The First Tools in your Toolbox - Part 2

Why we still use the Bible to learn about the world in the 21st Century

Read or Listen: Galatians 1&2

Starting at a new school, or moving to a new town can all be disorienting experiences, but it’s especially tricky when you come in halfway through the year. When you enter the workplace, you find it’s always like that. There is no start to the school year or class orientation. You might meet a dozen new people, remember half their names, and even less of what they do. As you settle in, you should start to figure out who is important, who can help you, and who to avoid. 

Reading the first two chapters of this letter might be a similar experience. Who is talking? Who are they writing to? What are the events and controversies that are being discussed? Most importantly, why does this matter to me? 

This is all part of getting used to using our new tool, the Bible. The Bible is a book, but it’s not like most other books. You can read it like a book, straight through from start to finish, but there are some parts that will make it really tempting to quit if you don’t know what’s going on.

We’ll go back and start from the beginning soon enough, but for now, imagine you are watching an action movie. The opening scene is always something tense - a car dangling half-way off a broken bridge, a hero tied up in a dark basement. Only after meeting the main character do you go back to the start. You are thrown in the thick of things, and it takes a while to sort things out.

This is the way we are starting our approach to the Bible. The first thing is the resurrection - and the people who really believed it. This is a letter to real people in a real place, Galatia, who had some confusion about what they were supposed to do. Paul, who started their church, is telling them about how he went and met with the other guys in charge, and they were all on the same page.