An 'R' Rated Book

I'm reading through a book this year that most people never really read. It could be rated 'R' for 'raw', or 'real.' Many people own a copy, but I think it probably sits unread in most homes. It's a fascinating book. It tells stories about people that really good imaginative novels can barely deal with. Here are some examples:

• A man and woman standing in nakedness and shame, blaming each other for what they did wrong.
• An angry and envious man, lures his brother into a field, brutally murders him, and then tries to cover it up.
• The world becomes so corrupt and violent that God decides to virtually wipe out the human population and start over.
• Noah gets drunk, and one of his son dishonors him by committing an immoral act in his father’s bedroom.
• Abraham twice tries to pass his wife off to another man to save his own skin. Later, his son Isaac does the same thing.
• Abraham sleeps with one of the household servants so he can have an heir. This was his wife’s idea, but she becomes so jealous after it happens, that she angrily throws the woman and her son out of house to live in poverty and shame.
• Lot offers to let a violent mob gang rape his daughters. Lot’s daughters later get their own father drunk and sleep with him so that they can have children.
• Jacob, Isaac’s son, is a deceitful mama’s boy who tricks his father and brother out of important family legal rights. He has to run away from home so his brother won’t kill him. He goes to work for his ruthless uncle, who keeps him in virtual slavery for decades.
• Jacob escapes by tricking him and running away. Jacob’s wives live in constant jealousy and competition, continually tricking Jacob and each other in an ongoing battle for supremacy in the family.
• Jacob’s sons loathe one of their brothers, sell him into slavery, then lie to their father and tell him he died.
• Jacob’s daughter Leah is raped. Her brothers exact revenge by deceiving and then murdering the perpetrator, destroying and looting his city, and taking all his family members captive.
• Judah refuses to find a husband for his widowed daughter-in-law, Tamar. So she disguises herself as a prostitute, tricks her father-in-law into sleeping with her, and becomes pregnant.

The Internet Monk has an excellent post about this book (here). You should read it, it might awaken an interest in really reading the Bible.

A.W. Towzer had this to say about these kinds of things, "Our woes began when God was forced out of His central shrine and `things' were allowed to enter. Within the human heart `things' have taken over. Men have now by nature no peace within their hearts, for God is crowned there no longer, but there in the moral dusk stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on the throne. "

The more things change the more they stay the same. Turn on the nightly news and you hear about the same kinds of 'R' for raw happenings.

The Bible still presents us with the story of the One who can get us out of all this chaos. If only we would read it.