Editorial July 18, 1988 Issue

Now, for the good news

Michael D. Rissler

The language of the Bible is beautiful. It's more like poetry than prose. And the dignified, unexaggerated print on the page is carefully delineated. Even the arrangement of books and chapters and verses seems orderly and reassuring. The names of the books are so familiar that they become the names of our children: Ruth, Daniel, John, Peter, James, Mark.

The Bible for many people is perhaps the strongest symbol of tradition, dignity, authority, even of home. When you look at a Bible, you're almost compelled to think of parents or grandparents—even when the Bible may not have been regularly read in the family circle. It represents history and religion and, again for many, the kind of conservatism that may be associated with a "past" not quite equal to the excitement and freedom of the present.

But when we break through the formidable barriers that unthinking acceptance of symbols sometimes produces, we'll discover that the Bible is a book filled with outrageous ideas and statements and people. I say outrageous because the Bible is full of events that were often shocking when they originally happened. But the shock didn't come from any God-inspired attempt to injure or destroy the good of life. The tumult that arose in people's lives in the Bible came from powerful confrontations between individuals with a moral and spiritual vision of man's undeniable relationship to God and the self-destructive forces of cruelty, greed, and spiritually numbing lawlessness—disobedience to divine law.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

Now, for the good news

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access