The Bible Challenge

I love codes. I've read all kinds of books about them, their historical development and uses. One could argue that World War 2 was largely won because the Allies managed to break the German and Japanese military codes which allowed us to know what their armed forces were going to do before they did it.

I think this love of codes goes back to when I was a kid and realized that the world was filled with information that adults could decipher but I couldn't. So I was thrilled when they taught us to read in first grade. To turn the symbols into knowledge was an important skill. And once I learned to read, eventually I had to learn how to crack codes, forms of writing that once again were keeping me from learning something. I learned the manual alphabet for the deaf, Morse code, Braille, etc. After watching an episode of the old Mission Impossible TV show, I immediately jotted down the code the team was out to break so I could use it too. I had a book of codes I kept in my official James Bond attaché case, next to my 007 code machine and a James Bond pen that fired small projectiles in which you could roll up small pieces of message paper. And that paper would dissolve in water to hide it from enemy agents! I even made up some extremely complicated codes in case I was captured by bad guys and had to get a message out to my family. When you are a kid that seems like a much more likely scenario than it does when you grow up.

Today they use computers to devise nigh-unbreakable codes. It's not as much fun as using a Jefferson wheel cipher or a Scytale or a book code which turns any book you and the message's recipient both have into a codebook. I don't make up codes any more. But I still love movies like "The List of Adrian Messenger" or short stories like Poe's "The Gold Bug" or Doyle's "The Dancing Men." I should have liked "The Da Vinci Code" more but I kept getting distracted by all the historical and theological errors the author made.

You may be surprised that I was not at all in sympathy with the so-called Bible Code craze several years back. That's partly because I knew that, like a book code, if you have a sufficiently large text, you can use it to piece together any message. For that reason the Bible has been used as a codebook by spies. And if you're going to use it as a word search puzzle, you can find all kinds of random vaguely important words if you look hard enough.

But my disapproval was primarily based on the idea that God sticking a secret code into the Bible goes against the whole purpose of the scriptures, which is revelation. God is trying to communicate to a world that has trouble grasping obvious truths when they're laid out in front of them. (Remember the billboard that said, "What part of 'Love one another' don't you understand?--God.")  If the purpose of the Bible is to spread the good news why disguise it?

Even Jesus' parables are only hard to understand if you really don't try to grasp what he's saying about God, love, justice, forgiveness, grace, humility and how what people are inside counts for more than appearances. The gist of what Jesus is saying comes through, even if you need to consult a Bible dictionary or commentary to figure out certain details that his audience would have understood without any explanation.

Actually, the hardest thing about grasping what the Bible says is that it runs so contrary to our expectations. We tend to view things in a very different way. Watch any movie about good and evil and you will think that the two are easy to distinguish and that good people are radically different from bad people. But the Bible starts off by saying everything God created was good. Evil comes into the picture when we doubt God's goodness and misuse or neglect God's gifts. Evil is not good's equal and opposite. Evil is a parody of good, a diminishment of good, or as C. S. Lewis put it, spoiled goodness. That's why we often get the 2 confused. Evil people are people created to be good making bad choices. And no human is entirely good. So after the Fall we see humanity slide into all kinds of evils, especially violence. And we see God start his project to reclaim the people he created to be good. He finds certain persons, usually underdogs, through whom he can transmit his message, his word. Starting with Abraham we see God reveal what kind of God he is, namely one you can trust to keep his word, one who doesn't let untrustworthy behavior on our part slide, and yet who forgives those who turn their lives around. And he reveals himself to be a God who, unlike the other deities, doesn't demand we sacrifice our children or others. Sin does have a cost but that is shown in the sacrifice of animals, which were an expensive enough loss to those whose wealth and economy were measured in livestock.

When the people demand a king like other nations, God allows it, while warning the people about what such power will do to those who rule. David exemplifies both extremes. He is a man who devoutly worships God and yet he is forbidden to build the temple because he is a man of blood. He resorts to murder to cover up his adultery with another man's wife. His family troubles led to his son Absalom's revolt.

Another son, Solomon, is both a wise ruler and a fool when it comes to women and luxury. Under his heir politics split God's people into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. Corruption sets in. And pretty soon God's message is not coming from official sources but from dissenters. The prophets keep pointing out how God's people, from the kings on down, fall short of God's standards. These shortcomings are particularly visible in the way people approach God and the way they approach the poor and powerless. The 2 are connected. If you don't really care about God or you worship things other than him, you don't really care about those made in his image or you value things above people. Eventually the corrupt regimes in Israel and Judah fall to the empires of Assyria and Babylon respectively. After 70 years of exile, only Judah returns, coming back to the ruins of Jerusalem and its temple. But the Jews have kept themselves from assimilation by devoting themselves to the Law of God that they previously had not observed.

By the time of Jesus, the problem is the opposite of not observing the Law. The Pharisees have obsessively kept it and elaborated on it, to the point that the average person despairs of receiving God's grace because keeping this version of the Law is impossible. The letter of the Law is being used to kill the spirit of the Law, were that possible. Justice, mercy and compassion take a back seat to keeping every last legalistic detail.

