Seeing the Forest for the Trees - Understanding God’s Purpose
Does reading the Bible seem like a daunting task? I hear this sentiment often from people who say they don’t have the time to study the scriptures. Questions they might be asking themselves are; Where do I begin? Do I have to read it from the first page of Genesis to the last page of Revelation? What if I don’t understand something? Can I skip bits if they don’t make sense? What are the most important parts that I need to know to be saved? Can’t I just let other people tell me what it says?
You can tell from these kinds of questions that people find the prospect of reading the entire Bible overwhelming. That’s understandable. It is a large collection of books and much of it won’t make sense at first glance. Many people have forged paths through this thick forest throughout history and each of those paths will lead you through the Bible in different ways. Sometimes those paths will cross each other and sometimes they will veer off in completely different directions. Most people will choose one of these well-worn paths to follow when reading the Bible. These paths are the various theologies and doctrines laid down by people throughout history, from the early church fathers to modern day teachers. Whether it’s the doctrine of Original Sin or the Rapture, often there is a main point of focus that provides the lens through which people view the whole Bible.
While walking along these paths, we can stop along the way to examine each of the trees lining the path to make sure we understand them in detail. This often means we ignore the forest as a whole because there is just too much to take in. Our focus becomes narrow and not broad. We can see the trees but not the forest as a whole. We prefer to stick to these well-worn paths because they make sense to us and we think they will inevitably lead us to our destination, which should be Christ, but in reality is often something else. What is the destination of your particular path? Maybe it’s getting to heaven, or being saved, or avoiding hell, or being a better person, or it might simply be knowing more about the Christian teachings.
It’s important to know why we want to study the scriptures before we set out on that journey. What is our aim? What do we think the Bible is going to teach us? How do we think reading the Bible will change us? Are we willing to veer off the well worn paths? Do we feel comfortable getting things wrong, or not understanding everything perfectly?
When I began reading the Bible I had no agenda, or particular theology, that I was following. I didn’t start at the beginning and work my way through to the end, I began in the middle in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Many of the things that I read were surprising to me. When I started to read some of the accounts of Jesus’ life, some of the things he said were shocking to me. I immediately found that his teachings were relevant to me and marvelled at how true they were.
I had questions that I noted down and I watched a variety of teachers from different denominational backgrounds, so I could understand the differences in their theology. I tried on different doctrines to see if they correlated with what I was reading and let them go when new information proved them to be incorrect, or incomplete. I was happy to forge my own path of understanding, knowing I could always turn around if I got it wrong. This attitude of not holding on to any doctrine too tightly helped me to see the forest as a whole, rather than getting stuck on a path where I felt it necessary to ignore other paths in order to reach my destination.
My aim from the outset was to understand more about Jesus and his teachings, who he is and why he taught what he taught. I wanted to know if his teachings were true and if they could be trusted. I wanted to know if God was the God of the Bible. If he wasn’t, then why follow the teachings at all?
Here are the questions I asked and answered before I committed myself to embracing the Bible as the word of God.
- Is it reasonable to believe that God exists?
- Is God truly represented in the Bible?
- Is the Bible a reliable source?
- Can we trust the testimony of the Apostles?
- Did Jesus rise from the dead?
- Is Jesus who he said he was?
- What happens to me when I live out his teachings?
There are many different ways in which we can find out the answers to these questions and I used all of them. I watched debates between Christian philosophers and atheists to see who had the best arguments. This satisfied my intellectual side which wanted assurance that believing in God was reasonable. Listening to William Lang Craig or John Lennox lay out clear arguments for the existence of God, or the resurrection of Jesus, helped me to see that belief that was based on evidence - whether historical evidence, or water-tight philosophical arguments - was perfectly valid.
