Not Everything Floats

James Dobson relates this story in his book, Stories of the Heart and Home. It’s entitled The Lost Marble.

 

When I was a boy, I heard a mystery program on the radio that captured my imagination. It told the story of a man who was condemned to solitary confinement in a pitch-black cell. The only thing he had to occupy his mind was a marble, which he threw repeatedly against the walls. He spent his hours listening to the marble as it bounced and rolled around the room. Then he would grope in the darkness until he found his precious toy.

 

One day, the prisoner threw his marble upward, but it failed to come down. Only silence echoed through the darkness. He was deeply disturbed by the “evaporation” of the marble and his inability to explain its disappearance. Finally, he went berserk, pulled out all his hair, and died. When the prison officials came to remove his body, a guard noticed something caught in a huge spider’s web in the upper corner of the room. That’s strange, he thought. I wonder how a marble got up there.

 

As the story of the frantic prisoner illustrates, human perception sometimes poses questions the mind is incapable of answering. But valid answers always exist. For those of us who are followers of Jesus Christ, it just makes good sense not to depend too heavily on our ability to make the pieces fit—especially when we’re trying to figure out the Almighty. 

 

I sometimes tell people who are struggling to figure out the “Why” of their life this illustration: If you were on a ship and you pushed off an anvil, it would sink to the bottom of the ocean because it would not float. However, leaving it on the ship does not sink the ship. We all have questions that we cannot answer in life, no matter how hard we try. If we refuse to be patient and trust God for the answers, it will cause us pain. But if we wait, they will not sink the ship. Sometimes, with the passing of time itself, we answer our own questions; others will be answered in heaven by God himself. The important thing is our ability to trust God. 

The Reliability of Scripture

How do we know that the Bible is reliable? How do we know that the Bible we have is anything like the Bible that was originally written for its original audiences? How much of the accuracy of the Bible has been lost in the ancient multiple copies of it that have been made? How much accuracy has been lost in the many translations that it has gone through? This is an important subject for the serious Bible Student. I recommend two good books on the subject: The New Testament Documents by F.F. Bruce and The Story of the Bible by Larry Stone.

Any ancient writing confirms its authenticity by the number of manuscripts and the accuracy and dating of those manuscripts. The Old Testament is a remarkable collection of documents preserved by the Hebrew people over thousands of years. Archaeological discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls confirm many parts of the Old Testament. These scrolls were preserved for centuries in clay pots, which were remarkably effective at preserving them.

 There are nearly 5000 manuscripts for the New Testament. The amazing thing is that many of these early manuscripts date back only a few hundred years from the original writing. The New Testament has more historical support than many other ancient historical works. For example, Caesar’s Gallic War, Tacitus’s Histories, Thucydides’ History, Herodotus’s History, Plato, and Aristotle, to mention a few, have only a few manuscripts. And these manuscripts were written much later. Rarely do people question the authenticity of these historical works or the classics. At the same time, there are few documents to attest to their authenticity, unlike the Bible, Sir Frederic writes in F.F. Bruce’s book mentioned above: 

The interval then between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.

 How were the sixty-six books placed in the Bible? We owe the first division, the Old Testament to the Jewish People. However, the second division, the New Testament, was chosen or canonized by two church councils, Hippo Regius in 393 and Carthage in 397 AD. However, these books were confirmed by these councils as those that the churches had accepted. They were books that proved superior in their writing, their quality, and acceptance for many years. Truly, it was the work of the Holy Spirit putting the New Testament in its present form.