You’ll be happy to know that for most of the characters in the Bible, life was as much a conundrum for them as it is for you and me. This is one of the reasons I don’t believe the Bible is just myths and fairy tales as many critics contend. Rather, it reads like real people encountering real things, much of which they don’t understand. If it was all made up I don’t think we’d see so many confused people in it’s pages. It would read much more like, well, myths and fairy tales!
I was reminded of this as I’m reading a book by the late, great R.C. Sproul, If There’s A God, Why Are There Atheists? In it he quotes these words from the prophet Habakkuk:
2 How long, Lord, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not save?
3 Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.
4 Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.
Did you know this kind of stuff is in the Bible? Most of the people in it don’t get what’s going on, at all. It isn’t until the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus that it starts to make at least some sense. Even on this side of the resurrection we wonder.
We notice that Habakkuk’s four questions are in fact complaints. Where are you, God? The world is going to hell in a handbasket, and you are nowhere to be found. God? Hello? Isn’t this the same complaint of many people who refuse to believe in God, or ignore him, because of “the problem of evil.” And yet the very same complaint is right here in the Bible, and coming from a prophet of God no less! And he’s far from the only one. What do we make of this? How can it validate our faith, and increase our confidence in it?
The Bible reads like no other “holy book” on earth. Neither does it read like fiction, or myths and fairy tales as I mentioned. It reads, in fact, like history, a coherent narrative from beginning to end. As I’ve been writing my way through it the last five plus years, the phrase that constantly comes to my mind is, it reads real. It also makes claims no other “holy book” on earth makes, the most important is that it claims to be the one true God’s revelation of himself to man. But it makes these claims through extremely flawed and fallen human beings. Nobody in the Bible seems to portray themselves, or is portrayed, as other than what they are. The heroes, so to speak, all come off looking very much less than heroic. It also upends all the cultural expectations of it’s day, often in subtle ways, and ours as well. Other “holy books” are bound by the cultures that created them, and have little cross cultural relevance. The Bible transcends them all even as it challenges them.
Many multitudes of books have been written on the contentions I make in that paragraph. The resources at our disposal to help us understand the realness of it are basically endless. There is no excuse for Christians to lack confidence in its message. And since the inspiration for this blog is my children, and the passion I’ve had to persuade them of the truth of that message, Habakkuk helps me to teach my children about life in a fallen world, and how the Bible helps us to navigate it. The mess, I’ve taught them all their lives, should never surprise us. It’s predicted! And explained. That never makes it easy, but it gives us purpose in the inevitable struggles we encounter. We never need to fall into bitterness or despair because our salvation and hope lie beyond the mess. All the promises of Scripture are eternal in nature. If you read the last three verses of Habakkuk you’ll learn of the Christian secret to surviving the mess, trust and joy in God our Savior. For that we can be truly grateful in all things.
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