The Bible

"Thou shalt decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee: and
the light shall shine upon thy ways." (Job 22:28)
"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; he makes me lie down in
green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul." (Psalm 23)
"Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are honest,
whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are
of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think
on these things." (Philippians 4:8)
"I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me."
(Philippians 4:13)
"He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he
increaseth strength." (Isaiah 40:29)
"If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31)
"What things soever ye desire, when ye pray believe that ye receive
them, and ye shall have them." (Mark 11.24)

The way people view the Bible usually falls into one of three categories:
a sacred religious text; a vast historical work; or a collection
of great stories. However, our attachment to these tired slots
can prevent us from seeing it anew as a collection of ideas, ones that
helped create our concept of what a human being might be.
Progress
It is easy to forget just how much the Old and New Testaments are
responsible for the world we live in today. In his book The Gifts of the
Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone
Thinks and Feels, Thomas Cahill wrote:
"Without the Bible we would never have known the abolitionist movement,
the prison-reform movement, the anti-war movement, the labor
movement, the civil rights movement, the movement of indigenous and
dispossessed peoples for their human rights, the anti-apartheid movement
in South Africa, the Solidarity movement in Poland, the freespeech
and pro-democracy movements in such Far Eastern countries as
South Korea, the Philippines, and even China. These movements of
modern times have all employed the language of the Bible."
Perhaps the crucial change in the way we think was the idea of
progress. In the distant past time was invariably seen as cyclical; the
great creation stories were so important to these early cultures' understanding
of themselves that little attention was paid to the future. The
idea that tomorrow could be better than today was alien. There were
many gods, but they were impersonal and capricious and none had any
particular vision for the human race.
This changed with the direct revelation of the commandments through
Moses on Mount Sinai. While this new singular God was to be feared,
He was a God who not only always had our best interests at heart, but
had a long-term vision for His people. He was the God who led the Jewsout of slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land, who would work
through history in order to create his own ends—the God of progress.
Though we take it for granted today, this progressive worldview has
defined western culture and been adopted by nearly all non-western cultures
too. It is, as Cahill says above, the force behind all the great emancipation
movements that, often employing the language of the Book of
Exodus, grew out of the thought that "it does not have to be this way."
This thought is also the light that guides most of the self-help literature.
The power of love
If the Old Testament has been the inspiration for groups through the millennia,
the New Testament became a symbol of personal salvation. The
Old was revolutionary because it put fresh emphasis on the individual, but
the New took this to its logical extreme by saying that individuals could
not only change the world, but had a duty to do so. Its challenge to transform
the world in God's image, using Jesus as the example, made it a
manual for active love. Again, a love that heals and creates—like
progress—is something totally taken for granted now. But as Andrew
Welburn put it in The Beginnings of Christianity: "Love is the revelation
of God to the individualised, self-conscious man, just as power and wise
order were the revelation of God to ancient, pre-self-conscious humanity."
The Bible's theme of the power of love marked a new era of
humankind. On his way to Damascus to help suppress the Christians,
Saul of Tarsus (who later became St. Paul) was "blinded by the light."
This wonderful story of personal transformation illustrated the strange
new idea that love could be stronger than position or power.
Faith
The collections of deities that preceded the Judaic concept of one god
were mostly reflections of human desire. If you didn't get what you
wanted, it was obvious that the gods were displeased with you. Moses'
God was more complicated, requiring the worshipper to have faith in
order to fashion His ends and demonstrate omnipotence. The Judaic
and Christian God became one not simply of creation and destruction,
but of co-creation.
Look at the story of Abraham: Told by God to go to a mountain to
make a sacrifice, he does so but realizes that the sacrifice will be hisonly son. Amazingly, he is willing to go through with it. At the last
minute God has him replace the boy with a ram caught in a nearby
bush. Abraham's success at this incredible test of faith is rewarded by
generations of his descendants living in prosperity.
Yet this was not simply a test of allegiance to God, and not just
about Abraham. Humanity itself had passed a test: we could choose no
longer to be animals quivering with fear, tied to the physical world, but
could reflect God in becoming beings with calm faith.
The Bible and individuality
Other religions and philosophies had seen the world either as an illusion
or a drama in which we played a role, but Christianity, by making
the individual the unit through which the world would develop and fulfill
its potential, made history important—it became the story of
humankind's efforts to create heaven on earth.
Above all, Christianity freed believers from having to accept their lot
in life. It was profoundly egalitarian: Human beings were no longer captive
to other humans, nor to capricious gods, the "fates," or the "stars."
This emphasis gave people the groundbreaking idea that they could no
longer be defined by factors such as class, ethnicity, or lack of money.
The revolutionary opportunity of the Bible, particularly the New Testament,
was to see and understand the "incommunicable singularity of
being which all possess" (Teilhard de Chardin). While the broader vision
of the Bible is the creation of a community of humankind, it can only be
one in which each person has the opportunity to express this singularity
to the full. Whatever you think of him, this belief is what fired Pope
John Paul to be so strongly anti-communist—that was a system that was
willing to sacrifice a person's uniqueness to some larger community.
Final comments
The Bible deserves to be seen with new eyes. We no longer have to see it
as being about original sin and sacrifice, or as spawning a heavy church
hierarchy and holy wars. We should be reminded of its simpler messages
of compassion and fulfillment and refinement of ourselves, a morality
requiring no imposition on others. Though fascinating as a historical
book with great stories, we should do the Bible justice by remembering
that it was the original manual for personal transformation.