I enjoy puzzling. You know, sitting down and putting together a jigsaw puzzle. My sister and I have been known to complete an 1000 piece puzzle in two days. Some puzzles are easier than others, of course, with clear edges and easy to recognize shapes. Others are more difficult, with lots of sky, trees, grass and water, where many of the pieces look alike and it’s hard to distinguish between them.

Having a picture to look at though when puzzling is essential. When I’m really struggling to fit a piece, I scour the picture provided, looking at every little detail until I find exactly where the piece fits. Can you imagine trying to put a 500 or 1000 piece puzzle together without a picture to refer to. It may be doable, but it is certainly more difficult.

And if you wanted to, you could disregard the picture altogether and try to make the puzzle pieces fit together in whatever way seems best to you. Doing that might lead to a completely different picture than the one intended and you’d likely have lots of leftover pieces that don’t fit anywhere. For a puzzle to be considered properly done, every piece must be placed and fit properly and match the example picture.

I think of the Bible the same way I think about a 1000 or more piece puzzle. The different ideas presented in the Bible and verses are like the many pieces. In order for an individual piece to make sense it has to fit with all of the other pieces. And together they all must fit together to match the overarching picture. People can try to put some pieces together and say that those pieces show a particular concept, but if all the pieces don’t fit or it doesn’t match the bigger picture then it very well could be wrong.

Some people would call this big picture a worldview. Christians who say things like a biblical worldview think it’s very clear cut, and think all Christians have the same big picture. But with between 180 and 47,000 protestant denominations out there (depending on how you count them) not everyone sees it the same way. 

Without a big picture or having a skewed big picture of God and what the Bible is all about, it’s easy for the individual puzzle pieces to be used in a way to say something completely different than intended. Those concepts can then be used to inflict wounds and damage individuals. Before we can address wounds caused by these toxic religious concepts, we have to determine the big picture we’re using to put this puzzle together. 

Following are a compilation of the theological and biblical big picture ideas that I follow.

Father-Son Theology. The Christian author, Harold Eberle, claims that we should see God as a good father and ourselves as his children. With that view informing our big picture every piece should reflect God as a father and that He is love and loves us (1 John 4:16).

God is like Jesus. Reading through the old testament may give us a picture of God as very angry. But Jesus claims that knowing him is the same as knowing God the Father (John 14:7, Hebrews 1:3). So if we examine Jesus’ character, we will see the clearest picture of God.

The Sermon on the Mount is more important than the ten commandments. Jesus said that all the commandments could be summed up in two. First love God, second love others like you love yourself (Matthew 22:37-39). The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) is a good description of the type of Christian character we should aspire to live up to.

Being Christian means following the example of Jesus. Literally. That’s actually what it is supposed to mean. Before Jesus the righteous were expected to follow the mosaic law, but Jesus came to “fulfill the law” (Matthew 5:17) and the new covenant is far superior to the covenant of the mosaic law (Hebrews 8:6). Some say we must follow the Bible as the authority, but the Bible can and has been used to defend many atrocities. To be a Christian means to follow the example and character of Jesus.

New Creation. N.T. Wright (one of my favorite theologians) explains the biblical big picture as Creation, Fall, Redemption, and New Creation. The Old Testament helps us understand the story of Creation and the Fall. The New Testament explains how Jesus Redeemed the fallen story and New Creation has begun through him. 

If we can keep this big picture in mind it will help us as we are examining all of the pieces we encounter. It will also help us as we are examining the wounds that can result when a skewed big picture of God is presented and perhaps weaponized against us.