Welcome to the One Great Story!. George B. Thompson
“Yes, that’s the book for me!”
Those of us who grew up in a church were very likely told Bible stories from an early age. If you were, and you were like me, you were not always sure what the story was supposed to be telling us. Part of that uncertainty would have been related to the story’s setting—in a world so far removed in time, distance, and familiar customs from our own. I think the stories that I remembered the most were the hardest to understand—like a plague of locusts or Jesus making mud paste and healing a blind man with it.
What was it like for you to sit down and read something in the Bible on your own for the very first time? Where did you begin, and why? What do you remember about it? What questions did you have about what you read? What motivated you to keep reading—or did you give up out of frustration?
What was it like to sit down and read something from the Bible for the very first time?
My home church had a practice of presenting Bibles to children when they entered the fourth grade. I remember the Sunday morning when I received mine, bound in black faux leather, with a presentation page in the front, a bunch of color maps in the back, and my name embossed in gold leaf on the front cover. It was my very own copy of the Bible, and I was excited! I received it with pride and carefully carried it home after worship. That night, I sat cross-legged in my pajamas on my bed, placing my Bible in front of me on the bedcovers. I was determined to read it—but where should I begin? It seemed to me like cheating to start anywhere other than at the beginning, so I turned to Genesis, chapter 1, and began to read.
Not many days later, I discontinued this nightly effort. I had made it to about chapter 17 or 18 of Genesis, but I could not understand what was going on. The translation was the Revised Standard Version, so it was not a matter of trying to make sense out of old-fashioned words and phrases. No one at church had suggested a place to start or a particular approach; no one oriented me on what I would be reading or how to find answers to my questions; no one checked in with me to see how it was going; and, for whatever reason, it never occurred to me to ask anyone for help. Granted, I was only nine years old at the time, so it was a challenge for a child to understand much about the characters and story lines. Even so, when I put that Bible aside, I quietly felt defeated and guilty.
Something similar happened to me at school in eighth grade. My literature teacher decided to challenge me so, one day in class, she handed me a copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace to read. I took the book home and plodded away at it for a couple of weeks, getting through about 200 pages of that 2,000-page novel—trying to keep track of characters, story line, events, and plot development. But I was lost, getting more and more frustrated and discouraged. Finally, I gave up and returned the book to her, apologetically—but that was that. I have never tried to read War and Peace again.
The Parts—and the Whole
My motivation to keep reading the Bible ebbed and flowed over the years, until my freshman year of college. There, I ran across a loosely knit fellowship of Christians, who didn’t think much of organized church but were zealous in their faith. Perhaps not surprisingly, I read more of the Bible during college than in all the years before then. Introductory courses to the Old and New Testaments helped to broaden my perspective, but I was not able, at the time, to integrate that college-level learning into my devotional reading. Then I went to seminary, where (after testing out of the required Bible courses) I took classes in 1 and 2 Samuel, 2 Isaiah, John, and 1 Corinthians. By that time, I knew that I was preparing to become a pastor, so I was committed to using scholarly study tools in the service of preaching and Christian education.
You would think that, after all this formal and informal preparation, I would have had a clear and comfortable sense of the flow and overarching coherence of the Bible. At the time, I am not sure that I would have admitted anything to the contrary; however, it was not until some years of preaching were under my belt that it finally felt like I began to “get it.” Perhaps there were professors and course readings along the way that had presented “it,” but that comprehensive picture never, for me, had come into clear focus.
Reading the Bible—and feeling confident that you are following what is happening—can feel like dumping out the contents of a 1,000-piece puzzle and trying to figure out where to begin. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Yes, the Bible is very long and consists of a dizzying number of distinct books and documents. And, yes, the Bible was composed, edited, and re-edited a long time ago, by many different people over hundreds of years, largely from oral traditions, in a geographical location that most people today see only on maps or electronic media. Yet, I am convinced that interested, devoted people can read the Bible and get a lot out of it, once they get oriented. You don’t have to pursue a formal degree in order to understand and appreciate the Bible’s rich, compelling message.
Reading the Bible can feel like dumping out the contents of a 1,000-piece puzzle and wondering where to begin.
My wife Beverly and I have been serving together as pastors for about a decade, during which time I have been regularly leading adult Bible studies. Over the years, I have preached about how Christians are called to find their story within the Bible’s story. More recently, these Bible studies have allowed me to trace the story that holds the Bible together and to demonstrate how it echoes, time and again, from the Old Testament to the New, with fascinating consistency. I call this “The One Great Story,” and it is the reason for this book. It is written for readers inside the church as well as those outside of it, for people of faith as well as people who might simply be curious—or even skeptical. For this reason, I have attempted to avoid “churchy” jargon—so that the story can speak vividly, both to church and non-church folks.
Starting Points
Everyone who writes about the Bible does so guided by some set of assumptions, whether articulated or not. Here are the particular ideas that guide my understanding. The first one I already have begun to unpack: that what gives the Bible its basic integrity is a narrative—a story line. This narrative emerges in the first book, Genesis, and can be traced in its long development through most of the biblical books, all the way to Revelation.1
Second, although this story takes on more and more characters, places, events, and practices, its basic theme and goal do not waver. They concern God’s call to establish a people who will bear witness to who God is and what God is doing in and for the world. The unavoidable flip side of this claim has to do with that selected people, what happened over many centuries as they sometimes trusted God in this call—but often did not. Third, this story, by definition, does not conclude with the last book of the Bible; it is our story too. Christians in all times and places are spiritual descendants of the people of God whom we discover, celebrate, cringe over, and certainly with whom we identify in the pages of the Scriptures.
Consequently, our fourth claim here is that the Bible retains a unique place in the life of believers in all times and places. It is intended to be our companion and our friend. Like any faithful and worthwhile companion, the Bible encourages us as it also sometimes tells us what we do not want to hear! This dual role is what makes the Bible so valuable and reliable.
Fifth and finally, I am aware that many adults in the church are embarrassed to admit that they don’t know much of the Bible, or that they don’t always understand what they read. Some even have concluded that it doesn’t matter much to their faith anyway. This is a sad but all-too-common situation, and I think one of the main culprits is the church’s failure to teach well. I remember once sitting in the board meeting of a large church and hearing one of the officers state quite firmly that he “did not need to go to Sunday school!” No one else in the room offered a response. When congregations get used to biblical ignorance, their life and witness are weakened and in danger of losing direction. The growing number of people in Western societies who show no interest in religion just might change their minds and hearts if they saw churches who engaged the Bible authentically, faithfully, and creatively.
The Nature of the Beast
Approaching the Bible in terms of The One Great Story is a way to overcome our embarrassment of ignorance and confusion, and even our apathy. Before we enter