The same people who tout the virtues of being well-read skip right past the Bible, the most popular book in human history. We’ll binge-read biographies about some hot new tech CEO while skipping the one about the most important figure in Western history: Jesus Christ.

The bible comes out with guns blazing.

Within the first sentence, we are hit with some huge statements:

There is a being called God
He made the world

By the end of the first chapter, it's clear that in some way, this God made us too. This powerful, worldmaking being has condescended to create partners to rule with him. He makes them like himself and places them in a garden to create, build the world, and have a tight-knit, life-giving relationship with him.

For a while, things are, well… perfect.

Then things go very wrong.

Betrayal

The humans betray God.

Just three chapters in, the whole thing starts to unravel as the first humans are deceived into rejecting God as God, forgoing his ideas about good and evil, making themselves the arbiters of right and wrong. In so doing, they knowingly disobey their maker, their friend, their God.

The humans survive... but something at the core of their being dies. From here on out they will be deeply, irreparably, broken.

These first humans must leave the garden, the fulfilling work, the knowing and being known, the very God-closeness that defined their once-beautiful existence.

Outside the Garden

Outside the garden, life goes on, along with their mission to build the world. Humans continue to bubble over with the goodness given to them at creation. They live and work and make. But there is a darkness that will haunt the human project from here on out.

Outside the garden, work is laced with misery and oppression. Relationships are fraught with brokenness and misunderstanding. People die.

And it quickly becomes clear that whatever this curse is will be passed on.

The first couple’s oldest son kills his younger brother in cold blood. The fratricidal son founds a city... with values that somehow reflect the deep brokenness of its founder.

The next thousand chapters or so document the unfolding - and unraveling - of the ongoing human project. People spread out and expand, technology progresses, culture is made, but at every turn they are dogged by the selfishness and death that the humans can't seem to shake.

Is this world starting to sound familiar?

The Central Question

Here emerges the central question of the bible:

Can what is broken be fixed?

Is there something we can do to mend our broken relationship with God? How do we fix our dying bodies and crooked souls? Can the world be made right?

Human Inability

By the end of the old testament, it's clear that humans will not be able to fix their fundamental problem. Despite God choosing a people (the Jews), giving them deep experiences of his goodness, a perfect set of moral and civil laws for the time, and even land flowing with "milk and honey", it's clear that God's chosen people are just as broken as everyone else.

When the new testament picks up, God's disobedient people have been shattered and scattered and the progress-amidst-brokenness dynamic has reached its apex. The Romans are in charge.

In many ways, the Romans personified the best and worst of what humanity could be. The same people that perfected the republic, gave us Seneca and built still-standing monuments also mastered the art of "might makes right", enslaving conquered enemies and glorifying the torture of crucifixion.

This was when God moved in to fix the problem himself.

The Hero

Jesus was different. Born into Roman-occupied Israel, it was said that he didn't sin like the rest of us. It was said that miracles followed him. It was said that somehow... he was the Son of the Creator God himself.

Jesus loved people regardless of their social status or worthiness. He loved them in spite of their sin.

If there was one group he was critical of - it was the religious establishment.

In apt irony, the confluence of the heights of human power and will - religion and state - conspired and executed the innocent embodiment of love, joy, and life. They killed Jesus.

If the story ended there, we wouldn't be talking about it. But a few days later, the same people who watched him die claimed that they saw him, that he was alive.

They claimed that he was back from the dead and that his death and resurrection had accomplished something.

The Death, The Fix

They claimed that Jesus’ death was the fix that the world had been looking for since the day we left the garden.

That when Jesus died, he had taken on himself our sin and shame, paid the penalty for it, finally bore the wrath that we deserved, and opened up a way to be with God once more.

He had opened a way back to the Garden - back to God himself - and anyone could walk through it.

The way was not a physical path. It was a path for the human soul. One need simply believe and, in a reversal of the first sin, turn from their own ways - lives defined by themselves - back to God.

He said that those who make this move of the soul would gain access into a new way of being, the way of the coming kingdom, even while the world is still broken.

A New World

Finally, Jesus made it clear that while the world itself would stay broken for some time, one day he would return and usher in a new age, an age where somehow everything would be made right. All the brokenness and ugliness would done away with - and the new world, now absent of sin and suffering and oppression would be more beautiful for having been through all the darkness that had come before it.

In Sum

There is a God who made us. We turned away from God and in so doing broke ourselves and the world. Jesus died to take the penalty that sinners deserve, to fix our biggest problem - our alienation from the one who made us. The reason we are still talking about Jesus is that he came back from the dead.

We can be reconciled to God and find a new way of living by opening our life to him and turning away from the sin that has ensnared us since our first parents (trying to be god over our life and world). Jesus will come one last time to remake the world along with those who are reconciled into his life.

That is the story of the bible. And if it’s true, that is good news.

Further Resources

Book: The Drama Of Scripture

Video: For normal, modern readers looking to understand the important (but difficult) book that is the bible, I can’t recommend The Bible Project enough. Here’s their video on this topic: “The Story of the Bible”.

In 1832, Hokusai painted his famous “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji”. With each painting, he gave a fuller view of the mountain- and his own perspective. Here’s one of my “36 (or so) views of the world”. It’s an attempt to illuminate an aspect of the present by telling a story of the world through one lens. This essay covers what I think is the ultimate meta-narrative: God’s.

The Bible in 1000 words (tl;dr)