This is a blog post I published back in 2020 – and once again its principles have come back to my attention.

What if the writers of just about every book in the Bible was a believer on a similar life journey to us, as are we today? What if the writers – St. Paul included – did not have all the answers, but instead wrote from the faith position they were currently ‘at’? What if they wrote from the position of their current understanding, incomplete though it may well have been?

Well in fact that must have been exactly what happened. As new believers, we were told that the reason why the concepts and principles espoused in the Bible are still relevant today, is that humans in general haven’t changed. What was applicable for the writers, way back then, is also applicable for us, today. Human nature, they tell us, does not change.

So, if that’s the case, then anyone reading the Bible today should take this into account. Some of the things, the writers will be right about. And some of the things, they will be wrong about. The Bible did not simply fall out of the sky as a finished tome^[1], but was instead written by real people with real doubts and real lives, with all the baggage that this would naturally entail, and each of whom was on a journey of discovery of God.

With that in mind, then, here is the piece. I hope you find it useful:

I have come to realise over the last few days that all of the writers of the various books of the Bible were at different Stages of Faith. Just like us, they were all at different places in their walk with God, and some of them were possibly even at less ‘mature’ stages than we are.

This is visible easily in St. Paul’s writings, as his maturity and emphasis changes with the chronology as well as with his target audience (hint: Paul’s books are not placed in the Bible in chronological order, but in order of content!).

Not only were they as writers personally at different stages of faith, but the cultures they lived in were also at different stages of evolution regarding their concept of God.

So, the guys in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) were not long out of Pagan child-sacrifice culture, whereas those who had returned out of exile in Babylon, hundreds of years later, were very different in their regard for God and His ways.

In the New Testament, the view changes even more decisively with Jesus’s ‘perfect revelation’ of what God is like. “Now we have seen Him”, was John’s implication in John 1:18.

I find this quite fascinating, and it is all very much worth bearing in mind as you read the words written by these people so long ago, and remember that you too are on a similar journey.

But your experiences and learning will be different from theirs – and that’s ok. Amongst other things, the Bible is about an evolving arc of discovery of Who God is, and what He’s like. And it’s perfectly ok – a good idea, even, sometimes – to read it with that in mind.

Grace and Peace 🙂