The Bible is not a love letter written directly to you

"The Bible is God's Love Letter written just for me!"

Seriously, guys. Stop saying that. Stop thinking it. Stop pinning things about it.

Because when you say stuff like that, the internet produce scary pictures like this one.

I blame you for this image. 

Traumatizing images aside, stop saying it because it makes you look like you haven't actually read the Bible.

Because if the Bible was actually was God's love letter written to me personally, I might think that somebody needs to explain to God what exactly love letters are supposed to look like...

Because this "love letter" has genocide in it. Floods. Destruction. And a whole bunch of gore, blood and death. (Don't believe me, flip open to the book of Judges...seriously, that book is crazy town)

And that's just the violent stuff. This love letter also has page after page of rules, genealogies, measurements, clothing patterns, debates about food laws, and the like.

Nothing says love like all that, right?

Even Jesus, the hero of our story, gets a bit snarky at times. Seriously, read what he actually says in there sometimes. Sometimes its all love and all inspiring, but sometimes he talks about cutting off your hands and throwing them into fire or throwing mill stones around people necks.

Oh and then there's Paul and all I'm going to say is that I'm pretty sure he would roll over in his grave if someone called him a romance author.

When you try to make the Bible become a love story written just for you, you are not getting the whole story of who God is and what the Bible can do. You end up ignoring its complexity, the multiplicity of its voices. You lose out on the stories, the tragedies, the victories.

You lose out on the anger. You lose out on the despair. Which makes the hope you find its pages lose some of its strength.

And no, I'm not saying that God's love isn't in the Bible. No, with every ounce of me I believe that Bible contains the words that lead to Life. God is love, friends and by reading its pages, I hope you begin to realize that God loves you and your neighbor and your enemy and all of creation.  And there are days when I know that the Spirit will use 3,000 year old words to speak directly to the deepest places of your heart.

But that doesn't mean the sole purpose of the Bible is to be love letter written by God directly to you.

It's a collection of stories and letters that span centuries, written for different reasons in different places. Different voices shouting through history to teach us a little bit more about who God is and about who we are and who we could be.

Barbara Brown Taylor describes the Bible like this:

[Because of the Bible] I am not an orphan. I have a community, a history, a future, a God. The Bible is my birth certificate and my family tree, but it is more: it is the living vein that connects me to my Maker, pumping me the stories I need to know about who we have been to one another from the beginning of time, and who we are now, and who we shall be when time is no more.” -   from This Preaching Life 

So call it your birth certificate. Call it your family tree. Call it your connection to the past and to the future.

Call it crazy and lovely and scary and life-giving and encouraging and difficult.

But please, stop calling it a love letter.

It is so much more.