HOW IS THE BIBLE RELEVANT TODAY? by steve johnson
O
ne of my first after school jobs was working in a butcher shop. I learned to trim fat and cut meat, how to wrap and freeze properly, sharpen knives, and as a corollary, how to stop bleeding quickly. As good as these things were, they were about as relevant to my life as a high school student as knowing the price of rice in China. There was no connection between the world of high school and that of the butcher shop. Only later in life when I became a hunter, had to choose meat at the grocery store, and owned knives of my own did I see the relevance of that knowledge. My experience with the butcher shop job is like that of many Christians who struggle to relate to Scripture. Preachers say it is relevant and applicable to life in
the 21st century, yet for many, there is a huge disconnect. This disconnect exists because of difficulty relating to the world of the Bible. The times were different in every way. People we never knew did things we don’t comprehend in places we’ve never been in times we never lived. It really was a different world. Or was it? One reason we might not see Scripture’s relevance is because we focus on the discontinuity between the world of the Bible and our world and conclude Scripture’s irrelevant. Instead, we need to look at the points of continuity. It is these that provide the relevance for us. Here are three of them. The first point of continuity showing Scripture’s relevance today is the main
