9/26/18 Santana and Toni (video) 20's
Lately I’ve been hearing various descriptions of the Bible
as a man-made “fairy tale”. This is
often done with a mocking tone, to set up a straw-man description of the Bible
in order to try to make people feel foolish for believing it as God’s
Word. I heard this reference again
recently in an outreach conversation with a young man named Santana. He wasn’t trying to use this comparison in an
offensive way during our conversation, but I could tell he had heard it
from someone else, and it had affected him so much he couldn’t take the Bible
seriously.
Much can be said about the difference between the Bible,
which is written mostly as an historical account of events, and the frivolous fantasy
of fairy tales. The Bible does include
accounts of miracles, as one would expect when God intervenes in human history,
which are presented as historical eyewitness accounts. 1 Peter declares, “We do not declare unto you
cleverly devised myths or fables but rather what we have seen with our eyes and
heard with our ears” The writers of scripture were very concerned with
accurately recording the truth, not with writing creative fairy tales.
Miracles were also recorded for specific reasons, not as
random or unrelated additions to make a story more fanciful. Only a few of the many miracles of Jesus, for
example, were even written down, and as explained in John 20 they were recorded
for a specific purpose: “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of
his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that
you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by
believing you may have life in his name.”
But the mocking comparisons of the Bible with fairy tales
often sound like this: “The Bible is full of talking snakes and donkeys, the
earth stopping its rotation, and people walking on water or getting swallowed
by fish. How is this different than any
fairy tale?” This exaggeration is usually originally stated
by skeptics who know full well the Bible isn’t “full” of such miracles, but
they want to keep people like Santana from reading it for themselves in the
first place. They take a small truth –
that there are a few crazy sounding miracles in the Bible, and blow it out of
proportion to make it sound like any intellectual adult would be crazy to even
read the Bible. The exaggeration then
gets repeated over and over by those who want to believe it.
So if the miracles of the Bible are all there for a purpose,
what about the few miracles that do seem like random fantasy rather than
historical record? Skeptics, who take
pride in their intellect and ability to reason, can’t accept these miracles
because to do so would make them appear foolish in the eyes of other
skeptics. Paul writes about this in 1 Corinthians:
“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the
weak things of the world to shame the strong.”
Elsewhere we are told “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the
humble.” (James 4)
Since all miracles are recorded for a reason, could it be
that the few “fairy tale” miracles of the Bible are designed by God and
purposely included as a way to oppose those too proud to believe and receive
them? I believe that is part of what
Jesus was referring to when he prayed the following in Matt. 11: “I praise you,
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the
wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.”
Santana, Toni, and other skeptics: Do you really want to
think for yourself and avoid just going along with the crowd? Try reading the Bible for yourself, taking
God at his word, and living it out in your life. You will be humbled, yes, but you will also be one of the
strong few who find themselves swimming upstream against the current of our
culture, truly being the independent and thinking person God created you to be.
PS –Santana and his friend Toni graciously allowed me to
record our conversation, which can be seen in its entirety HERE
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