The best of the best

Finally, my last look back at 2011. What was my favourite day in the whole year?

Well actually I'm not going to tell you that. Instead, I'm going to tell you the day that affected me most. There was one day last year when I was shocked, revolted, shaken and sickened. By the Bible.

Just occasionally, both in real life and when watching a very powerful piece of drama, I have encountered something that struck me as so evil that I was scared. You know the feeling you get when you see something that you really shouldn't be looking at? A mixture of revulsion and shame? When you see people doing something that offends your sense of right and wrong so much that you wish you hadn't seen them do it?

It hasn't happened to me very often. Once or twice, if I'm being very honest, I've come across of piece of pornography that is violent and disgusting. I don't make a habit of watching porn, you'll be pleased to know, but show me a man who says he has never watched porn, and I'll show you someone who isn't telling the truth. And thanks to the internet it's so easy to do it in secret.

So is there porn in the Bible??? No of course not! There's plenty of sex, but what I'm talking about is the sense I got on the 10th August last year when I read Ezekiel Chapter 8.

Day 224: Ezekiel's second  vision

In Ezekiel's vision, he is dragged by the hair into the Temple, shown a hole in the wall and told to dig through it. He comes across a doorway, and inside the elders of Israel are burning incense to idols. In secret, in the holiest place in Jerusalem, they are practising idolatry. After immersing myself in the prophets for so long, I saw this as adultery. They were being unfaithful to God. Like a married man who brings another woman home, takes her to bed and there in the place of intimacy with his wife, he betrays his relationship with her.

I just don't get why people are soft on adultery. To me, it's one of the worst sins of all.

God's response to what is taking place in his Temple is to turn his back and leave. Chapter 10 tells of the glory of the Lord departing in disgust.

Strange? You might think so. But I have to be honest and say this was the passage that made the biggest impression on me last year.

Come back tomorrow, and I'll be revealing what I intend to do next. I've read the Bible, now what?

Best of 2011 #12 The end. And it turns out to be a beginning

As December rolled to a close, I read the final chapters of Revelation. Tired after the exertions of Christmas, it felt like the end of a double marathon. But it also felt like a new beginning.

Day 366: The new heaven and the new earth

I loved the way that John brought back some familiar scenes and ideas into his last chapters. Echoes of the vision of Ezekiel, traces of the tender words of Isaiah, the longing for the return of Jesus expressed by Paul in 1 Corinthians - these are all there in the last chapters of Revelation.
But above all there's a sense that everything is starting again. That what has gone before was the dress rehearsal, the real play is about to begin. C.S.Lewis understood this perfectly, when he ended the Chronicles of Narnia with these words: "All their life in this world and all their adventures on Narnia had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

Best of 2011 #11 Paul gets his theological head on

Come on everyone. Let's sum up St Paul in one post. Should be easy, shouldn't it? He was a man of one idea, surely?

I always love what Peter had to say about his fellow apostle, when he talks about "our dear brother Paul, [who] also write to you with the wisdom God gave him... His letters contain some things that are hard to understand" 2 Peter 3:16

In searching for a post to sum up the mighty apostle, this is what I chose:

Day 340: Out of "7" into "8"

I love the way Paul is honest about failure as well as sublime when he talks about freedom and grace. Failure doesn't nullify grace. And that's good news!

There will be one more post looking back on 2011, and then I'll reveal my favourite day of the year. Any followers want to tell me yours?

Best of 2011 #10 Jesus fails, and succeeds

This is the moment above all else where it is impossible to pretend you are reading the Bible for the first time. Jesus is sentenced to death ... DISASTER! But don't worry, just around the corner is ... Jesus comes back to life ... TRIUMPH!

How to read the first without thinking of the second?

All sorts of people have tried, a famous recent attempt was Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ where the resurrection is just barely hinted at in the last scene of the film, and all the attention is on the agony and horror of the crucifixion. I spoke about this in my post on 9 November.

Day 314: Trial before Pilate

As I reflected on the joy of the resurrection, I thought about the struggle of living a life of faith when most of the time it doesn't feel like it's all true. Do we struggle to believe against the odds, desperately remembering the flash of light that one lit up our lives and showed us the landscape clearly? Or do we instead cultivate the belief that God is inside us, patiently working in the dark, growing the tender shoots of righteousness and peace into the soil of our lives?

Day 317: Jesus appears to many

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never understood it.

Best of 2011 #9: Into the New Testament

I had a delicious sense of anticipation as I moved into the New Testament. It was slightly odd reading the Christmas stories in October!

After so many centuries of going round and round and round, it seemed as though something truly new was about to happen. Here's my post from the day when I read about Jesus in the wilderness:

Day 277: The Temptation of Jesus

The people of Israel could never trust God for very long. They always wanted to have a backup. Satan was tempting Jesus to do the same - water down his trust in God, turn to something else. But Jesus passed the test that Israel always failed.

