The story of the Bible from Andrew Kavan

He is an excerpt of Andrew Klavan's book, The Great God Thing, where he describes the story of the Bible as he saw it as a young man many years before he ever believed it was true.

"The fact was, as a story—even leaving out the supernatural, especially leaving out the supernatural, taking it all as metaphor, I mean—the Bible made perfect sense to me from the very beginning.

I saw a God whose nature was creative love. He made man in his own image for the purpose of forming new and free relationships with him. But in his freedom, man turned away from that relationship to consult his own wisdom and desires. The knowledge of good and evil was not some top-secret catalogue of nice and naughty acts that popped into Eve’s mind when a talking snake got her to eat the magic fruit. The knowledge was built into the action of disobedience itself: it’s what she learned when she overruled the moral law God had placed within her. There was no going back from that. The original sin poisoned all history. History’s murders, rapes, wars, oppressions, and injustices are now the inescapable plot of the story we’re in.

The Old Testament traces one complete cycle of that history, one people’s rise and fall. This particular people is unique only in that they’re the ones who begin to remember what man was made for. Moses’ revelation at the burning bush is as profound as any religious scene in literature. There, he sees that the eternalcreation and destruction of nature is not a mere process but the mask of a personal spirit, I AM THAT I AM.

The centuries that follow that revelation are a spiraling semicircle of sin and shame and redemption, of freedom recovered and then surrendered in return for imperial greatness, of a striving toward righteousness through law that reveals only the impossibility of righteousness, of power and pride and fall. It’s every people’s history, in other words, but seen anew in the light of the fire of I AM. It made sense to me too—natural sense, not supernatural—that after that history was complete, a man might be born who could comprehend it wholly and re-create within himself the relationship at its source. His mind would contain both man and God. It made sense that the creatures of sin and history—not the Jews alone but all of us—would conspire in such a man’s judicial murder. Jesus had to die because we had to kill him. It was either that or see ourselves by his light, as the broken things we truly are. It’s only from God’s point of view that this is a redeeming sacrifice. By living on earth in Jesus, by entering history, by experiencing death, by passing through that moment of absolute blackness when God is forsaken by God, God reunites himself with his fallen creation and reopens the path to the relationship lost in Eden. Jesus’ resurrection is the final proof that no matter how often we kill the truth of who we’re meant to be, it never dies."

Confess Your Sins to One Another

This last week I was reminded of one of reasons that God made us for intentional authentic relationships. We need someplace to be honest with others and therefore ourselves.

James 5:16a says, "Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.”

Confessing our sins to another person is not easy, but it is good for us. Often we are bound up in some sin that is wrecking our emotions and relationships, and we cannot find freedom anywhere but in confession and release of that sin.

When we keep our sin and our deepest life secret we are not forced to confront the darkest parts of ourselves. Sometimes we talk to God about it and confess it to Him, but because He seems removed, we don’t really get brutally honest with ourselves. We are physical creatures and when we have to talk to people about our thoughts and sins, they become more real to us. Therefore we take them more seriously, and we are more willing to truly repent. True repentance leads to true change. When we know we have to face someone it is harder to sin in the same way again, and it is also easier to know we are forgiven and release the guilt when someone else confirms it.

1 John 1:7 says, “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”

Walking in the light is a great place to be, and to live there we need to establish relationships where we are committed to being honest. Find safe, maturing Christians who really love you, and who will meet with you consistently. Make a commitment to honesty and confidentiality, and then challenge each other to be honest. God created us for such relationships, and when we have this kind of fellowship it will deepen our relationship with Him, with each other, and even the world. In fact, if you do not have such relationships then you cannot be maturing as a Christian the way you should. So you should this if for no other reason than to be obedient to the Lord, and you will find freedom and joy in the process.