The Tackle Box: the Bible

Tools, materials, equipment, gear: no matter what you call them or what you do for a living, you know what I'm talking about because you use them too.

Students use books, paper, and Internet resources to do homework and school projects. Carpenters need fasteners, a tape measure, wood, and a bunch of tools that they usually carry around in a tool box. Lawyers, copywriters, doctors, teachers, and scientists use computers to access information, do research and publish their conclusions. In fact, every profession requires certain instruments and materials, and every religion has reference books, objects and rituals to support their traditions, organize actual practice of the religion and claim authority.

Fishermen use a tackle box for their hooks and other small fishing equipment, so this is the first of a series of articles about the tools and practices that Christians are supposed to use.


Let's start with the Book: the Bible.

1929 King James Bible
Photo courtesy of King James Bible Online

It was written of a period of around 1500 years by 40 different people, and the original manuscripts were in three different languages. Scholars are aware of the existence of hundreds of ancient copies of the original texts and several translations.

Scribes copied the original documents by hand, and that practice continued through the centuries. When the printing press was invented, it was used to make copies of Bibles in common languages so that everyone could read it (provided they knew how to read).

In the beginning, it was written on scrolls - long rolls of parchment attached to two sticks. It was really hard to find individual paragraphs. The concept of chapters and verses was consolidated in the 1200s.

"Biblical notation" is the system of abbreviations and numbers that lets us find particular sentences (verses) quickly. For example: John 17:3 means to look up verse 3 in chapter 17 of the Gospel of John.

The Bible's purpose is to give people the possibility to find out who God is. In fact, the first commandment that Christians are given is to love God, so it is really important to know about him. Jesus said that knowing God is actually eternal life.

Some other "tools" that Christians use are: prayer, church, and faith. We'll be looking at those in the future.

The Way

Everyone is looking for happiness and serenity.

Every religion in the world offers a "way", and points out how to achieve inner peace or receive eternal life. They promise you'll go to heaven, be happy and sometimes even get rich, and in any case they offer a philosophy of life.

Jesus said he was the way the truth and the life*, which is just a mysterious way of saying that if we make him our role model, we'll be able to see things more clearly.

So Jesus is supposed to the way... 
To where? And just why should we follow him? What do we get out of it?

Many people are still convinced that being a Christian means following a set of impossible-to-obey rules, but instead, Christianity is really a lifestyle.

The word "lifestyle" is defined as "the way we interpret ourselves inside the reality that we live in", and it is the collection of attitudes, reactions to social issues, interests, opinions and behaviors of a person, a group or a culture.** In other words, it's a set of conscious and unconscious choices, some of which have meaning only within our specific context.

A Christian lifestyle starts with a decision, and good decisions are made after a lot of thought and consideration. I think that when we start to clash with the culture around us - the events, the politics and the customs - we begin to think about what other things life could offer. If you don't agree or you're unhappy with your world, how can you change it?

Convictions are really hard to change. 

How much do you really know about the Christian lifestyle? Are you sure that what you think you know is actually true? If not, how can you tell the truth from the lies?

Through the centuries, thousands of people have interpreted the Bible in different ways based on their cultures and convictions. We are supposed to start with the Bible and see what it says, instead of trying to graft verses onto our culture to reinforce our own views.

In the next month, I'll be posting a few articles about how to read the Bible: the easy stuff, like notation and the difference between the Old and New Testament content; and the more intellectual notions, such as how cultural context influences interpretation. We all know that Biblical text is centuries old, but we don't always take that into consideration.

The biggest obstacle to Bible study is the notion that we've heard it all before, and the only way to overcome it is to challenge it.

*John 14:6

** http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stile_di_vita