Kethuvim

Hear me out on this before you make any rash judgments about me. I'm not necessarily endorsing anything here, I'm just spit-balling on something I've been thinking about. The Bible, at its best, is enigmatic and difficult to read. I also find large parts of it to be boring. Sorry, I know pastors aren't supposed to admit this, but I'm just being honest. Every pastor feels this way, they just won't admit it (ever read the book of Numbers with an "edge of your seat" type of excitement? I didn't think so.).

I've been trying to figure out why I love to read novels, but find it, at times, difficult to read the Bible. It hit me today...when I read the Bible, I'm wondering the whole time whether or not what I'm reading is factually true. While doing this, I first have to unpackage history, then try to decide through evidence if what I'm reading actually happened, then I try to find its meaning. It's completely exhausting, and by the time I get to the second step, my mind is mush anyway. When I read novels, I'm not worried about whether the events in the book coincide with history, I'm just sucked into the story.

I read Les Miserables recently. When I read it, I wasn't spending time worrying about whether Jean Valjean (the main character, for those who haven't read it) was real, I was just captivated by the beauty of his story. I found great truth in that book, and I wasn't even looking for it.

Let me give you an example from the Bible, Noah's ark. There's constant debate about whether or not a global flood really happened, and frankly, there's evidence to support both arguments. When I read that story, the whole time I'm thinking, "I wonder if this really happened? What if it did? What if it didn't?" In doing this, I miss the whole point of the story. God was fed up with the wickedness and lack of love of humanity (quite disturbing actually), and he decided to wipe out all of humanity. He looked down and saw a good old man named Noah, and he decided that Noah, along with his family, would save mankind by building a huge boat in the middle of dry land. Humanity needed a savior, God gave them Noah. All of this is easy to miss if we're constantly having to spend time proving the historical truth of everything.

A note to all conservatives everywhere: the Bible doesn't have to be 100% historically accurate to be true. I believe that no truer document has ever been penned in the history of the world. It's assessment of humans is right on. It's look at the human condition is true. Our need of some sort of salvation is true. The way it speaks of Jesus' life is true and right. The Bible is true even if Goliath wasn't really 10 feet tall. The story of it is what matters. The truth is found in the meaning of the stories, not the historical accuracy of the stories.

Is the Bible historically accurate? A lot of it has been proven to be so. But we also have to admit that some of it has not been proven as accurate, and we have to be okay with that, because there's deeper meaning to be found in the narrative. It's still true. It's still beautiful. And it's still the greatest story ever told.