The Bible

What is it ALL About?

About a hundred years ago, there was a Jewish rabbi; his name was Abraham Hirsch. He was a well-loved and respected rabbi. When it came time for a decision to be given concerning the Bible -- which for the Jews was, and is, the Old Teatament -- Rabbi Hirsch was always the one the people sought out.

One day a sweet, little old Jewish lady came up to the good rabbi. She said, "Rabbi, I know that you are a great teacher, sent from God. My son has turned his back on the Bible. If I give you his address, will you write to him and convince him to come back to the faith of his people?" Rabbi Hirsch smiled and said, "I’ll make you no promises, but I will write to the boy."

Well, the first letter was very general: "How do you do? Your mother asked me to write to you. How do you feel about our faith, and the Bible?" -- these kinds of things. He got back a harsh letter telling him to mind his own business and that he, the boy, was sick and tired of a religion that was based upon a book that was filled with fairy tales! Give me some real hard facts, and maybe I’ll listen to you -- otherwise, leave me alone," the boy wrote back. Then the good rabbi wrote to the boy what became a series of Nineteen Letters.

In the first of the nineteen letters he told the boy that the Creation Story was really a story about our own personal, and earliest, experiences in the world . . . our BIRTH and the CRADLE. We are born in innocence, in the image and likeness of God. This first letter sparked a response of curiosity from the young man, and the next few letters went something like this: the Garden of Eden is our CHILDHOOD. It is our fanciful ecstasy. It is playful childhood. The Fall, of course, represents our ADOLESCENCE and SEXUAL AWARENESS. The ability to question and seek out an identity of our own seems to saturate this phase of our development. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, this represents to us our time of LEAVING HOME . . . a time when we have to sprout our own wings. The story of Cain and Abel is so much more than just the story of the first children of the first parents. "Can’t you see," he writes to the boy, "it is representative of our RELIGIOUS REBELLION!" This is our work-centered pride, our self-indulgence that produces greed in all of us. This is really the rebellious young man on his own.

As their correspondence began to deepen, the boy began to ask more serious questions about the Bible. He began to wonder why the Bible was never explained to him like this before. And one of his questions was about why the Bible would talk of angels coming down from heaven, marrying the daughters of men, and producing "giants upon the earth" [Gen. 6]. What could this riduculous fairy tale possibly mean? The rabbi complemented him on his intelligent questions, and then began to answer him by saying that the NEPHILIM [that is the Hebrew word for giants, which also means famous, or infamous, men] speaks to us of Man’s Humanity as it descends. He also explains that Enosh, who is mentioned in Genesis, shows us how even good religious intentions can be twisted around into something that is bad. You see, according to a Jewish legend, Enosh built a man from clay -- to show the people that only God could create life. When he blew into the clay manekin’s nostrils, Satan was hiding around the corner. Satan made the thing come to life and all people began to call upon the Name of the Lord -- that is, they called Enosh the Lord God.

He kept writing the boy. He told him about Noah, who represented the FATHER of the family who elevates himself above others by CONTROLLING and ENABLING the ANIMAL inside him. The boy was hooked. Rabbi Hirsch wrote about the Tower of Babel [which literally means, confusion] and how Man has to be scattered, that is WE HAVE TO GO THROUGH TRIALS, in order to keep us from BACKSLIDING into our own vanity. We can’t think that we are anything without God. And then Abraham appears on the stage of the biblical - drama. Abraham is our FATHER and teaches us to become FORGERS: of PURE SPIRITUAL LOVE, of COMPLETE TRUST, and of a TRUE FEAR OF GOD which produces a COMPLETE LOYALTY! In one of the final letters, the good rabbi talked to the boy about Moses, the Lawgiver to the People. Moses, of course, was the most famous, and greatest Prophet of the nation of Israel. This great man, who led the Chosen People into the Promised Land, really represents the GOY KODESH -- which is Hebrew for, a Holy Nation; HUMANITY RIGHT WITH GOD.

Well, as you might expect, the boy and the rabbi became very good friends. The boy’s mother was pleased to have her son back. And the wayward boy now had a faith that no one could shatter -- a faith that made a lot more sense than a bunch of Fairy Tales. If we can begin to see our faith as something that is being developed in us, in various stages of development, then we can begin to see the Holy Bible as God’s Word that can speak to us in each and every stage that we find our spiritual life struggling. Let us now move beyond the stories of the Bible and into the meaning behind these stories. Let us look for the Word of God for each of us that is contained within the words of God printed in our Bible. It is only when the Bible is allowed to penetrate deep down into where we live that it can change our lives as the Inspiring Word of God.

How much time does it take to read from Genesis to Revelation? If you would read the Bible at standard pulpit speed [slow enough to be heard and understood] the reading time would be seventy- one [71] hours. If you would break that down into minutes and divide it into 365 days you could read the entire Bible, cover-to-cover, over a year’s time, in only 12 minutes a day. Why not give it a try? Apply it to your life. It might help you as your attempt to construct your Interior Cathedral!

"Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not SIN against Thee!"

Psalm 119:11

for the original meditation, "What is the Kingdom of God,"

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