Into this world, God gives his last word on himself--the living Word of God, Jesus the Christ or Messiah. The definitive expression of God, the exact image of the Father, is seen in Jesus. He sets the record straight on the unforgiving version of the Law being promulgated and the religious leaders do not like it. Together with the leader of the country's Roman occupation they have Jesus executed. But God's Word will not be silenced and Jesus rises again to encourage and commission his disciples to preach the good news of God's Word. At Pentecost God's Spirit sets their hearts on fire and the gospel spreads like wildfire. Through Paul, a zealous Pharisee whom Jesus personally converts, the message reaches the Gentiles. The Bible ends with a book which, while somewhat disguised in Old Testament language so as to slip under the radar of the persecutors, is clear in announcing the victory of God and the re-creation of heaven and earth as a paradise once more.

That's the basic outline of the saga of God's redemption of his creatures. But there's so much more to the story. There is love and comedy and tragedy and treachery and war and peace and wisdom and folly and nobility and ignominy and horror and rescue and jokes and poetry and song. And yet, for all that, the Bible, a collection of 66 books written by at least 40 authors, has a remarkable unity. Like the 4 gospels, which approach Jesus from different vantage points and yet yield a 3 dimensional portrait of the same person, the Bible gives us a full and nuanced picture of our relationship with God. But the only way to get all of those details and nuances is to read the whole thing.

But that's hard, isn't it? Not if you read a translation you like. Not if you use any of the many study Bibles, Bible dictionaries, commentaries, and concordances, a great many of which are online, to answer any nagging questions. The Bible itself is online in several places in several translations, including in other languages. You can get it as an app on your smart phone or listen to it as a podcast. The Bible is easy to find, easy to read and easy to get the gist of. Yet woefully few Christians know it well.

The Bible is the best-selling book in the world and probably the least read. It's not in code. Its message has spoken to people all over the world, regardless of language, culture or time period. It has changed lives, inspired reforms in society and in the church, and has left its mark in our language and thought-forms. The majority of early scientists in the West were Christians and often clergy. They believed that the universe, as the work of one God, must make sense and that we, as creatures created in God's image, should be able follow his thoughts in exploring his universe. They believed all truth is God's truth. Isaac Newton, considered by many the greatest scientist ever, was very well-versed in the Bible and wrote a great deal about it. Some modern scientists ignore that part of his life. And they criticize people of faith as non-thinking dummies who don't even know what they believe very well.

So once again I'm going to issue the Bible Challenge. It's an attempt to get as many people to read the Bible in a year as we can. You can either read 3 chapters every day or read 5 chapters a day--3 from the Old Testament, 1 from the Psalms, and 1 from the New Testament--6 days a week. Most Bible chapters take 3 to 4 minutes to read so each session only takes 20 to 30 minutes a day. You can do that in the morning, at lunch or at bedtime.

I know inmates who have read the whole book in a couple of weeks. Admittedly they can devote most of their waking hours to it. But to the average inmate it is the most reading he or she has done in their whole life. Some churches have done marathon public readings of the Bible over 4 to 5 days. Reading the entire Bible takes from 72 to 90 hours total. So stretched out over a year, it's an easy task to accomplish.  

And to help you, I will not only post the references to daily readings but I will be posting my daily reflections on this blog. I myself have decided, after much thought, to read Eugene Peterson's The Message. I was going to read various scholarly translations. But Peterson is a Greek and Hebrew professor turned pastor who did his very periphrastic but astute version precisely to get people to read the Bible. So I'm going to try it just to feel the flow of the saga of God.

I intend to start on New Year's Eve, to keep up the Monday through Saturday schedule. You can simply start January 1. By the end of the first week you will have read about creation, the Fall, the tower of Babel, Noah and the flood and how Abraham pleaded for Sodom to be spared. You will have read a selection of David's psalms and be in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount. By the end of 4 weeks you will have put the 10 Commandments behind you, have the 22nd and 23rd psalms fresh in your mind, and be approaching the crucifixion of Jesus for the first time. And you will have created a new habit. According to experts, it takes doing something for 21 days to make that activity a habit. Admit it: you've got worse habits. This would be an excellent one to adopt.

The most stinging criticism of Christianity is that it could be a good thing… if more people put it into practice. Sadly, a lot of people have very vague and uniformed ideas of what Christianity is really about. They think it's about being nice all the time. Or that it's about telling everyone else what they are doing wrong all the time. Or that it's about proclaiming difficult-to-understand doctrines. Or it's about being very concerned with your own relationship with God and your own spirituality and your personal peace. Those are distortions that come from only paying attention to certain scriptures. If you want to know about God and humanity more fully, you need to find out what he actually has revealed about himself, about his past history with us and about his plans for us now and in the future. The good news is you can do this by reading a half hour or less a day for a year.

Knowledge is power. Paul knew this and said in Romans chapter 1: "I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes…" So not having knowledge of the gospel robs you of spiritual power and health, the way not knowing what nutrient you are lacking in your diet robs you of physical power and health. What you don't know can hurt you. What you learn can save you. It can also help you pass that life-saving knowledge to all you meet. What better time to gain or refresh this vital knowledge than right now?