This Quest for Faith series is something that is hopefully going to be a recurring theme on this blog all year. The thing is that at times, all of us have doubts, all of us at times need to rely on the faith of others, we are weak and need the help of others to get through. Which is the reason I share my struggle with faith because if we are constantly growing, then there will be new doubts, new questions, new things that arise. This is simply my journey which I am pretty much "live blogging" as in, these are the thoughts on faith and life and how it relates to me as I am currently experiencing, the things that I am currently learning.
So a few days ago I bought a new Bible, it is in The Voice translation, which I was hoping would be so new and fresh to me that it would bring the Bible alive, and so far I haven't been disappointed. Last year I read the New Testament through in The Message, which gave me a fresh look. I'm not doing a "read the Bible in a year" program or anything this year, I'm doing a "here is the Bible in fresh language: devour it" program. If I finish next month or in six months, it doesn't matter to me. What my aim is is to see the big picture, the full story that the Bible tells.
Anyway, when it comes to the Bible, why do we call it a book? It's a library really, a collection of 66 books. Each of those 66 books is written by a particular author with a particular literary style, and a particular culture. To me this makes the Bible more valuable, as God's story is being told by a variety of people with a variety of life experiences. Some of it is poetry, some of it is letters, some of it is apocalyptic. These are stories of people who experienced God and who wrote about it in completely different ways. It's a library of people's interactions with God, and that is what is so fascinating about it.
I am hoping that in devouring the Bible, I will learn so many new things about the story of God, and that maybe some of my questions will be answered. One of the things that struck me when reading last night was in Genesis chapter 9.
"Whoever sheds the blood of a human, that person's blood will be shed in return by another for God made humanity in His own image." Genesis 9:6 ~ The Voice.
In the New Testament, Jesus tells us that hating someone in your heart is the same as murder, and for the first time last night, I saw why this was so. Genesis 9:6 tells us that murder is such a huge deal because of the fact that humans were created in the very image of God. That means that when I am having bitter and ugly thoughts against someone, if I have hatred in my heart towards someone, I am totally devaluing the image of God, which is the same thing that happens when a person murders another. Murder, hatred, and bitterness is such a big deal because it shows that we do not value God's image and the people that he made to reflect him. We're telling God that he isn't good enough, or amazing enough. In other words, murder, hatred, bitterness is basically just dissing God. Wow.
That puts bitterness and hatred in a whole different light. Bitterness, hatred and murder all come from the same root and the fruits of them all will be poison.
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