What about the Bible? Can it be trusted or did Jesus’ followers just make up a fantastical story about him so they could start a new religion? Surely all the miracles were added in later? And we can’t possibly believe everything in the Old Testament? What about all the violence? If God is a good God why would he condone slavery or war? These are the kind of questions that critics of the Bible use to “prove” that the Bible is irrelevant nonsense. But they never actually engage the text in depth, or spend any time in the field of textual criticism, which exists to study the Bible manuscript evidence, so we can know that the Bible we have today is the Bible we’ve had from the beginning. This is a fascinating field of study that allows us to rest on the knowledge that the Bible can be trusted.
Even though we can trust that the Bible has remained the same, can we trust that what the original authors, particularly the New Testament authors, wrote down is what actually happened? Many modern day scholars like to say that Jesus never really claimed to be God, nor did miracles nor was he risen from the dead and that his followers just made all this up. They don’t have any evidence for this, they are simply starting from their position that God doesn’t exist and that miracles can’t happen, then they edit out everything that doesn’t align with their belief. This is not the way we ascertain the truth.
When you look at the historical evidence it is clear that the apostles believed what they wrote down and died for those beliefs. People don’t die for things they don’t believe, or that they made up, they might die for what they do believe, but not a lie. There are also certain historical facts, like the empty tomb of Jesus, that need to be explained and the most reasonable explanation for this is that he rose from the dead as the Apostles claimed. I encourage everyone to study the evidence for the resurrection as it is plentiful and available online. Historical evidence is used to formulate all of our beliefs about what happened in the past. There are ways to test the veracity of each piece of evidence and this is an academic field that includes people who are Christians and non-christians.
The other reason I would recommend that we study the evidence for the resurrection is that, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians.
“And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain…And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.”
1 Corinthians 15:14 & 17
In other words, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, if he didn’t defeat death and rise again in a resurrected body then there is nothing to believe in. Our faith is futile, it means nothing. All else is a moot point if Jesus never came out of the tomb.
Paul is so emphatic about this point that we should take it seriously. The only reason Paul stopped persecuting the early church was that he witnessed Jesus risen from the dead and then changed his whole life because of that encounter. He went from imprisoning followers of Jesus, to being the most instrumental person in the creation of the early church communities. He lost his life to follow Christ, in more ways than one, so I believe we can trust what he said.
Another popular claim is that Jesus was just a teacher of moral truths who died 2000 years ago on a cross. If that’s the case, who cares what he taught? Especially, given the fact that if he did die and wasn’t raised, much of what he said was either a lie, or a delusion, as C.S Lewis says in “Mere Christianity”. Most people quote only the end of his argument and leave out the beginning, but I’ve quoted it in full so you understand his reasoning.
“Then comes the real shock, among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear, among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world Who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else, and when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.
One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself un-robbed and un-trodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men's toes and stealing other men's money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct.
Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history.
Yet (and this is the strange, significant thing) even His enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit. Still less do unprejudiced readers. Christ says that He is "humble and meek" and we believe Him; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of His sayings.
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” From the chapter “The Shocking Alternative.” in “Mere Christianity”
As none of us have access to a time machine and there is no video evidence of Jesus in his resurrected state, we have only historical evidence and inference to the best explanation of the facts, to give us the foundation of our faith. If that isn’t enough for people then we will also have to throw away all our ideas and beliefs about the history of humanity, because they rest on the same kind of evidence. The other piece of the puzzle is the effect that Christ’s teachings have had on the world and the continued transformation of real people today. We can see that the Holy Spirit, promised by Jesus, continues to work in our lives to conform us to His image.
In other words, we can see the practical outcome of the influence of Christ’s teachings and the continued outworking of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Finally, if we can trust the truth of what the apostles wrote, then Jesus is who he said he is. If we have seen Jesus we have seen the Father, so we can also trust that the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament. We can trust the veracity of the Old Testament, as Jesus quotes it constantly and tells us to esteem it highly.
With all my original questions answered, I knew that I could trust the Bible and Jesus. I now also know that I don’t have to become too embroiled in the “vain discussions” that Paul warned us about, that can lead us away from God. If God exists and He is the God of the Bible and if Jesus is the Son of God, who leads us back to the Father, then whatever He says is true. I don’t have to understand it. I don’t have to even agree with it. I just have to accept that God has created us and this Universe to work in a specific way and for us to live a certain way. I can test his teachings in my own life, but ultimately what he says goes. Discussions about why he did it this way and not that way? Or debating whether something is unfair, or unjust, are really moot points, because the way He created it to be is the way that it is.
