13. What Is the Bible?
Essentialism, a Hunter’s Theology — Chapter Two: The Bible
The Bible is the journal and historical log of God’s relationship with humanity, transcribed by humans so that we might understand who He is, why He created us, how He sees us, and what He hopes for our future.
It records the ups and downs of that relationship. The successes, the failures, the arguments, the negotiations, the disappointments, and the celebrations. It tells us what God has done, what humanity has done in response, and how both have continued to interact throughout history.
It is a collection of books, written by different people across generations, containing history, poetry, law, prophecy, letters, songs, wisdom, and accounts of personal encounters with God.
But beneath all those different forms of writing is one continuing story.
The Bible is the history of God’s struggle against humanity’s desire for Greed, His interventions to keep that Greed from destroying us, and His plans to remove it.
That is the through line I see when I read scripture.
And understanding that through line changes how I understand God.
The Bible Is a Record of a Relationship
I don’t approach the Bible as though God handed humanity a completed instruction manual and expected us to follow it without questions.
I approach it as the record of a relationship that has been developing since humanity’s beginning.
God created human beings with the ability to make choices. He gave us a world in which to live, relationships to develop, responsibilities to fulfill, and the freedom to decide what we would do with those gifts.
He also created us in His image.
In Christian Essentialism, I understand that image through the five virtues of the Lens:
Empathy. Truth. Joy. Kindness. Anti-Greed.
Together, these virtues become Love.
God already possesses and practices them. He did not need humanity to teach Him how to be loving, truthful, or kind.
What humanity introduced into the relationship was a willingness to pursue Greed, even when doing so meant harming ourselves, one another, and our relationship with Him.
And that created a problem.
God does not desire Greed. He does not need to exploit another being to establish His worth, acquire status, or demonstrate His power.
Human beings, however, repeatedly choose to do exactly that.
The Bible records what happens when a God who practices Love works with people who repeatedly choose Greed.
Sometimes we listen.
Sometimes we learn.
Sometimes we decide that the benefits of Greed are worth the suffering it causes.
And sometimes we convince ourselves that our Greed is actually righteousness.
God continues working with us anyway.
Greed Is the Conflict
When people discuss the original sin, the conversation often turns toward sex.
But Genesis does not describe sex as the forbidden act.
In fact, God tells humanity to be fruitful and multiply before the events in the Garden of Eden.
What does the serpent offer Eve?
The opportunity to become like God.
Not merely to possess something useful, but to acquire a status and understanding that the serpent presents as being withheld from her.
The temptation is to take something in pursuit of elevation.
And when God confronts Adam and Eve, what happens?
Responsibility gets passed around.
Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent.
The desire to acquire more and the refusal to accept responsibility for the consequences are both present.
That is Greed.
In Essentialism, I define Greed as:
The desire to take more than needed for status or to lord over another, and the lack of personal responsibility for the pain that causes.
The original sin was Greed.
And Greed continues to appear throughout scripture.
Cain’s resentment of Abel. The corruption that precedes the Flood. Pharaoh’s refusal to release the Israelites. The exploitation condemned by the prophets. The religious authorities who value their positions more than the people they are supposed to serve.
These stories differ in their circumstances, but they repeatedly reveal what happens when people place status, possession, and control above the well-being of others.
Greed breeds cruelty.
And cruelty makes it increasingly difficult for humanity to survive together.
This is why I believe God’s interventions are so important to the biblical narrative.
He isn’t merely responding to people breaking rules.
He is responding to the consequences of a motivation that continually threatens the lives and relationships of the beings He created.
God Listens, Repents, and Adjusts
One of the most important things about reading the Bible as a historical record is watching how God’s relationship with humanity develops.
The people in Genesis do not live in the same circumstances as the people in Exodus.
The Israelites establishing a nation face different problems from those living under kings.
The prophets address conditions that differ from those faced by the early Christian congregations.
Human cultures change. Their institutions change. Their understanding changes.
And God continues working with them.
Sometimes He establishes boundaries.
Sometimes He allows consequences.
Sometimes He intervenes directly.
Sometimes He sends someone to explain what is happening.
And sometimes He changes His announced course of action after listening to someone.
Consider Moses.
After the Israelites make the golden calf, God announces His intention to destroy them.
Moses intercedes. He challenges the proposed destruction, reminds God of His promises, and asks Him to reconsider.
Exodus 32:14 tells us:
“Yahweh repented of the evil which he said he would do to his people.”
— Exodus 32:14, World English Bible
I believe we need to reconsider what repentance means.
We frequently teach repentance as admitting that we have sinned, feeling sorry, and asking forgiveness.
But I understand repentance as something more fundamental.
Repentance is accepting personal responsibility for the consequences of one’s choices and demonstrating that responsibility through change.
It is not necessarily an admission of sin.
It is an acknowledgment that our choices have consequences and that we are responsible for responding to those consequences.
Regret recognizes an undesirable outcome.
Remorse expresses sorrow over harm.
Repentance requires responsibility and action.
Someone can regret what happened without accepting responsibility.
Someone can feel remorse without changing their behavior.
But repentance becomes visible when someone recognizes what their choices have produced and acts differently.
And in Exodus, God demonstrates that principle.
Moses challenges His intended response to the Israelites.
God listens.
He recognizes the consequences of the course He has announced and changes it.
He does not insist upon destruction simply because He possesses the authority to carry it out.
He accepts responsibility for His decision and chooses another response.
God demonstrates repentance.
That is not the same as declaring that God committed a sin.
It is recognizing that God’s authority does not make personal responsibility irrelevant.
He demonstrates what it means to reconsider a decision when confronted with its consequences.
Now consider Nineveh.
God sends Jonah to warn the city of its impending destruction.
The people change their behavior.
And God changes His announced course of action.
Jonah is furious.
He wanted the punishment.
God accepted the change.
In both stories, we encounter a God who responds to what is happening rather than insisting that every announced consequence must be carried out regardless of circumstances.
This is an important distinction in Essentialism.
God’s character, God’s methods, and humanity’s understanding of God are three related but different things.
His character is expressed through the Lens.
His methods respond to the circumstances of His relationship with humanity.
And humanity’s understanding develops through experience.
God’s willingness to change His methods is not evidence that He lacks the virtues He teaches.
It is evidence that He practices them.
Truth recognizes what is happening.
Empathy considers the consequences.
Kindness seeks a response that preserves life.
Anti-Greed refuses to make authority more important than the well-being of those affected.
And Joy remains possible because destruction is not treated as the only acceptable outcome.
The Lens remains the same. The methods of teaching and applying it can change.
Humans Keep Putting Greed Back Into the Equation
There is another pattern throughout scripture that I find especially revealing.
Humanity experiences the consequences of Greed.
God intervenes.
People recognize the problem and establish new ways of living.
For a while, things improve.
Then someone discovers that the old exploitation was profitable.
Someone decides that a position of authority should come with special privileges.
Someone decides that another person’s labor, freedom, or suffering is an acceptable price for their own comfort.
And Greed returns.
Sometimes it returns openly.
Other times it comes dressed as tradition, religious duty, national security, prosperity, or the preservation of social order.
This is why simply removing one cruel ruler does not necessarily end cruelty.
Another person may occupy the same position and use the same methods.
Removing a corrupt institution does not automatically remove the desire to exploit.
And punishing someone for Greed does not guarantee that they understand why Greed is wrong.
They may simply become more careful about getting caught.
This is one reason I believe God continues working with humanity rather than simply destroying everyone who chooses Greed.
Destroying a person can stop that person’s actions.
It cannot, by itself, teach everyone else why those actions were harmful.
And if the desire remains, someone else will eventually make the same choices.
The problem is not only what people do.
It is what people are willing to do to one another, and why.
Humanity Must Choose to Fight Greed
This brings us to an important distinction between God’s immediate work and His ultimate intention.
Ultimately, God intends to eliminate Greed itself.
But until that future arrives, He works with humanity as we are.
He helps us recognize the consequences of Greed, understand the suffering it produces, and develop ways to resist it.
That work requires our participation.
A person can obey a command without understanding it.
A person can refrain from cruelty because they fear punishment.
A person can behave generously because generosity improves their reputation.
But none of those things necessarily means they have rejected Greed.
The desire may still be there, waiting for an opportunity.
If humanity is going to participate in a future without Greed, we must understand why it cannot belong there.
We must recognize what it costs.
We must see what it does to the people around us.
And we must decide that whatever advantages Greed promises are not worth the suffering it creates.
God can show us the consequences.
He can establish protections.
He can intervene when those protections fail.
He can teach us through prophets, scripture, experience, and the example of Jesus Christ.
But we must also decide to fight Greed ourselves.
That is where the Lens becomes essential.
Empathy allows us to recognize the suffering our choices create.
Truth requires us to acknowledge that suffering, even when doing so threatens our comfort or reputation.
Kindness directs us toward actions that preserve dignity and reduce harm.
Joy reminds us that there is goodness in life worth protecting.
Anti-Greed teaches us to recognize and refuse the temptation to take more than we need at another person’s expense.
Together, they teach us to practice Love.
Not simply because God commands it.
But because we have come to understand why Love is necessary.
Repentance Is Responsibility Made Visible
This understanding of repentance also changes what we should expect from ourselves.
If repentance is merely an apology, it can become another performance.
We can say the correct words, express the expected emotions, and return to the same behavior.
We can even demand forgiveness while refusing to address the harm we caused.
But if repentance means accepting responsibility and demonstrating that responsibility through change, an apology is only one possible part of the process.
We must also examine our choices.
What did we do?
What consequences followed?
Who was affected?
What responsibility belongs to us?
And what must change?
Those questions apply whether the original decision was malicious, careless, uninformed, or made with good intentions.
We cannot always predict the consequences of our choices.
But when those consequences become visible, we are responsible for deciding how to respond.
Good intentions do not erase harmful outcomes.
And having the authority to make a decision does not eliminate responsibility for what that decision produces.
That is why God’s example matters.
He does not merely demand that humanity recognize its mistakes.
The biblical record shows Him listening, reconsidering, and changing His announced actions.
In Christian Essentialism, this is repentance understood as responsibility.
It is a practice of the Lens.
And it directly challenges Greed, because Greed depends in part upon refusing responsibility for the suffering caused by one’s pursuit of advantage.
Repentance refuses that escape.
It says that responsibility does not end when a decision has been made.
It continues through the consequences.
The Bible Is Not Finished With Us
The Bible records events that happened long before we were born.
But the problems it describes are still with us.
We still create systems that reward exploitation.
We still confuse wealth with worth.
We still protect institutions at the expense of the people they were created to serve.
We still excuse cruelty when it benefits someone we admire.
We still demand accountability from others while inventing explanations for our own behavior.
And we still struggle to understand why a society organized around taking more than we need produces so much suffering.
The biblical record may have been completed, but humanity’s struggle with Greed continues.
So does our responsibility to learn from it.
I don’t believe the purpose of studying scripture is simply to memorize what God said to someone thousands of years ago.
I believe we should understand why He said it, what circumstances made it necessary, and what the consequences teach us about the choices we face today.
That requires more than agreement.
It requires examination.
It requires the willingness to ask questions.
And sometimes it requires admitting that something we were taught about God may reflect humanity’s desire for control more than God’s desire for Love.
That is not a reason to abandon scripture.
It is a reason to study it carefully.
A History and a Promise
The Bible begins with creation and humanity’s earliest choices.
It continues through generations of conflict, intervention, correction, and restoration.
It introduces people who cooperate with God, people who resist Him, and people who manage to do both within the same lifetime.
It records His promises, humanity’s failures, and the continuing effort to establish a future in which Greed no longer governs our relationships.
And it points toward a time when the suffering Greed produces will finally end.
That is why I call the Bible God’s journal and historical log.
It tells us who He is.
It tells us why He created us.
It shows us how He has worked with humanity, including the times when that relationship has been difficult.
It preserves what people understood about Him in their own times.
And it reveals His continuing hope for what we can become.
God’s ultimate intention is to remove Greed. His present work includes teaching humanity why we must reject it.
And His example teaches us something else.
When our choices produce consequences, we must be willing to recognize them, accept responsibility, and change.
We are not simply waiting for God to fix everything.
We are learning why things need to change, what must change within us, and how to participate in that work.
And every generation has the opportunity to do better with what it has learned.
That includes ours.
The Bible is the record of God’s relationship with humanity.
The question is what we will do with what that relationship has taught us.
Questions for Comprehension
- Why does Christian Essentialism describe the Bible as God’s journal and historical log?
- How does Greed serve as a continuing conflict throughout the biblical narrative?
- How does God’s response to Moses in Exodus 32 demonstrate repentance as personal responsibility?
Questions for Personal Reflection
- Have you ever changed a decision after recognizing consequences you had not previously considered? What did that experience teach you?
- Where have you seen people recognize the harm caused by Greed, only to reintroduce it when doing so became advantageous?
- What is one situation in which accepting responsibility would require more than an apology?
Save your faith for God. Ask me questions.
Return to Ask an Essentialist Theologian
Go to Essentialism Question Fourteen: How did we receive the Bible?