Psalm 139:7-10

There is a Looney Tunes character called Droopy, a rather depressed basset hound. There is an episode of Looney Tunes in which Droopy is after an escaped criminal. The criminal flees all over the world to evade capture, but whenever he gets anywhere, Droopy is already there, ready to apprehend him. No matter how many times the criminal runs away, or how far away he goes, Droopy is already there.

These few verses in Psalm 139 speak of God much like Droopy in this episode of Looney Tunes. It mentions places that we could never hope to go to in the physical world - Heaven, the world of the dead, beyond the east and the farthest place in the west - and says that even if we were to go there, God would be there first.

There is nowhere we can go that God is not. There is nowhere that we could venture without running into God at every turn; He is there every step of the way, and when we get there, He's already there as well.

For the escaped criminal in the Looney Tunes clip, the fact that Droopy was always one step ahead of him and cut him off at every turn drove him so mad that he begged to be let back into prison. But God isn't trying to catch us out by always being one step ahead; instead, He is supporting us and helping us.

Three Points About Creation

This post is a little different from my previous posts. In this post, I would like to talk about three things which people generally take from the Creation Story (or, to be more precise, the first three chapters of the Bible) that I do not agree with, based on my own interpretations of how the beginning of Genesis is written. I am not by any means asking that you agree with me, just that you hear me out.

1) That Adam and Eve were the first humans
It is almost a Christian cliché that Adam and Eve were the first humans. Whenever we tell the story of Creation, we tell it the way we were told it as children, which includes the notion that Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day of Creation; that they therefore were the first humans.

However, the story of Creation itself does not actually mention Adam and Eve. Instead, on the sixth day humans - both men and women - were created in God's image (Genesis 1:27), whereas Adam and Eve are not mentioned at all until Genesis 2. How, then, could Adam and Eve be the first humans if, according to the story of Creation, humans are created before Adam and Eve?

Secondly, we can find evidence that Adam and Eve were not the first humans by looking at the story of Cain and Abel. After Cain has killed his brother, he is exiled. Cain protests against this punishment, claiming that if he were to be exiled, anyone who met him would kill him (Genesis 4:14). If Adam and Eve were the first humans, then after Cain kills Abel there would only by three people on the earth, including himself. How, then, can there be anyone to kill Cain if the only people in existence to kill him are his parents, from whom he is being exiled?

However, although they were not the first humans, we can say that Adam and Eve are the mother and father of all humanity. They are direct descendants of Noah, whose family were the sole survivors of The Flood.

2) That woman was created as man's 'helper'
It is also written within the first few chapters of Genesis that Eve was created as Adam's helper, for Adam was lonely and needed such assistance (Genesis 2:18). This has been the basis for many claims that the Bible says that women are merely the 'helpers' or 'assistants' of men.

However, if linked to my previous point, this verse does not show the alleged inferiority of women. For, if Adam and Eve were not the first humans, then how could all of women have been created as man's 'helpers'? The most accurate thing we can make of this verse is that Eve was created as Adam's helper, not that entire womankind was created as the 'helper' of all of mankind.

On the contrary - as we have also seen in the last point that I made - both men and women were created at the same time on the sixth day, both in God's image; both equal.

3) That the story of Creation goes against the scientific explanation of the world
My final point is probably my most controversial. Over the years, there have been many debates over whether the scientific explanation of the world means that we have no need for the Creation story. However, this would imply that the scientific explanation of the world and the Creation story are in conflict with each other; that, much like Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort (warning: spoilers coming up), "one cannot live while the other survives". This does not have to be the case.

Firstly, you can take the order of the Creation story and compare it to the scientific explanation. Firstly, there was light, night and day. Secondly, there was the sky. Thirdly, there was the earth. Fourthly, water and plants. Fifthly, the moon and the influence of the sun. Sixthly, animals. And lastly, humans. In only one way does the order of the Creation story not mirror the scientific explanation of the world; albeit if the former does not use as sophisticated and scientific language as the latter.

One argument against the Creation story is that science as itself can disprove it; that if there is a scientific explanation, we have no need for the Divine Creation. Science, as an entity in itself, disproves the existence of God. However, could not science have been created by God? Science is the delicate string that holds our universe together; a set of rules that binds and controls all matter in the known cosmos. Therefore, it is very complicated. Therefore, could we not argue that it came into existence using the Design Theory?

Humans are an inquisitive race; it is what many people say separates us from animals, that we have the ability to dream and wonder and to question the world around us. This world is one that God created for us; He meant for us to inherit it, as a gift. Would you give someone a gift that they had no hope of understanding? Without science, our intelligence would not be advanced enough for us to understand how Creation works, for if it was, we would all be God. Therefore, I believe that science was created by God as a way of helping us to understand the world around us and to feed our infinite thirst for knowledge.