Going on from there, it was like a drink of cold water in the desert. Reading about Jesus as he met friends and enemies, allies and doubters, I was in awe of him all over again. It is very hard to pick one day out of the two weeks or so that I spent on Jesus' early ministry - any one of them would  have done. But here's a post from when his opponents were hardening their hearts.

Day 285: Jesus and Beelzebub

Reading the posts I wrote on Jesus’ ministry, I see how much I am in love with this man. I really do worship the ground he walked on! He loved the people he met, unconditionally and completely. He loved them, friend and foe alike. 

And he changed them. No one came into contact with Jesus and went away the same. Some became disciples captivated by this extraordinary man. Others became enemies, unable to accept the challenge he represented to the way they saw the world. He is so surprising, so fresh and new. Nothing he says can be predicted, but as soon as he has said it, it sounds completely right - the very best thing to say or to do in that particular circumstance.

Best of 2011 #8: rebuilding Israel

I always thought that after the exile, things in Israel got pretty boring. Certainly Ezra would make a good traffic warden, I have to say I don't find him a terribly exciting figure. (Sorry traffic wardens!) But Nehemiah is different, and there is a great intensity to the love and the passion that Jews feel for their land that began to grow from these days forward.

First, here's a reading from the early days of the Return. Day 256: The Rebuilding Programme begins

Have you ever read Psalm 119? When I was a choir boy it was a running joke. The longest Psalm! 176 verses all about the Law! Has anybody ever got to the end without falling asleep? Imagine my surprise at being bowled over by it last year.

Day 272

This passion for God's word, God's promises and the Land. The Land which embodies all those promises is loved with a passion. Jews always call it the Land. Capital L. Ha erets, if you speak Hebrew. If you are a Jew, that's your land, it's where you belong, even if you were born on the other side of the world and you've never been there.

Best of 2011 #7 Can I really believe the Old Testament?

The question that people have raised loudest and longest as I've blogged my way through the Bible is whether the Old Testament God is the same as the New Testament one.

I firmly believe that he is the same God, but I also believe that people's understanding of his nature changed radically during the course of Bible history. At first, it's clear that the Israelites thought of him as their tribal god, on a par with Baal, or Dagon, or any of the other gods worshipped by other nations. Take a look at this passage, where the Philistines are fighting the Israelites, and you'll see what I mean.

1 Samuel 4:1-8

Now as it happens, having the ark of the covenant in Israel's camp didn't help them win, and it was the start of a painful lesson that just having the signs of God's presence with them didn't guarantee them blessing. They had to behave rightly as well.

By the time of Jonah, there is the first hint that the Israelites thought of their God differently. He wasn't just their God, he was THE God, the creator of heaven and earth. Here's the post I made when we reached this moment.

Day 174: Jonah

Ok, so if that's the first signs of a new understanding, by what time does it come to full flower? Fairly quickly, in my opinion, after the almighty shock of the exile. And it comes through the mighty prophecy of Isaiah.

Isaiah was a prophet of the exile. Or at least the second half of the book that bears his name was. That doesn't fit with the chronology of the reading plan I used, which placed him earlier, in the last days of Judah before the exile. The Isaiah of those times was a palace insider, living in the court of King Uzziah and ending up as an old man advising Uzziah's great-grandson Hezekiah.

Hezekiah beat off the attacks of the Babylonians - just - but 150 years later, Jerusalem did fall, and with it fell all of Israel's confidence.

Into that despair a new voice takes up the prophecy in Isaiah, saying "Comfort, comfort my people." (Isaiah 40:1). There are prophecies of new hope about a God who has not been defeated, whose love and mercy are unquenched, who will come to rescue his people.

So much of what we Christians understand about God comes from the poetry of this nameless person, who just tacks his (or maybe her?) writings on to the end of the book of Isaiah. Here's an example of how great and wonderful these words are:

Day 194: God's people comforted

Not a god of vengeance, not a god of wrath and destruction: a God of power, yes, but of mercy and love as well.
Deutero-Isaiah, Son of Isaiah, Isaiah the Sequel, call him/her what you will, tells us what to believe.

Best of 2011 #6: The language of love

Is it love, or lurve? That was the question in my mind as I read Song of Songs, erotic Jewish love poetry. Yes, it's in the Bible. And why not?

Here are my reflections on the poem from May. Day 140: Bride and Bridegroom

I read a different version: The Message. Here's chapter 5

There's a lot of talk about how the internet is changing people's attitudes to sex. Research into 16-24's sexual habits was the subject of a recent BBC TV programme: Websex. One of its conclusions is that social networking has encouraged promiscuity and virtual sex, and further taken the waiting our of wanting.

