The key to reading the Bible, though, is to understand that all of those authors and books—all 1,189 chapters of them—are actually working together to tell one overarching, mind-blowing story about God’s action to save human beings from their high-handed rebellion against him, and from the effects and consequences of that rebellion. And the thing is, the story of how he did that is quite literally epic in its scope and its sweep. 

A trek. That’s what it is when you decide to read the entire Bible. After all, it’s sixty-six different books with thirty-some different authors, written over the course of a millennium and a half. And it’s long—almost 1,200 chapters and three-quarters of a million words, meaning that if you decided to read the entire thing aloud, all at once, it would take you just under three days to do it—about seventy hours and forty minutes if you’re an average-speed reader. Moreover, the Bible contains many different kinds of literature. There’s poetry and narrative, lists and genealogies, biographies and law codes and prophecies and sermons and open letters and personal letters and even something called “apocalyptic.” It’s no wonder so many people feel bewildered when they open up the Bible and attempt to read it. Actually, most people do pretty well through Genesis and the first part of Exodus. But once Exodus starts launching into Old Testament Law and doesn’t really come up for air for a book and a half, that’s when many people start thinking, “Wow, life’s gotten busy! Maybe I’ll give this another try next week . . . or month . . . or year.”
I think the key to reading the Bible, though, is to understand that all of those authors and books—all 1,189 chapters of them—are actually working together to tell one overarching, mind-blowing story about God’s action to save human beings from their high-handed rebellion against him, and from the effects and consequences of that rebellion. And the thing is, the story of how he did that is quite literally epic in its scope and its sweep. Wars between angels rage in the spiritual realm, while on earth kingdoms rise and fall, empires clash, cities are built and destroyed, priests perform sacrifices, and prophets point their bony fingers to the future. And in the end, a great throne is toppled and a great crown falls to the ground, only to be given finally to one thirty-year-old man—a subjugated peasant from a conquered nation—whom God enthrones over the entire world as the one who alone can and does offer mercy to rebels. If there’s ever been an epic story told in the history of mankind, this one is it!

Maybe you’ve read epic stories before, stories so sweeping in their enormity, in the comprehensiveness of the world they build, that you feel not so much like you’re reading the story from the outside as that you are actually a part of it. And when it comes to an end, when you get to the last chapter, you hesitate to read it because you know you’re about to have to leave this world you’ve been so immersed in.

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Slavery was never black and white, involving only Whites enslaving Blacks. It was multiracial just as most evils existent today are multiracial. It’s time to correct America’s history. It’s also time to cease promoting racial division based on the falsehood of America’s “original sin” and its selective omission of facts about all the oppressors and practitioners. If we fail to correct how we teach history, we will reap untold and potentially horrific consequences. 

We’re experiencing an increasing racial divide when there should be a remarkable decrease. What is the basis for this historical anomaly, given that American has no more prejudicial race-based laws? No race currently faces legal obstacles to equal justice and opportunity. The most likely culprit for the divide is the simplistic, inaccurate approach to American history in our schools.
When people try to explain the racial divide, they offer many reasons: Critical Race Theory, which divides everyone into oppressed/oppressor categories; the Black Lives Matter movement; politicians pandering to receive ethnic-based votes; or the emphasis on police actions involving race. Something deeper is involved.
Americans are taught that slavery is America’s original sin.” Wrong. Slavery was not America’s “original sin.” It existed before any White or Black person arrived. Native Americans practiced it before they ever came along—but even then, it wasn’t their “original sin.” Slavery is humankind’s sin.
In elementary and secondary schools, slavery is now and has long been taught very simply: American slave owners were White and slaves Black—period. Students learn slaves were shipped from Africa, without any focus on who caught them, enslaved them, or sold them to Europeans to be shipped to Europe or the Americas.
Only after school ends do some learn the whole story. I broadened my knowledge by reading “Unspoken Reality: Black Slaveholders Prior to the Civil War,” co-written by Yulia Tikhomirova and Lucia Desir at Mercy College. Tikhomirova is Russian and Desir is Black. They draw upon and include information from Black historians and scholars (e.g., John Hope Franklin, Larry Koger, and Carter G. Woodson, et al.). The truth is Blacks were also slaveholders.
American slavery begins in Africa. Black Africans, chieftains, and Arabs were the main participants and oppressors of the enslaved. They captured, kidnapped, enslaved, and sold millions of Black Africans into slavery. Millions were sent to Europe and the Americas and millions more to the Middle East and North Africa.
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Fortunately for us, Satan lacks self-control. He can’t keep anything within reasonable proportion. He can’t be content with transing just some of the kids. He must trans all of them. He must destroy every human body on the way to devouring every precious soul. And so, eventually, all the confused speech becomes such a deafening cacophony of lies, that all the “surgical racism,” whatever that is, will be seen for what it is—total and complete evil.

“I hate this book,” said my child, removing an earbud.
“What book?” I asked.
“The Screwtape Letters,” he replied.
“Oh yeah,” said another child. “That’s the worst. Get out of my head, Dr. Lewis. You Don’t Know Me.”
Except he does though.
I wanted something light and fluffy for today, since I have so much to do and so little time to do it. But then a dear friend sent me this long rant by Andrew Sullivan, who afflicted himself by reading Judith Butler’s latest book which he describes as “decipherable” but “inelegant.” He takes this new readability as a hopeful sign, that the tide of gender confusion and insanity is perhaps turning. Butler, and that extraordinarily wicked person, Andrea Long Chu who made a case for the transing of children in New York Magazine, are not relying “on the media, the government, and the courts to impose their ideas by fiat” but are taking their arguments to the general public. This must represent some measure of desperation. The release of those WPATH files combined with the airtime de-transitioners are getting in places like the New York Times indicates that there is plenty of work to do to convince both lofty academic and humble normie to persist in doing “the work.”
I am not entirely persuaded about the hopefulness of this shift, but I was delighted to hear what is happening, in general, to the entire “community” that persistently attempts to find their essential identity in anything related to sex. In the words of Sullivan:
That’s why the Trevor Project, the massively-funded TQ+ organization, now tells troubled young gay kids that a gay man is defined as someone who has sex with biological women as well as with men. A gay man is not attracted to the same “sex” but to the same “gender” and that now includes biological women. Trevor has abolished homosexuality! It’s why woker-than-woke Grindr, formerly an app for gay men, is now full of straight dudes with profiles that say “NOT INTERESTED IN MEN just don’t bother,” “I don’t like men,” “Str8 4T”, “do not message me if you’re cis or a man,” “Fems and Them No Men,” “No gay men u will be blocked,” and “Im straight not gay.” Just another part of the straight “queer” community.
In the postmodern world where we invent reality hour by hour, depending on how we feel, being gay now includes heterosexual sex — and by far the biggest group in the “LGBTQIA+” umbrella are bisexual women in relationships with straight men. At some point, gay men will wake up and realize that they have abolished their own identity — indeed merged it into its opposite. But they have another tea dance to get to and another Instagram vacation pic to post. Most are pathetically uninformed, or programmed by tribal insecurity to follow the queering herd.
All my children, not just the two aforementioned, are binging on Lewis right now. If I made up a drinking game for every time I heard “C.S. Lewis” or “Tolkien says,” around here I would have to be locked away. Instead, I’m just folding laundry and eating cheese, and listening to them argue. No matter what I’m reading or thinking about, eventually, I’m going to end up back in Narnia or St. Anne’s. 
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