Another argument against Creation is the seven days aspect of the story. The Bible claims that the world - indeed, the entire universe - was created in seven days. Science claims that it took more like 13.7 billion years. That's a big difference in time. However, how literally can we take the timing written of in the Bible? The civilisation that wrote Genesis were more scientifically naive than us. A concept like 13.7 billion years even boggles us, let alone a race who has not had our centuries of scientific innovation to make a number like that more accessible. 7 days is accessible to everyone.

Furthermore, how can we say with any real certainty that God lives inside of time? Even the scientific explanation of the world claims that time started at the Big Bang - and God existed before the Big Bang; therefore for something to exist before time, that thing - or Person - must exist outside of time. 7 days to God could have been billions of years for those living inside of time.

Finally, the theory of evolution. How do dinosaurs fit in with the Creation story? To this, I argue a case similar to my last point. The story of Creation does not mention explicitly the animals that were created. Dinosaurs could have emerged in the 'day' that animals were created, but - as I have already mentioned - if that 'day' was actually millions of years, then there is no difficulty fitting in the dinosaurs into the story of Creation.

Romanticising the Bible

I've noticed that when we read, we often distance ourselves from the emotions of the characters. We read that the writer has said that a character feels happy, or that they feel sad, but we don't feel those emotions ourselves. We treat them as distant, almost non-human entities.

Obviously fictional characters in novels are not really feeling these emotions, but we seem to distance ourselves from the emotions of the people involved when we read the Bible. In particular, we read passages like the Psalms, which are full of emotion, but we don't connect with the emotion that was needed to write them. The difference between the Psalms and a poem written by a fictional character is that the emotion behind the Psalms are real, but we don't connect with them.

After all, the Bible is a history book. It tells the story of the history of God's people, which is, in essence, our history as Christians. We cannot distance ourselves from the people in the Bible, or their emotions, because unlike fictional characters they were real. So we can put ourselves in their shoes, and remember how they really felt, instead of romanticising their situations.

2 Timothy 3:16

This is one of the most famous verses in the Bible; it basically says that the Bible is the Word of God and that, no matter who each part was written by, it all has the same Divine Author.

This verse can be interpreted in so many ways, but I'm just going to take one slant on it - that it can be interpreted in so many ways. What does it mean for Scripture to be "God-breathed"? The Bible is basically the Word of the Living God, which would mean that the Word itself is living: the Living Word.

The Living Word can say different things at different times and to different people. I'll give you an example. I love reading the Bible, and frequently follow Bible plans. This means that I can be reading different parts of the Bible at the same time, but one time - for the first time - I was reading the same part of the Bible (1 Samuel, if you're interested) in both of my Bible plans at the same time. If the Bible had been written by the earthly author, with no divine influence, the Bible plans would have said exactly the same thing, because the words would have the same message. But they didn't. The Word is God-breathed, and so God speaks through it to each of us differently. So, even though I was reading the same scripture twice, the person writing Bible Plan A had a different slant on it than the person writing Bible Plan B.

The Word can say different things to different people at different times. Not only that, but you can read a verse once and take one meaning, then read it again the next day and it seems to say something completely different. But the words themselves haven't changed.

So, this is what it means for scripture to be "God-breathed": that the words are the same, but the message is different. And thus the Living God speaks to each of us differently and gets His message across, whatever He wants to tell us. And so the Word is not just words, it is a Living Word.

Signposts to Jesus

Not too long ago at my youth group, we were asked to write on a piece of paper what the Bible meant to us. On my piece of paper, I wrote that the Bible is a "good story".

I wrote this because, not only is the Bible made up of the stories of God's people, but that good stories have twists and turns, and different parts fit together and are linked in ways that the reader doesn't realise until the end.

In many ways, the Bible can be like this. There are many times when you read the Bible and see a part that connects to an earlier part, but I certainly don't have time to go through all of them right now (not that I know all of them, but you get my point). Instead, I'm going to focus on two parts of the Old Testament that point directly to Jesus.

The first of these is in Leviticus. Leviticus is less of a story and more of a long list of rules and regulations, almost like a legal agreement between God and the Israelites. There are occasionally bits of story, but mostly it's these rules for how the Israelites should live. The start of Leviticus is mainly about how to make offerings to God, and there are lots of different offerings that the Israelites make. One of which is called the wave offering. The wave offering is pretty self-explanatory: it's when the sacrifice is waved before the alter. However, the wave offering would have to be waved from left to right, and then up and down - in the sign of the cross. This part of Leviticus which is so easily skipped over, directly points to Jesus and his ultimate sacrifice in the New Testament.

The second part of the Old Testament which I'm going to talk about is directly mentioned in the New Testament to show how it is connected with Jesus. In Numbers 21:4-9, the Israelites complain in the desert, and God punishes them by sending poisonous snakes among them. When they realise that they have sinned, they ask Moses to pray to the LORD in order to save them from the snakes. God tells Moses to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole, so that anyone who looks at the snake will be healed. Later in John 3:14-15, Jesus explains how He is like the bronze snake, so that whoever looks at Him will be healed from sin.

