Lent: Old Testament

This year for Lent I have given up pleasure reading. This means that I only read things for work or study and newspapers. I have replaced all the time I spent reading pleasure books with reading the Bible... straight through. I began this project a little before Lent and got worried that I would slow down or give up at about Numbers/Deuteronomy. So, to prevent this and make sure I at least got a good ways in I took my vow. Last night I finished the Old Testament and it was a journey. My view of God and the Bible have been all over the place reading it.

First, after reading the Old Testament I realized what a New Testament Christian I was. I knew the most famous Old Testaments stories, characters, and etc. However, I was much more familiar with the New Testament. I really think that I mistook New for being More Important Testament, my attitude being if someone says something is in the Old Testament I asked, "Well, is it in the New". Now I think that was a bad question. I should have asked how the New Testament deals with the issue. The differences in the question may seem slight but I think there is a world of difference. The question of "Is it in the New Testament" implies that if the answer is No then the issue is not important. For example, are the Old Testament Laws repeated in the New Testament? The answer is no. This would lead me to think that they weren't really important. After reading them I see that they are important, I'm not going to start living by all of them. ( I'll still wear clothes of mixed fabric.) However, they take up so much of the scripture and address things in the daily life of Israel they have to be important.

The question that I will start asking is, how the New Testament deals with the issue. This doesn't have the same implication that the Old Testament is lesser. Its meaning is more to acknowledge the unfolding nature of the scripture and Gods love for us. If I asked this question about the Law a great answer would be to look at Matthew 5:17-20. Here Jesus says that he has come to fulfill not to abolish the law. This is about how none of us can fulfill the Law so Jesus came to do it. It does not mean the Law is unimportant it means the Law was the framework Jesus came from and operated under. How could it not be important then?

Second, this one a bit of a lighter note. The Old Testament is long. Way long. I always knew intellectually that it was longer then the New Testament but not how much longer. There were definitely times when I thought the Old Testament would never end. When reading got to be "Israel turns back on God, God sends prophet to warn Israelites, they ignore him, God punishes them, and then later God rescues them and they go back to God, repeat". I feel bad that the Bible got repetitive, but the Prophets turned into a bit of a slog. The other part that got to be a grind to me may surprise people, but it was Psalms. I know that Psalms is many peoples favorite part of the Old Testament and I see why. Its a nice break from Israel and righteous anger God. God is our rock and a mighty fortress and he will deliver us. It's nice, it's more of the love aspect of God that we really want to focus on. However, they got very repetitive to me I had trouble seeing how one differed from the other. Some did jump out at me sure, but I struggled to understand why each Psalm was important or different from the one before it. Psalms is important and I have been convinced of that, but I don't think I will ever do a straight through read of it again.

Third, things I was surprised I liked alot. I really like Proverbs, they gave me a lot to think about. I read through them really fast and plan to read them again when I finish the New Testament. Ecclesiastes was something that I was really drawn to. The tone about the things of this world being meaningless was dark and truly memorable. It made me think about the things that I found important and tried to advance in. The importance of God over the things of the world is just so well shown. Also, the closing verses are new favorites, "Now all has been heard here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man for God will bring every deed into judgment including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil." This is a book that I will go back and reread over and over again. There was so much to it and the rest of the Old Testament that I had never seen before.

Lastly, the way that I'm reading the Bible now has been very interesting. After reading about how chapters and verses were added to the Bible I have been trying to read without using them. It has been nearly imposable for me to do. For a couple of reasons one being that I have used them my whole life and the other being its hard to discuss a part of the Bible without saying chapter and verse. I don't think that chapter and verse are bad necessarily, just that they encourage verse picking. Instead of looking at the Bible as a whole, where thoughts flow into each other and are meant to be seen as part of the whole, verses and chapters brakes them up so that each verse seems like an isolated thought. This turns the whole Bible into not a book, but a collection of saying and proverbs. Rather then try and understand the whole, we look for parts that confirm beliefs we already hold. A verse in isolation many times is not a complete sentence, let alone a well developed full thought. We all know that you can take fragments of the Bible out of context to mean or show anything. Many times we say that this is a bad thing, but mostly we say that when someone is using it against us. They can be a great help in discussing the Bible making sure we are in the same place. We just need to make sure that we remember that the Bible is a book with an overall message not a collection of comments.

Also, the many references in the Old Testament to caring for the stranger and about hospitality kind of surprised me. I had I think fallen into thinking of the Old Testament as Gods wrath book and the New Testament as Gods love book. They are both Gods love and Gods wrath, when we focus on one aspect of God to the exclusion of near exclusion of all others we miss the rest of the story. As I continue on into the New Testament I look forward to seeing the Gospel unfold and learning more from it. I will probably be slowing my pace when I can read other books again, but the New Testament isn't as long so hopefully it will take less then 40 days to do it.