New Direction for Ye Old Blog

So I have been thinking a lot lately about how to help people understand the Bible, God, Jesus, and toasters, (except the part about toasters). I also thought about the millions of people who read this blog, (about as true as the toaster comment), who come to this blog seeking good words about life, God, and the Scriptures. My earnest desire and passion is to help people know the Bible and know how to read it for themselves. I was thinking about writing about the book of 1^st Timothy or the book of Deuteronomy, but in each instance I was struck by the fact that unless my loyal audience knows the context of these books and how they fit into the Biblical narrative, then they will a) have a hard time understanding what I was teaching, and b) it would give me a lot more work to do in teaching because I would be forced to explain so much of the context before actually getting into the books themselves.

The fact of the matter is that the Bible is not a collection of random stories. It’s a story that runs together with the same themes, ideas, and concepts consistently woven together throughout the stories, histories, and songs we read. It’s like reading a great mystery. You start to get a picture of things in the first chapter. Throughout the book the mystery continues to build until it reaches its apex towards the end of the book. The Bible is similar in that we start to read “In the beginning” and the story builds until the end where it climaxes in an incredible finale. But just as in a good book, you don’t start reading in chapter 23 and expect to just jump into the story. There’s so much about the characters and the background that you miss out on. To fill in the gaps you guess, assume, or make up your own theories about what has happened previously. It’s the same as in the Bible. You don’t jump into the Psalms and just go from there. Nor do you read a book in the New Testament about Jesus, then jump into the prophecies, then hightail it to the end of the Bible in the book of Revelation. What you end up doing is just confusing yourself and making weird assumptions about the meaning of the books. In order to understand the Bible as a whole, you have to understand the background of how and why the books were written and what they say in their proper order.

All that being said, because of the incredible demand of my readers (which mostly includes my mother); I am going to embark on an attempt to start teaching the Bible story from the beginning. My goal is twofold, 1) to teach the Bible in a semi-chronological way to help people understand the story of the Bible as one story, rather than a random collection of writings that don’t fit together, and 2) I want to practice on you, my loyal readers, (mom), so I can be better prepared to teach others, specifically my children. Also, I want to present the material in such a way that a person who has never read the Bible can follow along and have a framework from which they can know what the Bible says, even if they choose not to believe it.

I will not be attempting to go through the entire Bible. That would be both ridiculous and hard. I am both sensible and lazy and therefore will not be attempting such a task. Instead, I am going to be focusing on some of the main accounts of the Word so the reader can begin to follow the major threads that run throughout the Bible as a whole. Hopefully, in the end, the threads will run together so you can see the picture, as it were, that develops throughout the book.

P.S. I reserve the right to get distracted and go off on tangents about other topics as they interest me. But I promise to return to this theme throughout. 

P.P.S. If you're wondering, then no, this blog has nothing to do with toasters. If you're that into toasters, I recommend visiting here. And yes, I feel sorry for you for clicking that.