Have you ever heard someone talk about a “story” in the Bible and, because they personally have a hard time accepting it as fact, they brush it off as an anecdote made up just to teach a particular lesson? They say something like, it’s okay that it’s not true and everyone knows it couldn’t really have happened like it says. One story that comes to mind is the story of Jonah, but I can think of others.
Now I know that living in the world today can make some stories in the Bible a little hard to believe. Fiction writing today is so true to life; and TV and movies have shown us that anything you can imagine in your mind can be recreated–even things that could never possibly happen in the real world. We’ve been conditioned to believe that just because we’ve seen it with our own eyes is no guarantee that it’s real. And the truth is, some people’s hearts have just become so hardened that they don’t appreciate what God is capable of doing.
And then I got to asking myself: What if the story of Jonah is simply a story made up to teach an important lesson? Would it matter? It’s still a good story. It impacted my life as I’m sure it has the lives of many people. Whether the story is true or not, I can definitely relate to Jonah; after all, I learned about obedience from his story. Even if it was just created for the purpose of teaching, people do learn from it.
So does it matter? Well, let’s see.
I remember story about a farmer who raised watermelons and had a problem with some of the local boys who would come by at night to steal a watermelon or two. The farmer, not wanting to lose his inventory but also not wanting to stay up all night guarding his field came up with what he thought was a pretty clever idea.
He put a sign in the field that said, “One of the watermelons is poisoned.” By doing this, the farmer thought, the boys wouldn’t know which watermelon was tainted and he figured they would leave all the watermelons alone. Problem solved. Or so he thought.
The next morning when the farmer awoke he walked to his field feeling proud of himself for his ingenuity and confident that the remaining watermelons would now be 100% safe for the market. But when he checked his field he found another sign left by the boys. This sign, a little smaller than his sign but equally as powerful, said simply, “Now there are two.”
Two watermelons are now poisoned. But, which one did the boys ruin?
If we accept that one or two stories in the bible could be just fictional stories, which ones are they? And, if there are one or two, could there be three? Or four? And, if one of the stories that’s just a story is Jonah, what about Sampson? Or the parting of the Red Sea?
Or the resurrection?
Don’t be deceived. The Bible is God’s Word (2 Timothy 3:16) written down for us; it is true from Genesis to Revelation. Only Satan has an interest in turning it into just another book of cute stories.
Thom Fishow
July 18, 2010
David Williams