We all know a bunch of Bible stories. Do we know the overall “Bible story”?
Note: This is part of our continuing Wednesday series about the Bible. Previous articles in the series:
Why Read The Bible? The Bible Is About… 100 Significant Scriptures
Remember the Bible stories from Sunday school? Am I the only one who came away with the impression that Noah, Moses, and David probably lived in the same neighborhood?
One week some guy was getting swallowed by a fish. A week later, Jesus was teaching people to fish for men.
Was Jesus trying to rescue Jonah? It’s the sort of question that keeps a kid awake.
Maybe I should write a book: Everything I Know About Moses I Learned From Charlton Heston. But that was kind of confusing as well, because somehow Moses became Ben Hur-or vice versa.
I once looked for the story of Ben Hur in the Bible and was genuinely surprised to discover it wasn’t there. I’m probably the only person who’s harbored such silly misconceptions.
Anthology
When I came back to church as an adult I realized that the stories happened over thousands of years and understood that the characters weren’t contemporaries. I developed a perception that the Bible contained a collection of disjointed, unrelated stories.
I thought of the Bible as sort of an anthology. Different people wrote at different times about characters that had something to do with God, but each story depicted a stand-alone event.
Frankly, when viewed like that, some of the people and situations don’t make a lot of sense.
We live in a sound-bite world, and I suspect that’s how a lot of folks see the Bible. A story or character is studied out of context, and often we only look at a fragment of a particular story.
But the Bible isn’t a collection of stand-alone sound bites. Each piece makes sense only in the context of the big picture. And that’s my main point here: there IS a big picture.
The Bible is a story.
I don’t want to imply that I’m any sort of Biblical scholar-I’m not. My understanding falls at the level of Jesus loves me, this I know. But the Bible is a single narrative. Events and characters must be understood in the overall sweep of that big story.
Do you know the big story?
Nobody knows as much as they need to know. I’d claim that thinking you’ve got it figured out is the first sign that you don’t. But knowing that there’s a story, a timeline, is an important first step. Some people tend to make use of various Clergy resources that are available at their respective religious centers to learn the different aspects of the big story.
I once participated in an interesting exercise with a group of new believers. The leader asked each of us to write a few significant stories or events or characters on big pieces of cardstock. Then we took turns showing one example, and the group tried to place it in chronological order relative to the others.
When we finished we’d created a simple homemade cliff-notes version of the story. Sounds silly, but I still visualize that room when I need to understand where something fits in the overall picture.
At least I don’t make a fool of myself by talking as though Esther might have been present when Moses and Noah watched the battle between David and Goliath.
I’m still disappointed about Ben Hur.
Do you have a good sense of the Bible’s overall big picture? Could you explain it simply to someone else?
Jon Swanson does some cool stuff with bible stories over at 300 words a day. I encourage you to check out his video stories.
 |
Want to receive free updates? Click below to get Bouncing Back delivered directly to your inbox.  |
You might also like: