There are probably people who are open to the existence of God, or at least some sort of transcendent, spiritual reality, but when it comes to believing in the God of the Bible, they have struggles. One of the reasons is the Bible itself, and I think a major cause for doubt sometimes arises from a comparison of our life experience to what seems to be the life of a biblical person. This is what I will call the “Comparison Doubt”.
Admittedly, when you read the Bible, you sometimes cannot help but get the feeling of entering a different reality altogether. It almost seems incomparable to our everyday experience. We have no idea of what it’s like to wander in a wilderness for decades with a pillar of fire and a cloud to guide us. That just seems beyond comparison. How can someone believe that actually happened? Some would say that it’s just like reading a fictional, mythical storybook—sort of like Alice in Wonderland. It is just make-believe. It seems to me that we unconsciously create an argument sort of like this.
1. The reality depicted in the Bible is not the same as the reality of our experience.
2. We should either believe in the reality of our experience or the reality depicted in the Bible.
3. We should believe in the reality of our experience.
4. Therefore, we should not believe the reality depicted in the Bible.
I will try to alleviate this doubt with some theological considerations.
The Bible
Let’s discuss some key points about the Bible.
The Bible’s Structure: Two Testaments (or covenants)
The Old Testament
The Old Testament is mostly comprised of God’s dealings with the nation of Israel. That is the main focus of the Old Testament. God created the world and eventually from one man created a nation, the nation of Israel, that He would set apart for His purposes of blessing all nations. It was through this nation that God most clearly revealed Himself. God made a covenant with them and provided a law for them to live by. He promised them life, blessing, and wealth if they obeyed Him with all of their hearts. However, many times they rebelled and sinned against God. They strayed from Him often. God would bring judgement, they would cry out in repentance, and God would restore them. (Go read Judges.) Israel would reach her zenith in the reigns of David and Solomon. However, Israel would eventually come under severe judgement and be conquered by another nation. They were sent out in exile away from their homeland for 70 years. Eventually, they were brought back by God’s mercy. Nevertheless, they rebelled from time to time and came under foreign rule again. God promised them a Messiah who would save and deliver them and then went silent for 400 years. People at this time awaited their Messiah with excited anticipation, but there was no prophet who spoke new revelation from God. God had gone silent.
The New Testament
A man named John began mightily preaching in Israel. He kept preaching about a certain One whose sandal he was unworthy to even untie. John preached repentance and judgement, but, most importantly, John preached Jesus. Jesus, a Man like no other, enters the scene while John is preaching. John begins to decrease his ministry while pointing towards Jesus. Jesus preached mightily as John did while also performing wonderful miracles of God in the power of The Holy Spirit of God. Jesus preached about the reign and dominion of God. He preached that people should repent and turn to God. He called Himself the “Son of Man” and claimed divine status as God’s Son. He even went so far as claiming to be “I Am” (cf. Exodus 3). Many people began to wonder if He truly was the promised Messiah. His disciples certainly did believe Him. They gave up their lives to follow Him. Jesus though, to their confusion, claimed that He would suffer and die but would then rise again. The disciples couldn’t understand that their Messiah would suffer and die. They had a different understanding of the Messiah’s identity and mission than Jesus did. Jesus claimed that He would give His life as a ransom and that His blood would be poured out for forgiveness of sins. He claimed to establish a new covenant (testament). He then was crucified on a Roman cross and buried. Three days later, He mightily rose from the dead. He promised to send The Holy Spirit to guide His disciples that they would be powerful witnesses of the gospel to all the nations. He also promised that He would return to the world one day in judgement. Until then, His disciples are commissioned to preach to all nations. He ascended to Heaven. The disciples then began preaching the gospel. Many in Jerusalem and eventually many among the nations were converted to Christianity. The world was changed forever. The rest of the New Testament comprises letters written to churches for doctrine, encouragement, correction, etc.
Purpose of the Bible
It is crucial for our purposes here that we understand what the Bible was written for. When God revealed Himself to the people of Israel, He did so for the purpose doing just that, revealing Himself so that people could learn about Him. From reading the Bible, it seems that God intended, basically, to reveal His character and His will for man. I say this because people may fault the Bible for not including a certain topic or not being articulate in a certain area of thought while it simply was not written to address those things.
I think I remember hearing this one atheist (Peter Atkins?) in a debate say that he might would be more influenced to believe the Bible if it had scientific predictions or could contribute to science. Why? Why should that be what determines whether you should believe the Bible? He totally missed the point of the Bible. The Bible is not written as an all-encompassing philosophical or scientific worldview articulation. It was not meant to give a detailed analysis of all of reality. The weight of a hydrogen proton, the strength of the weak nuclear force, and the speed of cosmic expansion are totally irrelevant to God’s purposes in revealing His character and requirements of us. (It is almost as if people like this atheist worship science as their god, and anything that doesn’t contribute to science is worthless. Maybe they think science is the chief end of man, our true purpose—a bit short of the desideratum of real, objective purpose.) God gave us a revelation of His character so that we would know who He is. He gave us a law to live by so that we may know how to better live by His standards. He gave us the story of redemption so that we may believe and be rightly related to Him. These things are of eternal worth transcending cultural changes and advancements in scientific knowledge. So, whether you’re an ancient near eastern peasant who knows nothing of the depths of science or you’re the most renowned theoretical physicist in 2075, God’s revelation of His character and will for your life is directly relevant to you. However, taking his point about scientific prediction, why didn’t he take a look at the Genesis account where God created the universe, entailing the universe had a beginning? Science has only confirmed that to be the case whereas before modern science, I have heard that atheists simply took the universe to be eternal. In this case, science actually confirmed this long-held belief that Christians already had.
Highlight Reel
The Bible also is not intending to give a boring description of everyday life. It is more like a highlight reel capturing the big moments of God’s acts in history. This is very important. We read the Bible and see miraculous or supernatural things happening in seemingly every book and then rarely see anything like it in our experience of life, which leads to doubting the narratives because we imagine these amazing things to be happening every day or week in the Bible while rarely, if ever, seeing miracles or amazing events in our life. This is simply confused though. The Bible is not teaching that the life of an ancient, biblical person was full of these radical things happening constantly. As I will discuss, their lives probably weren’t too different from ours on a fundamental level. These miraculous stories are the highlights—not the norm of everyday life. They did not happen as often as it may seem when reading the Bible. If all of your knowledge of baseball came from the highlights they show on television, you’d think it was this energetic and exhilarating sport, but it’s not quite that way when you actually play it or watch a full game (coming from a long-time baseball player!). Furthermore, the Bible sometimes describes unique events that are not to be repeated. Citing the infrequency of these or similar events as reasons for doubt against them are mistaken. The return of Christ to Earth in judgement is something I have had feelings of doubts about before because there is no event that has happened that I can compare it to. However, it is a unique event, so naturally, it won’t have comparison.
Answering the Doubt
Daily Life
The day-to-day experience of our lives are probably not as different from the ancient readers and authors of the Bible as we make it out to be. Or, you could also say that the differences are not fundamental differences. The everyday life of an ancient biblical person was, fundamentally speaking, probably very similar to ours. What did people likely do pretty much every day? They worked. That’s what I do too. I wake up, read for a bit, work for several hours, then rest for the evening. I’m sure they probably did something similar. An obvious difference I can see here is that I work from a desk and a computer whereas work for them would have been farming or something like that. This is only a superficial difference though. The typical day was fundamentally the same. I’m sure a historical scholar could come up with more examples, but you don’t have to be a historian to know that life is work. The ancients worked to survive, and so do we. The difference simply lies in the kind of work we do, and this is only one example. This reasoning probably extends to other areas of life also. We have malls and grocery stores; they had markets. We have factories; they probably had a local blacksmith or something. You could likely find many similarities in the fundamental aspects of our lives. They didn’t live in some other strange reality, and apart from particular miraculous events, the Bible does not depict these ancients doing life any other way. They were people living lives of work just like us. Also, apart from work, they played games too! Paul refers to athletes who race in one of his letters. They had recreational activities like we do. We have stadiums with Jumbotrons; they had a coliseum. We have Nascar; they had chariots. We have boxing; they had gladiators (a bit more extreme). You see this? They were fundamentally the same as us because they were humans like us! Again, this is not some strange reality that our experience cannot be compared to. They got married and had children like we do. They had philosophers who pondered over reality like we do. They also had fictional writing and theatre like we do today. They had wars and fought over land like we do today. The list goes on. You get the message: fundamentally speaking, our lives were very much similar. Also, as a reminder, I say the Bible was written more like a highlight reel, not a description of everyday life. I just want to alleviate that feeling I noted earlier about seemingly reading about an altogether different reality akin to Alice in Wonderland. No, the Bible depicts real humans living normal lives with certain miraculous occurrences spread throughout history. However, maybe it is this point that you dispute: the presence of any miracles at all. That is a debate for another essay. Sufficient for this essay, I will simply say that if you accept a theistic worldview, then miracles are not an issue. Consider my Case for Christian Theism for more on a theistic worldview.
Parting the Red Sea
Let’s think about a particular Bible story, keeping the thoughts we have discussed so far in mind. Imagine a modern person, Walker, who has become friends with a Christian, Lincoln. After a few years of being good friends, Lincoln convinces Walker to consider Christianity. Walker is certainly open to God’s existence but has never read the Bible. He goes to church with Lincoln and is moved by the sermon the preacher gave. Walker takes a Bible that Lincoln offers to give him and opens it up to the story of Israel walking through the Red Sea but immediately doubts it. Why? Because this sounds so contrary to his experience of the world.
We find commonly occurring things to be more believable while spectacular things more difficult to believe. If your wife told you that she stopped by the grocery store before she got home, you’d believe her without even thinking about it. If she told you that she saw a UFO flying above Kroger seemingly defying the laws of physics, you’d be skeptical. When reading the Bible, we probably don’t have much doubt that Israel fought in wars. Wars happen. We do find it difficult to believe that they walked through a sea on dry ground. That doesn’t happen very often! One reason doubt may arise is the infrequency of events like this in our experience. If nations walking through a sea on dry ground happened a lot, we wouldn’t have a problem believing it, but this does not happen a lot, so it’s more difficult to believe. This is understandable, but it’s not much of an argument against the narrative. Granted, at face value, it is reasonable to be hesitant in believing it (unless you already have established that God inspired the text.) We believe in the creation of the universe, and that was a unique event that will not be repeated. Some of the Bible’s narratives capture unique events that will not be repeated. Citing infrequency as a reason to doubt a unique event is mistaken—a category fallacy. However, someone could say, “Maybe miracles are possible, but we just don’t see things on such a grand scale as an entire nation walking through a sea on dry ground. That is more difficult to believe. Maybe someone could be miraculously healed by God of a disease, but I still doubt this seemingly mythical story of an entire nation parting a sea and walking through.” Granted, but here is a crucial point to understand. At this time in world history, God was working through a nation as a whole—not just individual people. So, naturally, delivering an entire nation from slavery is a much grander thing than delivering an individual person from an affliction or a disease. God’s acts with Israel were on a much larger scale than His acts with particular people as individuals. That’s why we do not see things like this happening anymore. It’s not that the Bible shows some far-off reality that cannot be compared to our reality. No, it’s just that God does not work through one particular nation anymore like He used to, or at least in the same way. Now God accomplishes His will for gospel proclamation and kingdom advancement through individuals within the church preaching the message of Jesus. Moreover, one of God’s purposes with Israel was bringing them to a physical land whereas today, God is accomplishing more spiritual purposes. So, God’s activity includes much less physical, immediately visible display than it used to. Walking through a sea is not relevant to someone hearing the gospel and believing it, leading to spiritual liberation, God’s forgiveness, etc. It was relevant for Israel reaching the land God had promised them—a physical land that they had to actually walk to.
Concluding Remarks
On its own, this essay does not give us reason to believe the Bible. That is a much bigger conversation, but this kind of doubt has troubled my mind at times, and I hope that these thoughts do something to alleviate this type of doubt. I hope this encourages you. Please feel free to comment or contact me directly.