Read your Bible.
It might not be that easy, though. You may feel convinced that reading the Bible is the right thing to do, but it’s still on the shelf of your dorm room, or sitting at your parents’ house in your old room. You just can’t open it and read it. You’ve tried, but it’s too hard, and it doesn’t make sense.
My very first class in college was on the grand story of the Bible. That class changed the way I read the Bible—it brought a whole new perspective to a book that seemed insurmountable. The Bible can feel disjointed with so many different narratives, poems, proverbs, historical accounts, and then, all of a sudden, Jesus, who, at first glance, doesn’t really seem to fit with the rest of it all.
My professor explained how the Bible, with all its various elements and stories, actually tells one big story. It’s a story about God and humans together, then apart, then together again.
And that’s what keeps me reading the Bible: all the small parts work together to tell us something amazing. I am convinced that the Bible ought to be read to encounter God in his story.
And it ought to be read to see that I, too, have a part to play in what God is doing. Wouldn’t you want to discover your role too?
Read to find God
We dig in, from Genesis to Revelation, because of the story told about the one main character. From the beginning of the Bible to the very end, God is at the centre of the whole thing. All the little and big stories in the Bible make up the grand, overarching story of God. Human beings have a part to play in God’s story, but people have consistently rejected their role.
The first book of the Bible, Genesis, tells how the first human beings were told to leave the Garden of Eden, a special place for God and human beings to share in relationship. It was closed off to all people after the actions of humans against God. A fracture had taken place in the relationship and the story God was envisioning.
So many of the stories told about human beings in the Bible, then, are stories of rejection, resistance, exclusion, and exile. All these things are the opposite of relationship.
That doesn’t mean God was done with the human race, though.
As the stories of human beings in the Old Testament are told, God offers again and again the invitation of a relationship with him to all sorts of people. But no one is able to truly accept, and live in, a harmonious relationship with God, because their actions against God prevent it. But God does not disengage nor does he wish to exclude human beings from his story (1).
Read to see the big picture
A brief overview of some of the Bible makes this clear.
In the book of Genesis, God forms a people, a great nation, to be like him. In the book of Exodus, God rescues this great nation from slavery in order to be in a relationship with him.
The weird book of Leviticus, with all its regulations and laws, shows the complexities of a relationship shared between God and humans.
The book of Judges shows the human tendency to receive God, call out for him to help, but then reject him when the situation is resolved and times are good.
The book of Job tells of somebody who feels rejected from God’s story in their suffering.
The book of Proverbs is a compilation of wise sayings to help people live in the story of God.
The books of the prophets both call out the inconsistencies of their context and look ahead to a future when the story of God is indeed the story of human beings and God in relationship, as God had always envisioned. That’s where Jesus—the Son of God—really comes into the picture. Even if it doesn’t seem like it, Jesus does fit into the story too.
Read to find Jesus
The four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—explore the life of Jesus, as he lives as a human being within the story of God. Jesus came down from heaven as a human being himself, as true God and true human—in a wonderful mystery, which is not easily explained here.
While human beings could not fully accept God’s invitation to enter his story, Jesus did not have the same faults as all other humans, because he himself is divine. He was able to love and serve God and those he came into contact without reservation. Jesus did this on our behalf, making the way for us to both enter and learn to live in God’s story.
Jesus encountered all sorts of people in his life, with diseases, disabilities, and demons. These kinds of people were rejected by society, but accepted by Jesus. Something about our place in God’s story is shown here. Our stories of rejection, resistance, exclusion, and exile end when we receive Jesus, and Jesus receives us, and we are able to join into God’s story. Then we are embraced, accepted, and loved.
Jesus said, “I have come … not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38). My story becomes God’s story when I say, “Your will be done,” and join with him in what he is doing in my life and around me in my community. The New Testament tells of those who go out and embrace, accept, and love all sorts of people they encounter. As we become part of God’s story, by reading the Bible and prayerfully engaging with the God of the Bible, we learn more and more how to do the same with all those around us.
Read to find your part
As Eugene Peterson pointed out, many Christians do not actually open their Bible to read it and find their place in God’s story (2). Yet we do have a role in God’s story.
When I read the Bible I am thinking, quite often, how what I’m reading connects to the bigger picture, and what that means for myself, as somebody who has been brought into a relationship with God through Jesus. What role do I play in God’s story?
There are many ways to answer the question, but here I will say one thing. As I read the Bible, hopefully for the rest of my life, I continually try to unite my story with God’s story. Instead of exclusion and exile, I seek to embrace, accept, and love God and everybody in my life.
My part is to read the Bible and dig deeper into the complexities of the story. There’s so much more to it than what I’m traced through here.
So go see for yourself. Get that Bible off the shelf, open it up and see what it’s all about. And see how you can begin to live in God’s story too.
Read your Bible.
Footnotes
- Daniel J. D. Stulac, Tragedy of the Commons (Eugene, OR: Cascade Press, 2023), 5.
- Eugene Peterson, Eat this Book (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), xi.
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