I don't want to be judgemental, neither do I want to be harrumphing like a grumpy old man, but it's hard not to think that things were better then.

Best of 2011 #5: Joab: a general with attitude

Yesterday we looked at two of the big names: today someone who doesn't get mentioned much. Lucy Mills drew him to my attention, commenting on a slightly earlier episode in which Joab featured.

Who was he? He was David's general, a grizzled military hard nut and trusted enforcer. He got given the dirty jobs by David, and generally performed them to the King's complete satisfaction. But he had a mind of his own, and as time went by, and the King began to make some wayward decisions, Joab occasionally took affairs into his own hands.

Day 125: David restored to the throne

David has just survived a palace coup by his eldest son Absalom. He was forced to fight against him, and David ordered his forces to spare the young man's life. Joab thought this was crazy - now was the time to be ruthless, and if David didn't show some backbone he could forget about getting his kingdom back. So Joab kills vain pretentious Absalom, and then tells David to pull himself together and stop crying like a baby. If he hadn't done this, then David would have lost the respect of his army.

Or so says Joab. But David often did emotional things. Once, he said in the presence of his friends and fellow soldiers that he was thirsty. They broke through the enemy lines, found a well, and brought David back a drink. When he heard where they had got the water from, he poured it onto the ground, saying he would never drink something so dearly bought. You can read it here: 2 Samuel 23:15-17.

So who's right? Calculating Joab, or emotional David? I think the verdict of the Bible writers is that sometimes it's better to do the wrong thing gloriously, passionately, than to be grimly correct.

Best of 2011 #4: Two great characters

Reading the Bible in a year helped me get under the skin of some of the great Bible characters. Today, I recall Moses and David.

There is so much that could be said about both of them, so I've had to be selective. Let's first go back to Moses saying goodbye.

Day 74: Moses' final words and song

Although I pretended that Moses was like Frank Sinatra, in reality he was very different from the self-aggrandizing words of the famous song. He was a humble man, a reluctant leader, and a faithful servant of God.

James suspects that the end of his story has been got at. Re-edited after the event by people who wanted to insert "I told you so" into Moses' mouth. I think he's right, but I think it's also more subtle than that. James said that he thought this was written to make Moses say, "You're going to fail." I would say that the intended message is more something like, "You have failed, but all is not lost. You can still choose life."

Anyway, on to David. I am fascinated by the story of David sparing Saul's life when Saul entered the cave where David was hiding. You can read my post about it here, but I also wrote a longer reflection on the story some years ago, which I posted here.

When David was on form, he tuned in to God's heart better than almost anyone. He loved extravagantly, he forgave willingly, and nothing would make him do what was wrong. No matter how crazy it seemed. e earned the unique description from God: "A man after my own heart."

David inspired me to listen more intently to God, to feel what God is feeling, and to act accordingly without fearing the consequences. The times I have done that, I have never regretted doing so.

Best of 2011 Part 3: The day I lost the plot

The rant that I posted on 21 February attracted comments and twice as many hits as usual. Why? I'd found something in the Bible I just couldn't accept.

The title looks innocent enough: Day 52: The second passover

Now let me make it clear that I find Numbers 5:11-31 unacceptable. If the Tardis had taken back to Israel at this time and made me a priest, I would refuse to perform this instruction from God. For the reasons I said in my post.

But there is more to say. I chose my words about the Tardis carefully, because it implies that if I was alive then, but think as I do now, I couldn't accept this. But if I was alive then, and thought as people did then, it would be different. Even if I was uneasy about it, I would not have the strength of character to refuse, I have no doubt.

So do I think that the way people thought then was wrong? Yes I do. I think we've learned some things in the centuries since Numbers 5. Would I have gone along with it, if I had lived then. Most certainly. We can't escape our times, and all of us in every age are guilty of ignoring great wickedness. 21st century people are not excluded.

But there's one important word in this ugly passage that is worth taking note of. If you want to read the passage, do it now. Leviticus 5:11-31

Did you spot it? Jealousy. In the NIV it comes 6 times. An ugly passage for an ugly feeling. Wronged love leads to very violent feelings indeed, and some sort of controlled arbitration between husband and wife is a lot better than him beating the living daylights out of her.

But it's also a word that's used of God. When the Israelites went astray, God is jealous. When his love is wronged, violent feelings arise in him. Or at least, that's the nearest we can get to understanding what goes on in the heart of God when he is rejected by his creatures. The pages of the prophets simmer with divine rage.

But they are also shot through with incredible divine forbearance and mercy.

Yes, this passage isn't pretty. But it's not the whole story.

The best bits of 2011 part 2

Two passages swim into view today, highlighting some of the difficulties I had with the Old Testament. James, are you reading this?

