Prior to full-time ministry I worked at an insurance company. One of the major aspects of my job involved analysis. In particular, my department was required to gather large amounts of data, break it down, look for trends and produce informed reports based upon the data.
In this environment there was one individual who excelled all of us in his ability to dissect the data. He was particularly skilled at observing and anticipating trends and patterns. His speed and precision was almost legendary.
As a young worker I was impressed regularly with his ability to plunge beneath the surface and see the underlying connectives. In one of our meetings together I recall asking him about his analytical tendencies and the obvious limitations to his legendary ability. He was as intrigued as he was puzzled.
I pointed out to him that his skill of observation, analysis and interpretation is deployed across all aspects of his life with the exception of the Bible. Strangely my friend was uncharacteristically ignorant, unimpressed, and unattracted to the dramatic story of redemption. He was like the Sherlock Holmes of the insurance industry while around the Bible he behaved like a toddler with a TIME Magazine.
Why is this?
He admitted that he did not know why (although he was intrigued a bit by my questioning of the consistency of his ‘powers’).
The answer lies in the fact that the Bible is a remarkably unified book. It is not a collection of various stories so much as it is an articulation of one story told through various people and ages. This story is the story of redemption. Everything in the Bible pivots on how God saves sinners through Jesus.
This is a tremendously humbling story. It assaults our pride. It reveals our weakness. And while communicating the means of rescue, it also communicates the unsettling reality that we need to be rescued in the first place.
It is this central truth that is stamped on every book of the Bible that attracts and
repels people. I suspect (as I told my friend) it is this that has quenched his thirst for analysis; he did not want to think about salvation any more than he wanted to think about condemnation. In other words, the Bible was unsettling to him.
It is helpful to remember that it is the same thing that repels sinners that attracts them. As has been said, “It is the same sun that melts the wax that hardens the clay.” Therefore, Christians must be faithful with the gospel, knowing that it is what God uses to open men’s eyes.
