What do I really believe? That's the question I set out to answer when I started my first Genesis-to-Revelation journey through the Bible. It's not that I've never studied it. I grew up Baptist, and Mama expected me to be able to honestly check that "Lesson Studied" box on my offering envelope every Sunday morning. But there's a big difference between studying isolated passages selected for you—or rereading the ones you happen to need at the moment (yes, that has been my m.o. of late)—and reading the entire Scripture from start to finish. Here's what Oprah would call my "aha moment" of the week: I've always been taught that the Bible is the word of God. I've always called it that myself. But the Bible also includes the words of men and women wrestling with the nature of God. And that, to me, is one of the most divinely inspired aspects of it. What if all of those ancient wrestlings had been omitted? What if writers like Moses and Isaiah and David had recorded only the moments of triumph and communion? Where would that leave the rest of us? If we didn't know that even one as close to God as David—from whom Jesus descended—could stumble and fall and find redemption, how much harder would it be to believe that we can fall DRAMATICALLY but still find our way back to God? What if we didn't know that God's chosen people betrayed Him again and again, and yet every time they truly repented and prayed, He forgave them and restored them? (As a child, I had little patience with those children of Israel, going their own way and getting themselves into all kinds of trouble, even after God had blessed them. Now? Let's just say I've gotten myself into enough wanderings in the wilderness to be much more sympathetic toward my ancient brothers and sisters.) The Psalmists wrote beautiful words of praise and thanksgiving, but they also recorded moments of great fear and distress, when they asked God, essentially, "Where are You? When are You coming to help me? Please hurry!" I read those passages, and I'm amazed at the unity of the ancient past with the modern present. So here's something I believe: I believe the Bible was inspired by God, who understood that the weaknesses of humanity and the Big Questions that would trouble us are timeless. He also understood that we need to know that. He had the wisdom not to exclude our questions from the Scripture, but to make them central to its truth.
When I consider the heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
Psalm 8: 3-5
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