Bible Archives — the creative minimalist

February 19, 2012 By Darren 2 Comments

I have finished reading the whole bible in a year

And so, as with all good things, my journey through the bible has come to an end*. I set out on 1st January 2011 to follow a reading plan and work through the whole bible in a year. Okay so there appear to have been a few days when I didn’t manage it but there were good reasons, being unwell, being too busy or away and being not-bothered to name a few. However I have now reached the end. I have also written mini book reviews of each book of the bible along the way. I tried to review them in the light of what they were about and how they read, in other words to be quite subjective. I didn’t write any theology along the way… well I may have lapsed once or thirty odd times. I haven’t checked but I think I managed to write something about every book, so not bad going.

Thoughts

As I read through the whole bible I did have one or two thoughts that I will share. The first is how much emphasis my own religious tradition puts on certain passages above others. I suppose this is only natural but you can see where over the years the church and its various incarnations and denominations have chosen one passage to have significant importance above others. The whole faith verses works issue is one that springs immediately to mind.

In a similar vein is how some people take some passages literally and others not. This is quite difficult and people far more cleverer than I spend time mulling this over. The problem, in my humble opinion, is when people far less cleverer than them decide what verses they will or will not take literally.

Finally, and this did make me think quite a lot about how I live each day. There is far, far more in the bible about how we should live our lives full of justice, mercy and love to one another than getting into heaven. I don’t want to make light of the eternal nature of the bible, but it does put a much bigger emphasis on how we live now, than how we will live one day.

Ever onwards

I’ll probably return to some of the issues that I have mentioned above, but not for a little while. I thank you for sharing this journey with me. I decided to create these posts to make myself accountable, so dear reader, thank you for keeping me to account.

If you want to see all the posts they are tagged ‘bible in a year‘ so you can browse through them at your leisure.

As a pre-cursor to my footnote below, when I say the whole bible I haven’t actually read the apocrypha in this reading plan… what did I say above about my tradition 😉

*I have read the whole bible before, but it has been a few years since I sat down and did it in such a short period of time. I do recommend it.

February 19, 2012 By Darren Leave a Comment

I’d like to teach the world to sing – Psalms: a review

I like writing songs, I have since I was knee-high to Richard Kiel. I also like poetry although I don’t spend nearly enough time writing it to be particularly good. What I love is the emotive side of songs and poems. I love the way they can evoke strong emotions, vivid memories and spiritual awareness. Now if only there was something similar in the bible… ta da!

This isn’t Karaoke

And so I come to the final review in my journey through the bible in a year. Psalms is the other book that has accompanied the reading plan of Old and New Testament books. It is a collection of songs and prayers, that cover a wide range of emotions and feelings. We have unbridled joy, deep despair and calls to God to exact Godness on the writer’s enemies. At times theses are easy to read, Psalm 23 is pretty well-known and a couple of lines quoted when the going gets tough can be quite reassuring. But other Psalms are a little uneasy, the ending of the Psalm that Boney M immortalised in their song, By the rivers of Babylon, is often quoted by those who have a few questions about the whole, God is love thing (Psalm 137).

Psalms isn’t written by any one person, although many of the them are given an author and King David gets quite a share of the royalties for this lot. Whether he actually wrote them or his ‘band’ we’re not sure, but many relate to specific incidents in his life. The saying and singing of Psalms played quite a role in Jewish worship, so it involved ‘professional’ people within the religion.

The word of God?

One thing that hit me while reading the Psalms was the nature of what the bible is. One end of the Christian spectrum would say that the bible is God’s Word. However these Psalms are so personal to humans, and their individual experiences and feelings, that to say it is God speaking would not be true. But I am getting a little off track, this is supposed to be a review and not a theological treatise on what the bible is. However, it once again points out the humanity of the words on the page.

I liked the Psalms, they are real, authentic contain real human emotions and real human failure. They are colourful and raw, inspiring and devotional. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed reading them, but I was moved.

February 18, 2012 By Darren Leave a Comment

The numbers of the beast – Revelation: a review

We love a good conspiracy theory. We like a good mystery. We simply adore being able to work something out and prove it. This is the human condition and it has helped us discover gravity, atoms and many other wonders. It has also led us to make amazing claims about the book of Revelation, the last New Testament book in my journey through the bible in a year.

