

- The Old Testament Writings all yearn for someone who will satisfy the hungers of the human soul. Every bewildering circle in the Old Testament is magnificently squared in the New Testament in the person of Jesus.

This coherent, central narrative running through the Scriptures helps to resolve some of the biggest puzzles in the Bible. 

For example, reading through Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, many people in our day are shocked by the primitive nature of the legislation (in fact, it was revolutionary and strikingly humane compared with other legal codes from that time). But what use does a Christian have for it in the 21^st Century Western world?

Consider the many offences which carried the death penalty in the Law of Moses. Isn’t this all we need to know to declare the Bible irrelevant to the issues of our age? For the record, the death penalty under the Law of Moses was prescribed in cases of cursing God, sacrificing to false gods, serious violations of the Sabbath, false prophecy, divination and the dabbling in various occult arts, human sacrifice, premeditated murder, kidnap, striking or cursing  parents, persistent and incorrigible rebelliousness, rape, adultery, homosexual acts, incest, bestiality and premarital sex.

Why do we not feel obliged to apply capital punishment to such (or indeed any) offenses in so called Christian countries? Because of Jesus who, in his own words, came not to abolish but fulfil the Law.

What does that mean? Two things. First, that the death penalty is permanently valid because, however much our standards vary from age to age, all those sins listed above constitute a serious offence against a holy God and always will. But second, because Jesus died for the sin of the whole world, he has already paid the death penalty for all sin. He has totally satisfied all the righteous requirements of the Law – including its draconian sanctions.

When Scripture interprets Scripture in this way all the pieces of the sometimes perplexing puzzle fall into place and the glorious picture emerges.

Then take the resurrection as another example. As I explained in Reason 14, the resurrection stands out as stunning evidence of the truthfulness of Christianity. But, more than that, it fits perfectly and surprisingly into the logic of the big theme of the Bible. As J. John and Chris Walley write:

“The resurrection of Jesus… is like one of those twists in a novel or film that takes you by surprise until you think about it, and then you realize that it actually makes sense and it fits with the plot. So the Old Testament teaches that death is the inevitable consequence of human beings having sinned against God. The interesting implication of this (which no one appears to have explored before the resurrection) is that if someone who had never sinned actually did die, death would have no hold over them.”

My conclusion to all this is that a book with so many diverse authors, writing over such a long period of time, could surely only display such unity and coherence if their work was commissioned and collated by one divine editor.

So that’s the fifteenth reason I am a Christian. I believe the Bible is God’s inspired word; a trustworthy revelation about life, the universe and everything.

You might have thought that, with such a humanly inexplicable unity, the Bible would have the respect (if not the admiration) of those who are not believers. But no book has been as hated, as burned and as banned throughout history as this one has. That it has remained, despite all the odds, easily the world’s bestselling and most fervently sought-after book is what I’ll write about in two weeks’ time.

* The genres I have in mind are legislation (e.g. Leviticus), historical narrative (e.g. 1 Kings), short story (e.g. Ruth), tragic poetry (e.g. Job), song lyrics (e.g. Psalms), tweets (e.g. Proverbs), romantic drama (Song of Solomon), prophecy (e.g. Isaiah), dirge poetry (e.g. Lamentations), news supplement (e.g. Mark), open letter (e.g. Ephesians), private correspondence (e.g. Philemon) and apocalyptic (e.g. Revelation).