In which I find a good self help book.

To begin with, a warning; this particular one will be quite explicit. Lock the doors and make sure the children aren’t reading. Is the coast clear? Marvellous, let’s begin.

I was in someone’s house recently, and in a dull moment I wandered over to the bookshelf. Bookshelves are normally so eclectic and unique that they reveal a great deal about a person. It was your average collection: motor maintenance manuals, reader’s digest collections, a couple of favourite children’s classics, and - high on the top shelf - the inevitable Bible. It was small, leather bound, and obviously untouched. I dragged it from its final resting place, and enjoyed the filmic experience of blowing the dust off. (Very satisfying - a proper cloud of the stuff that got in my eyes and caught in my throat.) Opening the front cover, my suspicions were proved. It was a presentation Bible - handed out fifty years ago in some primary school and unopened since. I suppose some childhood nostalgia must have convinced them to hang onto it.

The sad thing is, I feel that that is the place the Bible has in most people’s hearts and minds. It’s a nice looking book, full of good moral stories for children but not really to be fretted over. Nothing for intelligent, logical adults. People who actually try to live their lives by it? Well let’s just say, if the straightjacket fits…

Which brings me on to my main point. In this extract, God uses a metaphor to describe the nation of Israel, who he freed from slavery. He likens the nation to a prostitute:

“Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled.”

That’s hardly the happy animals going in two by two in your children’s Bible, is it? The real Bible is far more cutting and direct than a lot of Christians dare to be today. Bear in mind the background here: all of Israel are enslaved in Egypt. Their lives are degrading and cruel and disgusting. So God frees them. You are no doubt familiar with the story of their escape through the red sea. That’s the story - choose to believe it or not. So you would think they’d be quite grateful, wouldn’t you? What with the miraculous rescue and all. Yet they want to go back? Yes! Unbelievably, they do, and we are left in no doubt as to that. Life living under God’s law is too hard. They want the easy route.

It’s all in there! That book is drippingly rich with relevant and challenging comments about how we really are. There is no holding back. It will tell you exactly where you slip up and leave you with no excuse - if you let it. There is a deep knowledge of joy there too. Not just a kind of thin happiness of flowers and sunshine, but of one who knows what it is for everything to be utterly perfect. I become more convinced daily that the Bible explores human nature in such a pithy and cutting way because the one who wrote it knows each and every stinking one of us better than we know ourselves.