The Bible is Not a Source of Role Models

There's a graphic that's been floating around the internet over the past couple months that actually served as my motivation to start this series of posts.  This is the fifth in a series of six blogs in Your Bible is Wrong, where I've been exploring varying ways that people in our cultural moment so often misread, misinterpret, and misconstrue the Scriptures.

The graphic seen to the left cleverly organizes figurines to represent different Biblical "portrayals" of marriage and the first time I saw it had the sardonic caption, "Why can't we just go back to traditional marriages like in the Bible?" as it seeks to make a point about same-sex marriage.

I get it.

But, to me, even more so, the graphic reveals an interesting misconception that I think I spent most of my life believing: The Bible is a book full of role models and examples to follow.  A belief the the actions of Biblical character are prescriptive to the followers of God.

This is blatantly false.

The Bible is not a book of role models.

The Bible is a book of utter, catastrophic failures and a God who somehow, for some crazy reason loves them, uses them for purposes greater than themselves, and redeems them.  The Bible is about a God who is recklessly in love with a humanity who is recklessly depraved and disobedient.  It's a story of grace.

Let's name some Bible "heroes" and see how this plays out.

Jacob: His name is a Hebrew figure of speech for "he deceives" so that's too easy.

Moses: Murderer.

Samson: Best thing he ever did was die.

David: Adulterer and Murderer

Jonah: Lazy, disobedient bigot.

Peter: Racist and impulsive.

James and John: Try to manipulate Jesus into better seats in Heaven.

Paul: Chief Persecutor of the Church.

These are the pillars of faith.  But when we read the Bible, we certainly are not to take their example as our blueprint for right living.  And I can't make this point enough, this is because, right living is not the point!  No one does it.  No one ever has.  No one ever will.

In fact, I would argue that these Biblical characters flaws and failures are actually a divinely ordained example for us.  Not an example of what we should do, but rather an example of the type of God we can know and live for.

He is a God of grace.  He does not give us what we deserve, but rather he chooses to take messed up, broken sinners and use them for His greater purposes.

He takes an adulterer and murderer and gives him the title "Man After My Own Heart", he takes a murder and talks to him "as a man speaks with his friend", he takes the primary opponent of Christianity and lovingly turns him into the primary proponent of Christianity.

He's a God of grace, not of works.  If he was a God of works, he would never use these screw-ups.  If he was a God of works, He'd focus on the top of the moral class, the clean cut, and the virtuous.  But, because he's a God of grace and redemption, he goes after those who need him the most and who know it.

Those are the types he loves to work in and through.

The Bible is not a book about man.  It is not a book about morals.  It is a book about God.

And God wants you to know him. He wants you to know that, you're not "too far gone" for Him.  He wants you to know that nothing you do could cause him to love you less.  And he wants to prove that by using people who were unlovable and too far gone for his greater purposes.

The more I look at myself the more I see how I'm like Jonah or John, but the more I look at God, the more I know he's in the business of using restoring, redeeming, and rescuing Jonahs and Johns.

"When Satan tells me that I am a sinner, he comforts me immeasurably, since Christ died for sinners." -Luther

The Bible is not a book of role models, whose example we are to follow.  It is a book about God, who loves and redeems screw-ups.