Friday, November 11, 2011

Boring Bible?

Have you ever wondered why parts of the Bible are boring?  Like this text?  [1 Kings 15:33-16:7]  They're boring because they are the records of sinful men who simply repeat the sins and evil of those before them.  Sin is never creative but merely imitative and repetitious.  Maybe you can sin with a flair but you can't sin with freshness.  You can only ape what's already been done.  Goodness has an originality inherent in it which evil hasn't got.  Evil can distort and ruin and corrupt and do re-runs, but it can't be original, nor even scintillating.  Evil carries a built-in yawn.  'And he walked in the way of Jeroboam and in his sin' (v.34a).  What tedious stuff!  If the Bible is boring, blame Baasha.  It's his fault.

Dale Ralph Davis in The Wisdom and the Folly: an exposition of the Book of First Kings, page 181

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