These are just two examples of how events and passages in the Old Testament are signposts to Jesus in the New Testament, but they show how the stories of the Bible are all interconnected.

However, there is one difference between the Bible being a good story, and anything else being a good story. That is, any other good story has finished. The story of Bible will never be added to in that extra stuff will be placed inside it, but it carries on with each and every one of us. And if the stories in the Bible are signposts to Jesus, then how is our story being a signpost to Jesus?

Judges 10:16

The Bible is a big book. Such a big book, in fact, that people often try and condense it to its most important bits, and explain everything in as few words as possible. One time, I was told that the Old Testament was basically a story of how God loves His people. While I hadn't - and still haven't - read the Old Testament in its entirety, I was unsure as to whether this was an accurate description or not.

However, I recently came across the verse Judges 10:16, and realised that actually, this description is not very far off at all.

Judges is the story of the Israelites when they first settle in the Promised Land, after they have driven out the peoples who were already living there. A lot of Judges seems to be the Israelites turning away from God and sinning, so in response God allows them to be occupied or attacked by another nation. After living under oppression, the Israelites remember the LORD and turn back to Him, and He gives them a judge to rule over Israel and drive out the oppressive nation (this is before Israel had a king). Once the judge that God has appointed has driven out the other nation, the Israelites have peace as long as that judge is alive. However, once the judge has died, they go back to their old sinful ways and the cycle starts all over again...

This passage is no different. The previous judge, Jair, has died and the Israelites begin to worship other gods. In response, God allows the Philistines and the Ammonites to attack Israel. When they realise that they have done wrong by turning away from God, they cry out to Him for help. One of the most astonishing things I find about this passage is that when the Israelites cry out to God, He reminds them of all of the times that He has saved them in the past, and tells them that despite all of this, they still turned from Him. He tells them to ask the gods that they have been worshipping to save them. But the Israelites realise that they have sinned, and this is where we get to Judges 10:16.

The Israelites get rid of the foreign gods that they have been worshipping and God cannot bear their pain any longer. This is what I find so astonishing: the Israelites have broken Commandments by worshipping other gods, but as soon as they realise that they have sinned against God, His love won't allow them to suffer any longer. God knows that they are going to sin again, but when His people turn to Him He still saves them, despite what He knows they will do in the future.

The story of Judges is much like all of our lives. We turn away from God in various ways, realise that we have been wrong, turn back to Him and then once we feel better we end up turning away again. But every time we turn back, God helps us. Despite the fact that we can't help but sin, God will help us when we ask Him with a true heart.

So maybe the Old Testament is simply the story of how much God loves His people, because it mirrors just how much He loves all of us right now.

Ruth 2:1-13

This post is sort of a sequel to I see what You did there, because in my Bible reading plan I found a Biblical reference to God working subtly for the good of His people.

In this passage, Ruth has just arrived in a nation that isn't her own, where she doesn't know anyone and she doesn't have any income or food. She goes to a field to gather the produce they leave behind in the harvest, and we see in the language that God has been working on a small level to bring Ruth and her mother-in-law to a better place.

Ruth just happens to choose the right field at the right time in order for her to meet Boaz, whom she later marries and the family line continues all the way down to David. The way these verses are written, we see that her situation was influenced by God in order for the best outcome to happen.

1 Kings 19:11-12

I love this passage. It's particularly good in the NIV translation, because it describes God speaking to Elijah as "a gentle whisper", after all these other massive things have happened. It reminds me of a joke that I once heard (I don't know where it comes from, but whatever)...

A man sat on the roof of his house to avoid flood water that was quickly rising. He prayed to God to save him from his predicament. 

A little while later, a man in a rowing boat came along and said to the man, "Come in my boat, I'll row you to safety."

But the man said, "No, thank you, I have asked God to save me and He will save me."

So the man in the rowing boat left and the flood waters continued to rise. A little while later two men in a speedboat came by and offered to help the man, but again he declined. 

Finally, a helicopter came and offered to save the man, but once again he refused, saying that he had prayed to God for help and that God would help him.

The flood waters continued to rise until they reached the roof and the man drowned.  

When he was in Heaven, he asked God, "Why did You not save me when I asked You for help?"

And God replied, "I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what more did you want?"

This passage reminds me of that because Elijah is expecting God to speak to him, and then all of these massive things happen - there's a great wind, an earthquake, and a fire, but God isn't in any of those things. Then God speaks to Elijah in "a gentle whisper". It makes me think of how lots of people expect to see God in a great big way, that when God is acting in their lives they'll know that God has acted. But in reality, God could be working in our lives in the smallest way, because after all, God is concerned with the small things in our lives as well as the big things.