The first is the iconic Sunday School story of Abraham nearly killing his son Isaac. Perfect story for little kids, isn't it?

Day 15: Incidents in Abraham's life

Ok, welcome back. I did a classic job of skating over the surface here - just mentioning that I couldn't have raised a knife against my own son. But why? Why did God even ask this of Abraham. To test him?

My answer is that God wanted to show Abraham he was different from the other gods. Child sacrifice was not uncommon in Canaanite religion. The Bible itself tells us that. (Leviticus 18:21 for example). God didn't want his people having anything to do with that. So he staged a story that would enter their folklore, to convince them never to do it. The story became folklore alright, but the Israelites still followed Canaanite practice from time to time, and get rebuked for child sacrifice, especially by Ezekiel.

The important point that I think we miss from our great historical distance, is that people thought in those days that you had to appease the gods. If you didn't buy them off with frequent costly sacrifices, then you wouldn't have good fortune. You had to prove your devotion, over and over again.

Judaism is different. We haven't chosen God. God has chosen us. So we don't need to try to please him.

The second passage deals with the classic objection to the Old Testament. How could God order his people to invade and kill other tribes and take over their land? How can that be right?

Day 33: God's covenant with Israel

God had promised to take the Israelites to a "land flowing with milk and honey." Fertile land like this was always in demand. Different groups of people would have competed for it since time immemorial. As well as that, the land has a key strategic position on trade routes from north and south. It's an attractive place. Everybody wants to live there.

If you wanted to live in Canaan, you had to have big swords. These days, we do the competition with money. If you want to live in Chelsea, you've got to be rich. If you're not, you can't. So we've got rid of the blood, but if you want to tell me that anything else has changed, I won't believe you. The business of becoming rich includes back-stabbing, treading on people's heads, bleeding your opponents dry ... I could go on. We still use the language of war even though the weapons have changed.

The thing about Israel was that they weren't typical conquerors. They were runaway slaves, living in tents in the desert, scraping some mysterious flaky substance off the ground to eat every day. Not ideal preparation for war. It's a miracle that they won any battles at all.

The best bits of 2011 Part 1

OK so it's getting a little late for a retrospective, so let's get on with it while we can still remember 2011.

Scholarship tells us that Job is one pf the oderst p[arts of the Bible, so that's where I found myself after only a week or so. Here's one of my early posts: Day 10: Job part 6.

Ok, if you've taken the trouble to read that, welcome back! As you can see, my frustration was mounting. It's not that Job is irrelevant today - his central question "Why does God allow suffering?" has been asked no end of times in 2011 - what I found hard to take was that the book never really makes any progress. It just goes round and round and round.

Perhaps I'm fortunate. I've never been trapped in a horrible situation that seems to go on with out end. If I was, I might like Job for company. As it is, it's good to know that the questions can be asked, I was left wishing that they could be asked more pithily, and only once or twice.

And that the answers might not be provided by such boneheads and Job so-called "comforters".

So why has the book of Job survived for so long?

You want my guess?

Sheer dogged presistence.

The best of 2011

After a year of reading the Bible every day, I thought I’d re-read my posts and come up with a top 10. Or a top 5 if I couldn’t manage that many. 

Unfortunately I’ve produced a top 19!

It was harder to narrow them down than I thought. But there were 366 posts, in my defence. And about the greatest book ever written.

I’ll share them with you, in chronological order, over the next few days, posting a link to my original thoughts and some comments in the wonderful light of hindsight.

And then (drum roll) I will reveal my favourite post of the year – the bit of Bible that meant most to me in 2011.

Stick with me for some reminders of the epic journey that we went on last year.

Where do we go from here?

Well, I've done it. Read the Bible in a year. Read every page of this quirky, ancient, peculiar, sacred, wild text.
It's been an exciting year, and one that has changed me in several ways.
I want to say think you to those who have bothered to send congratulations to me on completing the Bible, and thank you to those who followed me some or all of the way. Your company spurred me on.
If this blog was a TV programme, there'd be scope for a few retrospectives. So perhaps I can get away with my top 10 favourite Bible bits, once I've had time to look back through a year's worth of posts.
But what next?
I'm tempted to read through the Apocrypha - those books that Protestant Christians ignore, but Catholics and others regard as part of the Bible. There are some parts I have never read, so it would be an interesting journey.
Perhaps I should go more slowly though a particular part of the Bible, not skating wildly across the surface of all the issues, like I have been doing, but getting stuck in to some of the harder questions. Some of you have challenged me with those questions over the year, and it would be interesting to continue the conversation with you.
So what do you think? If there's anyone still reading my blog, would you like to express an opinion on what you'd like me to tackle next?