Why Read the Bible?

Why should I read the Bible? The Bible is more than 2000 years old, how could this book possibly have anything relevant to teach me today? These are some common questions surrounding the Bible. On the other hand, it's quite fascinating that a book that is more than two thousand years old is still a bestseller today. This book is not 100 or 500 years old but 2000 years old, that in itself is pretty incredible to me. Every time I read through one of the books in the Bible I'm surprised by how little has changed over the past 20 centuries. We still have the same problems. Us humans have a tendency to be self-centered and foolish, which leads us to repeat the same mistakes over and over again, century after century.


People in the Bible hurt each other through wars, cheating, stealing, murder etc. and we do the same things today. It's the human condition. When we try to rule the world all by ourselves we quickly get led astray by greed, selfishness and pride. You could say we do a terrible job when we try to take God's role in the universe. We aren't very good at loving each other and getting along. It makes sense I guess. Imagine you let your children live all by themselves without the help and guidance from their parents, they would self-destruct pretty quickly. In the end we are all children in a big universe and on our own we are lost and helpless. Whether we like to admit it to ourselves or not, we need God.


When I read through the whole Bible for the first time I was annoyed by how stupid the people where in my opinion. It's easy to look back at history and see how the people should have done this instead of that and so on. It's a whole different story to make the right choices in your own life. The wonderful thing with the Bible is that it's full of people who made foolish choices and ended up in big trouble as a result of that, but God had mercy on them and as they turned back to God and cried out to him for mercy he saved them and put their broken lives back together.


The good news is that although nothing has changed when it comes to our human problems neither has God changed. Twenty centuries may sound like a long time for us humans but it's not a long time for God. God is still the same today and he offers us the same love, mercy and grace as he offered the people back in Israel many generations ago. When we come to Him he starts to soften our hardened hearts and he starts to heal what's broken inside of us piece by piece.


God's love for each one of us is the most beautiful thing we can experience during a lifetime on this Earth, no love is greater than this. No matter what we have done or where we have been we are never too broken or too far gone for God. Our Father in heaven loves each one of us with an unfailing unconditional love. He can restore anything that is broken and redeem anything that was once lost. Having seen these sentences become true in their own lives is what makes people raise their hands and sing really loud in churches all around the world.