Why I Believe the Bible Is the Word of God: It Tells the Truth about Us

Returning to my series presenting "Reasons to Believe the Bible", I find that what it says about us provides compellingly precise insight that suggests a Mind which knows the subject intimately and infallibly; that is to say, the Mind of God.

The Bible is compelling because of how nuanced to perfection its presentation of human nature is. Contrary to those who teach on the one hand that humans are no more than highly evolved primates, and on the other that they are “basically good, tabula rasa innocents”, the Bible describes humanity’s unique dignity (as image-bearers of God, Genesis 1:26, 27) and inherited depravity (Genesis 6:5; Jeremiah 17:9; Psalm 51:3-5) with nuanced balance and unapologetic honesty.

Philisophical materialists, evolutionists, and others of similar mind, would say to us that Man is animal, and no more; a random collection of chemical actions and reactions accidentally borne along by an endless, meaningless stream of randomness. As such he is essentially nothing other than matter, devoid of any true value, or unique dignity.

The Bible says otherwise by telling us from the outset that we are "made in the image of God", and as such are possessive of great dignity, yes, even glory and honor (Psalm 8:4-8). In his intellectual, moral, spiritual, relational, aesthetic, and dominion gifts, Man stands alone in glory and honor over the natural world. What the natural order tells us, the Bible first declared!

But alongside this heralded dignity of man the Bible presents a mourned depravity of Man. Man, though gloriously gifted, is also ingloriously depraved. He's a fiend, a cruel tyrant, a selfish taker, a gutless compromiser, a lazy fool. Someone has quipped that the Bible doctrine of man's depravity is the most easily proven doctrine in the entire Bible. All one has to do to prove it is to read the news, study history, watch a child's natural instincts to be selfish and mean, or simply look into a morality mirror.

Someone else has said that the naive notions of man's enlightenment, and grand nobility, once popular in the late 1800's, ran shipwreck in the 1,900's against the jagged rocks of the atrocities of Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia, the segregated south, and endless news of wars and fightings and divorces and child abuse and the rest.

This, my friends, is what the Bible has been saying all along. Man is a grand reflection of God who somehow has become a moral monster as well. All other world views err by denying one side or the other of the paradox called Man.

The Bible gets it right. Why? Because it comes from the One Who sees things deeply and as they really are. He knows us because He simply knows. And some of what He knows, He has chosen to tell us about, in a Book.

That's another reason why I believe.