thoughts on the Bible (and all Sacred Scriptures for that matter)

In short, one way to describe the Bible, written by many different people over a period of three thousand years and more, would be to say that it is a disorderly collection of sixty-odd books, which are often tedious, barbaric, obscure, and teem with contradictions and inconsistencies. It is a swarming compost of a book, an Irish stew of poetry and propaganda, law and legalism, myth and murk, history and hysteria. Over the centuries it has become hopelessly associated with tub-thumping evangelism and dreary piety, with superannuated superstition and blue-nosed moralizing, with ecclesiastical authoritarianism and crippling literalism. Let them who try to start out at Genesis and work their way conscientiously to Revelation beware.

And yet—

And yet just because it is a book about both the sublime and the unspeakable, it is a book also about life the way it really is. It is a book about people who at one and the same time can be both believing and unbelieving, innocent and guilty, crusaders and crooks, full of hope and full of despair. In other words, it is a book about us.

                                                                                      Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking

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The Bible is a mirror.

We look in it and see ourselves.

It is indeed stories about God

Told by people who do not fully understand

who see darkly

but are striving

in the dark

to find some light

A progressive unfolding of our understanding of God

But it is as much about us as it is about the Sacred

It reflects who we are

at our best, and at our worst

in our believing

and in our doubting

We are in the story (for the story is more than a story of "then", it is also our story).

It is not a story about other's hearts,

so that we can guilt them and control them

it is about our hearts

it reveals our hearts

If we are open,

we know we are the miserly priest at the temple,

the arrogant Pharisee on the street corner,

the person in the crowd condemning the woman,

or perhaps, the woman

sprawled in the dust

we are the one who hears, “you are a child of God”

we are Zacchaeus, clinging to the branch of a tree

we are the cripple who is told to stand, and walk

we are the ones who are told

time and time and time again

“be not afraid”

as such the Bible is

challenging

confrontive

disturbing

inspiring

but above all, real

very, very, very real