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The Bible: story and ourselves

‘This year,’ said a friend of mine, ‘I’m going to read the Bible.’

I was rather surprised, for she had always been very scornful of religious practice. I was interested to know more.

‘How are you going to set about it?’ I asked.

‘I’m going to start at the beginning, and read all the way through. Don’t tell me it’s the wrong way to do it.’

So I didn’t. But I could imagine her progress, and almost predict chapter and verse where her resolution would, almost literally, run into the sand. Genesis starts off promisingly, there are some very good stories in it: the Creation, the Flood, the family sagas of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the beautifully told story of Joseph. And the book of Exodus is almost as exciting as the people are freed from slavery in Egypt and journey through the desert, discovering the generous love and care God has for them. But attention begins to waver as the writer presents instructions for the building of the Tabernacle, the size of the altar, the robes for the priests. And after Exodus comes Leviticus, where you have to be really determined to stick with it as laws and rituals about things we don’t usually mention in polite conversation are described in minute detail. There are more exciting stories to come, but Leviticus is probably the point at which anyone who thought the Bible was a book to read through from beginning to end would give up.

The Bible isn’t a book, but a collection of books, put together at various points in the history of the people whose story it tells, and edited several times in the process. So one of the first things we need to do is to discover the context of what we are reading. (The Lion Handbook to the Bible is quite a good starting point.)

And it is helpful, too, to think about the nature of story. Everybody loves a good story. We probably don’t remember being read to as children, but bedtime stories are part of the reassurance that everything is under control, ordered. At this point, if at no other during the day, we have someone’s undivided attention; we hear a story in which frightening or evil people or powers are inevitably conquered. Stories are the stage on which our fears and terrors can be encountered, in the safe knowledge that good will win. We never tire of hearing them, and woe betide anyone who tries to skip a page.

Stories aren’t just about being reassured, feeling secure in the knowledge that everything is under control. They are much more powerful. We use story to discover the roots of our history and our culture. Families bind themselves together, or sometimes destroy each other, by their stories – listen in on a gathering at a wedding or funeral! We use stories when we meet people, and talk about who they are in terms of where they’ve come from, and where they hope they’re going.

But stories are more important even than that. They are ways of engaging our imagination, helping us to explore things about our own personalities. Fairy stories, folk tales, religious stories, biographies, even fiction (however firm the disclaimer that no living person is portrayed in the story) are all written out of experience; all alike give us a framework, a vocabulary for dealing with ideas that are perhaps too painful to deal with directly.

Stories don’t necessarily illustrate, make things easy. They involve us, provoke us into response. They sneak past our defences and catch us off guard. The story of David and Bathsheba, and the way Nathan the prophet brought David to an understanding of what he had done illustrates this well (2 Samuel 11–12.14).

Apart from the fact that to have gone to the king and told him off for committing adultery and murder might have resulted in an unpleasant experience for Nathan, it would also have put David on the defensive. Telling David a story was a stroke of genius. David got so involved that he couldn’t restrain his anger: ‘Who is that man? He must die.’ And having made his judgement, he can’t evade his own story; he takes responsibility for what he has done.

Stories may take us out of ourselves, give us a break, but they give us back to ourselves with deeper understanding, seeing more clearly where our responsibility lies, which in turn frees us from the guilt which so often prevents us from moving on in our lives. And listening to people’s stories reassures us that we are not alone – there may not be an obviously happy ending, but there are companions along the way who are closer to us than perhaps we realized.

The Bible is full of stories, and they all contribute to one big story, the story of God’s love affair with his people. ‘You are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you’ (Isaiah 43.4). The Bible is not a book of instructions, but an invitation to listen to God’s story, which is our story too. God doesn’t tell us what to think, God invites us to discover who we are as we follow the events described in the Old Testament, and respond to the challenge of the prophets who, like Nathan, brought people face to face with the consequences of their choices. And in the New Testament, we meet the Word of God in a fresh way in Jesus, and think about how we might have responded if we had been there with him. What does it mean to be precious in God’s eyes? The story of Jesus tells us that it doesn’t mean that we will be spoilt. Although Jesus knew himself to be loved, he was not spared the cross, or the feeling of being totally alone. But he also knew that God is faithful, and that nothing in the end will be able to separate us from God’s love.

The story of God’s love continues as our personal story unfolds. The challenge for us is to discover where God is in the particular circumstances of our lives, or in the world around us. The Bible can help us not so much by giving us the right answers to our questions, but by helping us to ask the right questions, and nudging us into making appropriate responses. When we read the Bible we need to ask, as happens in at least one church at the end of a reading, ‘How is this the word of God for us today?’