I was walking down the street with a friend and her parents and they discussed the supermarket Aldi and their wares, but the strange part was that they pronounced it “ALL Dee”. As an Australian I have always pronounced it Aldi as “Al” in Al from Home Improvement. Almost “owl”. And we began the age old discussion of who was right, who was wrong and who was the authority on the whole thing as one of the groups participants had actually worked there for awhile.

This is a supermarket, currently open and working as a stable provider of goods and services for our lives.

The bible on the other hand was written in a completely different language, to different people, in different countries, thousands of years ago.

It has been a funny thing for me of late, to hear people argue for and against things from the bible when neither participant has even read the bible. I am not a bible scholar. I have no funky title or letters after my name. But I have made an effort to read the bible at least twice all the way through ever year for the last four. Its come to my attention that it is an incredible book, filled with many life changing principles. Its sometimes hard to read. It sometimes makes no sense, or needs a bit of back story or back thought to think more like the original cultures… which, is an interesting concept.

The only reason I pronounce Aldi as such is because thats what I heard. So even so, how different is our take on biblical truths just because we heard them first?

I believe the truths in the bible are so much more universal then purely ‘only scholars can understand this book’ But I also believe that some others can use words to mean whatever they want, so strangely enough, a book that has the capacity to guide the world into love and selfless sacrifice, it has also seemingly led the world into oppression, destruction and racism.

Does that mean we throw the baby out with the bath water?

Do we throw bread knives out of our kitchen just because they could technically be used to kill someone? Do we stop driving cars just because some people got run over? Do we stop educating our children because educated people sometimes front mass genocides? No.

We shouldn’t give up on the bible or even ultimately God just because evil exists. Evil exists both as an outside force vying to destroy life and love, but also as a fruit of humanities choices.

I believe the existence of many cancers are a conclusion of mankinds mismanagement of the environment. But I also believe that a lot of diseases on the planet currently are because of an evil force that seeks to distract us from the love of God, or tempt us into blaming God for all the hurt and wrong in the world. And yes… we could do that if we wanted. But IF God is the best comfort, the best healer, the best manager of the environment, why wouldn’t we run to him instead of pointing fingers and distancing ourselves from him?

God exists and he is great. Or God doesn’t exist and we are alone. No where in any of Gods literature, or his behaviours is the tendency for being anything other then loving and ultimately FOR humanity.

God is GOOD. God is LOVE and when seen through those lenses, God even makes tons of sense. But when we look through lenses of offense or pride, even the cutest of kittens will look like a blood sucking leech.

Make Gods love tangible in your life. Makes everything else…. more comfy.