WAY TO LIVE_DOT I (GOD) // CHAPTER 3
The beginning of our journey is the decision that our lives are meaningful. What comes with this decision must be a commitment to discover, develop and deploy that meaning.
Once we decide to do that, we are on the journey and we’ve taken the first bites of our elephant. Let’s start with the Bible.
The Bible is believed by many to be the most influential collection of writing in human history. It is estimated that over 100 million copies are sold annually.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Bible, it is not one book, it is a collection of sixty-six books.
Most scholars believe that these books were written at different times by as many as forty different authors over a 1,500-year period. That’s the same amount of time from the Medieval period until now.
The oldest book in the Bible according to most scholars is either Genesis or Job, written around 1400 BC, 3,400 years ago. The newest book in the Bible is Revelation, written around 90 AD.
The Bible is divided into two parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament. There’s a four-hundred-year silent period between them where nothing was written. The books of the Old Testament represent some of the first chronicles we have about human history. They are not just religiously significant, they are historically, sociologically and culturally significant, showing how people lived, what their customs and culture were, and how they interacted with each other. The Bible, regardless of our belief system, reveals much to us.
The word “testament’’ is a Latin term for “covenant.” In the ancient world, covenants governed relationships, property disputes and businesses. Imagine making a friend a promise and knowing that your children and their children would also keep that same promise. Covenants were like contracts that never ended. A covenant is a deep, abiding promise. Marriage is a modern-day expression of a covenant relationship.
When we look at the Bible, we are looking at many different perspectives over a long period of time that detail two things: an “old” promise and a “new” promise. And these promises are the deepest, most solemn promises that can exist.
The Bible shows us that the that the story of humanity is a structured one. The content of our story as humans is important, but so is the structure of our story. The story of humanity, from its origin to now, has much to show us. The Old Testament gives us a glimpse of the beginning of humanity. It also shows us the starting point in our own lives. When do we start to determine how to live and what makes life meaningful? When can we begin to allow God’s thinking to invade our thinking? The story of humanity chronicled in Scripture shows us over thousands of years the journey that God has for us.