What I really wanted to know as my starting point for understanding the Bible wasn’t some doctrinal point about salvation, or the atonement, or the final judgement. I wanted to know why God had created any of this in the first place. That was the forest that I wanted to see.
The beginning of creation was love. Love between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Then came the creation of God’s family, that includes spiritual beings and humans. In the beginning Adam and Eve could walk with God in the garden and lived in harmony with him. He gave them and by extension us, free will so we could choose to love him. If we had no choice in the matter it wouldn’t be a loving relationship but one that we were programmed to be in. Even though giving us free will meant there was a high chance of us using it for the wrong reasons, it was needed if this loving family was to exist.
Adam and Eve failed the test and exalted their own will and desires over God’s will for them. They used their freedom to love themselves rather than God and were cast out from his presence. God’s plan since then has been to bring us back to himself, again through our free will choice, which will culminate in him recreating us and the heavens and earth, bringing us back into harmony with him once again. That is the forest. Finding out more about how that happens are the paths we take through the trees.
Words such as covenant, sin, rebellion, heaven, hell, redemption, salvation, justification and glorification are the mighty red woods that humans have marvelled at over the years. They are used as markers on our own theological maps because we think they will lead us to our destination and for modern Christians that usually means “being saved”. For many, this is a one time event, a transactional exchange that happens when we believe in Jesus. For others this combines belief in Jesus, ongoing faith and loyalty to him and his ways. The relationship begins when we come to Jesus and believe that he is who he says he is and that he is the only way back to God the Father. The relationship blossoms when we walk in his ways, abide in his word and love God as well as our neighbour.
If the outpouring of love that initiated the creation of the universe is not present within us and between us, we can conclude that no matter how correct our doctrines are, we have taken the wrong path. Remember that love doesn’t equate to being nice to everyone we meet, whether we want to or not. The love that God gives us is based on truth. The truth of who He is and the truth about who we are. In God’s eyes we are rebellious children who have forsaken a relationship with him, until we choose to participate in his rescue plan for us.
You see salvation is multi-faceted. We read about God saving his people - whether Israel as a whole or specific individuals - from danger and bringing them into safety.
We are saved from death and rescued from the cycle of bad choices we made in our lives. We are healed and made whole when we return to God, because he is the source of all life. He loved us first and what other response could we have toward that kind of love but to return it? Unfortunately, many people reject his love because, like Adam and Eve, they love themselves more than God, in fact many people believe that they are gods, which was the serpent’s temptation in the beginning.
But it was a lie then and it’s a lie now. We are not gods. We don’t create our own reality. We didn’t make our own bodies. We are not “basically good” and in fact use our free will to create more of the problems in the world than we solve. So when I hear people say, “I don’t need to be saved!” I marvel at their blindness. Who do you think is going to help you if not God? Certainly not yourself otherwise you wouldn’t be constantly seeking advice from others. The truth, like all good things, lies within God, not us. The current state of the world bears witness to that, with our past being littered with one attempted Utopia turned tyranny after the other.
We all know that we do need to be rescued from this cycle of sin, rebellion, destruction and death, we just don’t want our saviour to be Jesus. Anything but Jesus. But as he said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to Father except through me.” A bold claim and yet as Lewis showed us, this boldness didn’t cause people to dismiss him as a lunatic, so maybe we should take his claims seriously. The consequences of not doing so maybe dire and the rewards so plentiful. If we believe. If we love him as he loves us. If we can remember to see the forest for the trees.
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You can watch the video on this topic "The Most Improbable Truth of All?" on my You Tube channel. Many Bible references are included in the description box for your own study, as well as links to other videos about the evidence for the resurrection and veracity of the Bible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fflgHKe8ZD4
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