The Bible is full of horrible things.
Rape, murder, human sacrifice, incest, slavery, genocide, they all abound.
Jealousy, backstabbing, bickering, revenge, it’s all there.
The Bible is full of terrible people, and it’s a beautiful thing!
…….WHAT?
Practically every kind of sin and horror you can think of is in this Book. All weaving a story and a history. Each story alone can be tragic and seem meaningless.
But when you step back and see the woven tapestry?
Beauty comes out in every thread.
Because this is the story of Christ, Redemption, Salvation. This is our story, and it is beautiful.
This Book is full of horror and actions that can turn the stomach if you dwell on them.
Think about Lot for instance, who’s daughters were so emotionally deadened to right and wrong that they felt incest was an expectable action in order to preserve themselves through children. Each taking turns getting their own Father drunk and seducing him.
The ugliness of that moment in scripture can make you feel physically ill.
But then look at Ruth. A young woman of such steadfast faithfulness that her story stands the test of time, her story is one of the most intimate and beautiful in scripture. She is the Great-Grandmother of King David. She is mentioned specifically in the genealogy of Christ Himself.
And she is a Moabite. Descended from Moab. The son of one of Lots daughters. The product of incest.
Joseph: Sold into slavery by his own brothers. Rises to the highest position in Egypt short of Pharaoh himself, and through his wisdom and ability to hear God rescues basically all his known world from famine.
Leah: Her father tricked the man who was in love with her sister to take her as a wife, and then gave the man her sister as well. Forever condemned to be married to a man who did not love her and constantly battling her own sister for any affection. The Mother of literally half of the twelve tribes of Israel. Including Judah, from who descended Christ.
King David: A shepherd boy, the least of his brothers. Becomes the greatest warrior in his country, becomes the King. But also becomes an adulterer and murder, and has such dysfunction in his family that one son rapes a half sister, another kills that son and tries to take the crown from his father.
Yet King David is called a man who was after God’s own heart, and wrote most of the Psalms.
Saul: A righteous zealot who justified hunting down and having stoned peaceful people because they disagreed with his doctrine. Renamed Paul who wrote such things as:
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angles, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3
I could go on and on.
The Bible is full of the imperfect.
And it’s beautiful!
Because we all are imperfect people with imperfect lives and imperfect families. We all, every one of us, have dark secrets in our families past and things that we never ever want to be brought to light for the shame.
Some look at these stories and they find justification in their rejection of scripture. They say things like, “Look at all the horrible things God lets happen, that God even causes! This God can’t be loving! I can’t believe in this Book!”
I both want to laugh and cry at statements like that. Oh how much we miss the point.
The Bible holds up as righteous people who’s crimes we can sometimes find horrifying. But that is because their righteousness does not come from themselves.
It’s God’s Righteousness He gives to them.
It’s one long intricate story of redemption.
The redemption of individuals, but also the redemption of the world!
The story that says God can use every horrible thing, every pain, every mistake, every crime, and redeem the story.
Because we all are living in our own stories, and each of our stories need to be redeemed.
Maybe you are a person who has been used and abused, or the product of a family line that is irredeemable by human standards.
God can Redeem it!
Maybe you are a person who has brought unbelievable pain to those closest to you, who’s actions and neglect have destroyed your own family.
God can Redeem it!
Maybe you are a person sitting in a jail cell, guilty of things I can’t even contemplate.
God can Redeem it!
Christ! He is the center of the story! This Book is the story of all God would do and redeem in order to bring Christ, one long arc of redemption. All so Christ could fulfill this passage:
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God. to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion- to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. Isaiah 61:1-3
The Bible. It’s a story of horror and pain and grief and trial. But through all of it, through every thread, even now and in your own life, He is always weaving the story.
The story of the Redemption of the world!
Of the Redemption of you!
Of the Redemption of me!
~Joy Aletheia Stevens
Photo Credit: by McKay Savage (CC BY 2.0)
Photo Credit: by McKay Savage (CC BY 2.0)
Photo Credit: by Sébastien Bertrand (CC BY 2.0)
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