Elemental Season 1 - Day 23

Growing up, I used to be terrible at Bible quiz time at school. I just couldn't remember chapter and verse as they wanted us to. I wasn’t great at memorization and that seemed to be a prerequisite for being a good Chrstian. I was so bad that no one wanted me on their team when it came to bible bowls that we often seemed to have in elementary school. 

We used to have classes in chain referencing scripture together in order to make a point or to give a bible study. I had bibles that had color coded verses that were specific to certain topics. These things were helpful, but they were also teaching me a way to interact with the scriptures that were perhaps not what the original authors had in mind. Rather, they taught us to cut up scripture according to the topics that are spoken of, even though they were not written that way at all. 

You can take a look at scripture in a few different ways. Either you can look at it as an orange, to be segmented and eaten a bit at a time. This is a very valid and beneficial way to take a look at scripture. However, one thing that it does is assume this is the way that the Authors of scripture thought it should be used. We know that the writing of scripture happened over a few thousand years, so it is impossible to think that each author was trying to segment their work to fit into a column that some other author had already created. 

While there are limitations to the original intent with this method, it does help us organize scripture into readable and understandable portions. 

Another way to look at scripture is more like an apple. You don’t usually segment apples apart, rather, you take a big bite and see how it all works together. This is a very different way of looking at scripture, but might be a little more connected to the author's original intent. 

You see, scripture is this story of a people trying to wrestle with who God is, what God wanted for them, and how God was interacting with them. Scripture is messy, and can’t be segmented into simple bite sized portions that answer every question. 

1. How have you read the Bible in the past? 
2. Are you more like an orange or an apple?
3. What do you think holds all of Scripture together?