How Can Your Bible Save You from Hell?

How many christian people in entire world adore their bible more than Jesus Christ? There are even some rules to revere The Holy Bible made by current churches. For example, when your Holy Bible fall accidentally, you must clean it and kiss it three times. It sounds irrational, right? But it truely happens in a few churches. On the other hand, there were times when christians burned all their Holy Bible to declare their pure faith of God only. Is it a right thing to do?

The Canonisation of Christian’s Holy Bible

Christian Bible is composed by Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and New Testament. Let’s use terminology of “Hebrew Bible” instead of “Old Testament” here to respect Jews. The arranging process of both of them is separated by very long time distance. However, Hebrew Bible is related to New Testament. For Christians, New Testament writes about the fulfillment of the redemption promised by God, which had been prophesied in Hebrew Bible.

Hebrew Bible is canonized by Jews themselves. They began to tell their religious stories from one to another orally. It is called oral tradition. Then, they started to write their stories so that their next generation could keep it. After that, their writings were separated because of wars and exile. At the end of that period, they collected the lost scrolls and writings about the works of God and they made them their Bible. The scrolls and writings they collected were not intact, of course. They were damaged by the weather and ages. Some of them were lost or burnt.

The collected writings is called “Codex” and it is used by translator to translate Hebrew Bible into their languages. Hebrew Bible firstly translated to Greek, called “Septuaginta”. There are also apocrypha and pseudepigrapha beside the canonized Hebrew Bible. They are the hidden texts which also wrote about Israelite and their God in history, but were not included in Hebrew Bible. Catholics made the second canonisation by putting the apocrypha into their bible and call it deuterocanonic. Meanwhile, Christians only translated the fixed Hebrew Bible.

New Testament also started with oral tradition. The story of Jesus Christ as the incarnation of God was told by one to another viva voce. About a generation after, educated Christians wrote the reflection of Christ’s life story related with their sphere situation. Christians in every different area had their own writings and most of them did not recognize the writings from other Christians in other areas. For those reason, the popes canonized New Testament. But, the canonisation of New Testament was still controversial at that time.

Holy Bible as Icon of God

Every Christian should have known that Holy Bible is not fallen down from heaven. It is made by the hands of human to keep their religious stories. The one who came from heaven to bring peace and salvation on earth is Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God. Holy Bible is just a medium that helps Christians to know about the work of God in history. It is only an icon of God. It is like a story about God's love to His creations. It makes us know about how God is, but it is not God.

So, how can your bible save you from hell? You are saved by your faith of God, not your bible. It will only help you to establish your faith of God. Abraham is blessed because of his faith. So were Isaiah and the ohter prophets. When they were alive, Holy Bible had not been composed. They were saved by their faith.

Appreciation of Holy Bible

After we know that we should have faith of God instead of adoring Holy Bible, our respect on Holy Bible is usually decreased. Should we still respect it, then? Or it is fine if we let it be broken and do not keep it properly? In my opinion, we do not have any necessity to burn or break our Holy Bible. What do we get if we break our Holy Bible? It is only a waste of money. It is better for us to keep it and use it as it’s function. You may burn your bible after you can memorize every single word in it.

Daily Bible Verse

Christians are usually told to read daily bible verse, at least one verse a day. Not only read it, but we are also asked to make contemplations about those daily bible verse. It is fine as long as the verse we read do not contradict to another verse. But if we read the daily bible verse everyday, we will meet more possibilities to find that kind of case. Today we might be told to love our family. But tomorrow we might be told to leave our family to follow God.

Holy Bible has so many stories from different ages and places. Those stories make Holy Bible rich, but complicated. One verse can contradict the other. For instance, we know that God punished Israel because they were unfaithful to The Torah. On the other hand, Paul taught Christians that they were saved by their faith of God, instead of The Torah, like Abraham. So, which one is the truth?

Our Holy Bible tells about the journeys of faith. We can see the faith progression of God believers from Old Testament to New Testament. Those people used to do wars and crimes and they thought God was with them. But after facing their experiences, they slowly realized that God wanted them to do love. So we cannot just take one verse of Holy Bible, read it word by word, and make contemplation of it. It can cause misunderstanding and doubts.

Then, does it mean we cannot read daily bible verse? Or does the daily bible verse should have been left behind? Daily bible verse can give right understanding if we also read the context of the verse. If we know the situation, when and where did that verse was made, we may know the aim of the verse. So, we may know why and for what reason has that verse been made. Then, we can understand about the explanation of that daily bible verse. Eventually, we can make good contemplation of that verse without facing contradiction with the other verse.

We do not have to read whole Holy Bible if we just want to know about the context of our daily bible verse. There are so many books of daily bible verse which give explanation about the context of the daily verse. We just need to read the chapter of the daily bible verse, at least. For several situation, we need to be critical so that we can truly understand about what God want us to do exactly in our daily life.