Track: A Guide to Scripture
We've abandoned external authority for unstable internal emotions, creating anxiety instead of promised freedom. The Bible offers God's unchanging word, centered on Christ's redemptive gospel love.
In 2022, Taylor Swift gave the commencement address at NYU. At one point in her speech she said, “I know it can be really overwhelming figuring out who to be ... I have some good news: It’s totally up to you. I also have some terrifying news: It’s totally up to you.” Taylor captured the paralysis involved in participating in this modern, individualist culture we live in. All of us are constantly being told (even through mediums we don’t realize) that we are responsible for creating and maintaining our identity. Our hearts then whisper two lies to our heads: (i) “the degree to which I am a success or failure depends entirely on my performance;” (ii) “I am my own authority. What I feel, goes. I can do what I want as long as I don’t harm others.”
In our world, most people have turned away from the authority structures of the past. We have exchanged an identity and calling that comes from an external authority with the unstable authority of our own emotional lives. This has led to an immense amount of anxiety instead of the freedoms that were promised.
The truth is that everyone craves authority and the more we look inside to find its source, the more we realize that we are not very good at determining what is good for us. We make mistakes. We struggle with thought patterns that are recognizably intrusive and negative. If we’re willing to look at ourselves at any depth, most of us can say “I’m not who I want to be. I’m not who I should be.” That means that we need a far better authority, a better word.
For centuries, Christians have turned to the Bible to find an unfailing authority that’s bigger and enduring—far more so than the changing emotions, cultures, and ideologies of our time. The reason for this legacy is because the Bible is God’s Word. The Bible is the collected writings of many people who were inspired by God the Holy Spirit. The Bible is simultaneously human words and God’s Word because God spoke His Word through the words of people. Those people did indeed live in a very different time than ours. And so, we must come to the Bible carefully seeking to understand it in the ways God intended.
While God used certain people in a certain time, the Bible remains God’s Word and so it is the most important authority for us too. God spoke through people like Moses, an Israelite in the Ancient Near East. He spoke through Paul, a Jewish convert to Jesus Christ in the first century Greco-Roman Empire. God revealed himself in a time and culture that is not like ours. Though because God is the divine author, in the words of Scripture God still speaks today. God has spoken and speaks!
In this very short book, you will learn many truths about the Bible, its power, its clarity, its earthiness, its sufficiency, its depth, its wisdom, the claims the Bible makes about itself, and many more. But the most important focus of this little book is simply this: God has spoken. If that’s true, then we must be willing to listen and conform our hearts and minds to the central message of God’s Word.
The Bible is a big book composed of many books. It is a library. There is so much to read and learn. But, at the same time, there is one main message, the center. There is a center and periphery to Scripture and it’s all important! In the same way, think about the importance of your big toe. If it’s broken you will struggle to walk. But your big toe is not quite as significant as your organs, especially your heart. The Bible has a heart and a big toe (so to speak). You can go and learn so much about God’s world and God’s prescription for a life of wisdom and joy. And there is a singular message at its heart that binds all the truths together. I like to say convey the central message like this: God knows us for who we really are and loves us anyway, enough to rescue us before we ever asked Him to.
The heart of the Bible is the heart of history: the Gospel, the story of Jesus Christ and his work of redemption. In this book, you’ll learn a bit about how to see the Bible in the light of Christ and thereby see the Bible for what it really is: God’s Word for us, a light unto our path. The most important thing this book can do is convince you that the Bible is the Word of God and send you on your way to reading Scripture. And when you do that, you’ll find the center: the love of God made visible in the Gospel. If you’ve grown up in the church, that may sound old hat to you. But let me ask you to rethink the weightiness of the claim that God speaks to us in His Word and go and take up and read!
