Theological Fragments

The Bible is, first and foremost, a story. Books of stories make up about 35% of the Bible’s table of contents. However, if you break it down by the actual length of each book, you find that story-books make up about 65% of the Bible. If that surprises you, it might be because you were taught to treat the Bible as a reference book, full of facts, figures, doctrines and commands for you to obey. Of course, it is true that the Bible contains many facts, figures, doctrines and commands—but most of those are actually part of the story —and overall scripture seems much more interested in teaching us a story than in teaching us facts and doctrines. This is very foreign to our modern way of thinking. We prefer to have everything laid out in formulas. We want to put things under the microscope. We like to classify everything the way our scientists classify living things—kingdom, phylum, class, order, anatomy, etc. etc. And we do this in our theology, as well. Think of how we talk about God...

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Spoiler: It’s me—I’m the Christmas Jonah. I don’t mean that I’m back luck to sailors, or that I got swallowed by a whale (big fish?) and spit up three days later. No, I’m referring to a different part of the story. But I’ll get there. First let me explain where I am right now. I should be in Spokane at the moment. In fact, the plane I was booked on should be landing right about now. Instead, I’m sitting in the Pheonix airport. But that’s not the start of the story. The start of the story is early this morning, about 5am when I realized that my ride to the airport wasn’t going to make it in time to get me there for my flight. So I got in my car to drive myself to the airport, figuring I’ll just pay the parking and figure it out later. But the battery’s dead. So I jump my car with my portable car jumper (thanks, Dad!) and finally get on the road. Red lights all the way. Seriously, ALL THE WAY. I finally get there, park my car, and run into the airport. Interesting side note: a...