Algebra and calculus

I was taught a lot of mathematics at school that I have never been able to use in my life since. What might have been helpful was if I had been taught how to understand the numbers of the book of Revelation, because they seem quite important. To be honest any help I could get to try to understand what is going on here would help!

The apocalypse

Revelation is written by John, although exactly which John can’t be proved. It begins in the form of letters to seven churches, or their angels, and then turns into something that is more difficult to understand than an episode of Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy. Once again we have strange language that is similar to the book of Daniel and some of Ezekiel. We have beasts, dragons, prostitutes, crowns, horns, multiple heads, a lake of fire and 666. And the thrust of the book is essentially that there will be suffering but then God will sort everything out.

So what does it mean?

The book could be historical, all about events that concern the first readers at the end of the 1st century AD. It could be prophetic, beginning with the time of the first readers and ending when the world ends (2012 isn’t mentioned). Or it could simply be symbolic and mean very little to any specific historical events. The other option is to see it as futuristic, with no relevance to the first recipients and only dealing with events to come. How you choose to see it has a lot to do with whatever church tradition you are currently with. Personally, I am uneasy with making any literal predictions based on something so weird and wonderful.

And the point is?

I suppose there are two opposite approaches that are unhelpful. The first is that we obsess and worry about what and when these sometimes frightening events have taken or could take place. The second is that we simply ignore the book as mumbo jumbo, because it’s too difficult to make out any sense. If there is any point to the book being in the bible then we have to find some mid point. What did help, once again, was reading it over a relatively short period.

February 18, 2012 By Darren Leave a Comment

Planning permission – Nehemiah: a review

The Jews who wanted to, have returned from exile. Jerusalem is once again being lived in. However the city needs a little bit of urban regeneration. The once mighty city is still little more than ruined shell of its former glory. Step forward Nehemiah, royal cupbearer (an important and trusted role in Persia) and now civil governor.

Dear diary

The penultimate Old Testament review in my bible in a year is a little strange. The book is a mixture of narrative, more lists of names and quite a few prayers. In fact it felt like it was a personal diary. I could imagine Nehemiah using live journal if he had been around a few years back.

Nationalism?

I found some of the content a little difficult too. There was an emphasis on nationalism that I found a little uncomfortable, but then I have never been much of a nationalist. Nehemiah’s concern was that the nation had been exiled because they had not followed the law. This included the marrying of Jews to other nations. It also meant that the law, and the application of the law needed to be followed a little stricter in the future.

In short Nehemiah institutes a national purity based on the law. At the same time he makes sure the city of Jerusalem is fit to keep this reborn nation. He organises the people to fix the broken city wall and protect the city from those who want to see it remain a ruin.

Nehemiah is dedicated, he is a visionary and he is focussed on the job at hand. He isn’t swayed by popular opinion or discouraged when others turn against him. All attributes that make great leaders both in the past and today.

February 17, 2012 By Darren Leave a Comment

A fool such as I – Proverbs: a review

Isaac Newton’s third law states

To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction: or the forces of two bodies on each other are always equal and are directed in opposite directions

My physics 101 brain likes to interpret that as, if you do something to something there will be a reaction. In turn I like to think that this is also my summary of the book of Proverbs.

Collected wisdom

During my journey through the bible in a (almost) year, I have been reading some Old Testament and New Testament each day. The reading plan has also thrown in a little something extra each day too. Proverbs is one of the books that has been thrown in and I’ve now come to the end of it.

The book is basically a collection, from multiple authors, of common sense sayings. They can pretty much all be summarised as ‘if’ ‘then’ statements, for they almost always fall into this parallel pattern. There is a definite cause and effect style, which would fit very well into a National Curriculum for young Jewish children at the time of Solomon.

Live long and prosper

One of the main characters in Proverbs is the fool. He is ridiculed and compared unfavourably with the wise person. And that really is what the book is all about. It instructs the reader to live life to the fullest. It is an instruction manual, a sort of 3,000 habits of highly successful people. As I read I couldn’t help comparing the black and white of Proverbs with the grey of Ecclesiastes. Just like Newton’s laws have been developed by later physicists, the cause and effect of Proverbs isn’t the whole story for a wise life.