Looking at Literature Through God's Word

Part Two, The Meta-narrative

The Bible is a Story

The first part of this series discusses and generally appeals to reading the Bible. Giving multiple reasons why the Bible says it is important. Okay, besides knowing God better, what does reading the Bible actually accomplish? Everything. There is nothing it does not accomplish, no matter what our creative mediums may be. And it all starts with the Gospel.

Two questions I often ask Christians: 

1. Have you ever read the Bible from beginning to end?

2. How would you explain the Gospel to me?

Why do I ask these questions? And no, it is not because I get some sick joy out of watching my fellow Christians squirm in their seat of vulnerabilities. Though, if they are smug Christians I sometimes have a little joy from that, if I’m being completely honest. But mostly it comes from the fact that 1. I like to ask questions that provoke both deep thought and deep conversations from the get-go; and 2. I was once a guy who had no answer to these questions and I want to help facilitate building a stronger foundation for others. Oftentimes, the responses to these questions are a resounding “no” to question one, and simply “Jesus?” for question two.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

And that’s okay. If that’s where you are now, it’s not the end of the world. You’re not the worst Christian to walk this earth, and it is no failure of yours, even if you’ve grown up in the church all your life. Let me say, that if you love Jesus and seek to follow him with all your heart, you’re probably doing just fine. Better than fine. You have submitted to the creator of this world, acknowledged his sacrificially, dying love for you, and that he is sanctifying you to be who he’s created you to be. If you find you’re not a Christian reading this, know God loves you, and has a wonderful plan for you, please, keep reading. I hope this encourages you too by the end.

But just because it is okay does not mean we should not better equip ourselves. Having and utilizing the right tools for the right application makes most jobs go a little easier. As a Christian, those tools happen to be the Word and the gospel. So please, allow me to give a summary of the gospel here, as a starting point so you can start with the first tool while building your own. If this is familiar to you, that’s great! There are several methods in which to share the gospel which also share the story I am about to tell.

The Gospel Story

The Gospel: (The good news of God’s redemptive love for all the world)

In the beginning, God made everything. (How it all came about hardly matters in the grand scheme of things, and I see equal arguments for old and young earth, so just acknowledging that God made it is fine.) 

When God made everything he made man and woman for it was not good for us to be alone, and gave us one command, which we broke.

God in his goodness, allowed us to continue living though we deserved death for that is what he said would happen if we disobeyed. Then, he immediately promised a rescuer to us.

God was completely good, and when he made everything made it good, but breaking God’s command, which he called sin, brought evil to our world. Yet he promised to redeem it.

Over the centuries, man has become more and more corrupt. Creating more evil and loving the evil they created over their creator. God rescued a people, reminded them of the redeemer, repeatedly, and continued to fulfill his promise.

Several millennia later, God fulfilled his promise through his son, Jesus. Jesus came, lived a perfect and obedient life, died for our imperfect and disobedient lives, fully received the wrath of God we deserved, rose again, and went back up to his Father to prepare a place for those who believe in him. His followers passed this word to us through their witness of his life and left us with the Bible we still use 2000 years later.

What is your response to this? God created good, mankind broke it, God promised a redeemer, mankind continued to worsen and not believe God, and then God fulfilled his promise despite us making him our enemy. Is it one of profound joy? Mystery? Abundant love? That’s how this story hits me. Every time. And every redemption story that even comes close touches me because of the beauty of the Gospel.

Found this stock photo and thought it captured the imagery of “beautiful” I mean.

The Ultimate Story

Live in this! The best way to live in this is to read the story, over and over again. There is no end to the life it gives because it is the origin. Philosophically speaking, if there is the ideal, then anything other than the ideal is mimicry. It could still be good, functional, or beautiful, but it is not the ideal. The ideal chair exists, somewhere, but every other chair is slightly varied from it and works for different purposes but they don’t measure up to the ideal. 

For example, a painter who captures the ideal landscape in front of him on an ideal day, at the prime time of the day captures the light and recreates it through his medium, but it isn’t the landscape. It’s a picture of it. Then, some student, in an effort to become a better artist, tries to copy every stroke and color of the master, but this is even further away from the original ideal landscape. 

The Bible is the closest copy of the most beautiful (ideal) story of redemption and love that exists in the world. Authors who try to capture redemption, love, and every great quality the Bible possesses are merely copies. And the ones that capture it closely remind me so deeply of God’s love that I am touched. But if we are to reflect these elements, we must know the originator of them. God. And the best way to know him is to know the book he’s put together to know him better, the Bible. As a Christian creator, that is the single most important thing we can do to reflect our creator through our endeavors.