Little Red Riding Jesus

From Andy D

Growing up it was common to hear stories that ended with the phrase, “and the moral of the story is…”  As adults we might have dropped the phrase, but not necessarily the concept.  In fact, for years it used to confuse me that I read the Bible pretty much exactly like I had learned to read fables. I began to ask myself if that is all the Bible really is?  Is it simply a collection of stories that can teach us good morals?  A collection of God fables?

What if there is far more to the Bible than that?  What if it isn’t simply a place to read a short story to learn how to face our giants, or to do mighty things for God, or be a good person?

A couple of Kiwi authors have written a book to help answer exactly these sorts of questions — The Insect and the Buffalo: How the Story of the Bible Changes Everything (http://www.compass.org.nz/ib/home).  In this book (which is amazingly readable and less than 80 pages!) the authors explain how the biblical story comes together as a whole and what this means for how we are to read it.  They teach that “the story of the Bible invites us to enter the story — to become part of the new race of human beings that God is redeeming to participate in the re-creation of the world” (p.77-78).

So maybe the Bible isn’t a book of fables.  Maybe it is a book about why the world is the way it is, and about what God is doing about that.  Maybe it is a book about God and his journey with humanity, his desire for a people, and his conquest of evil.  Ultimately, maybe it is a book about what it means to be human!

If so, perhaps we need to move on from simply reading the Bible as if it contained stories like The Three Billie Goliaths Gruff, or Little Red Riding Jesus—stories with good morals—and instead begin to engage with the story of the Bible as a whole…one big story that we have been drawn into by God…a story which desires to shape the very way in which we see the world.

Andy D

Andy is awesome, he works at Edge one day a week.