Where Did The Bible Come From and Why Should We Care: Tim Mackie (Transcript)

Full text of Tim Mackie’s lecture titled ‘Where Did The Bible Come From and Why Should We Care?’

Listen to the MP3 Audio here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Tim Mackie – Chief Education Officer @ BibleProject

It’s really good to be here, you guys. I’ve had so many friends who are a part of the Jesus Church family or Westside here for a lot of years. This is my first time being to one of your gatherings and being out here, so it’s a privilege to do that.

Cheers. Yeah, it’s great. It’s great to be here.

All right. I already feel like everything I’m going to say is inadequate right now for a number of reasons, and Ian mentioned it. This is a huge, huge set of questions around: what is the Bible, where did it come from, what is it, and why on earth should we view it as some source of authority or guidance in our lives?

I mean, if you’ve grown up with that idea of the Bible, it doesn’t seem strange to you. If you became a follower of Jesus later in life, or if you have friends who don’t follow Jesus, which I hope you do because they will help you get a reality check on how crazy it is that you believe all of this, you know what I’m saying?

It’s really quite odd, really, in the culture in which we live to view an ancient book as a source of real guidance and authority in our lives. It’s odd. It’s certainly to your neighbors.

And so if maybe this isn’t your set of questions or whatever, there are other ones in the series, but I guarantee you that people that you love and care about, this is a big question for them. So even if it’s not your question, you need to care about this question because almost everybody’s asking it, even if you aren’t yet with the program, basically. I started asking the question.

TIM MACKIE’S STORY

So I need to kind of tell my own story of why this is a big deal to me and it’s been a big deal over the years. I became a follower of Jesus when I was almost 20 through a ministry called Skate Church. It’s an outreach ministry to skateboarders over in East Portland. You guys heard about Skate Church before? It’s outstanding, outstanding ministry.

So I started going at 16 because it’s a dry place to skateboard in the winter, especially. And you know, you got to sit through the Jesus talk, you know, and sit at the back or whatever. But over the years, the friendships and this presentation of Jesus became just unavoidable to me, just who Jesus was.

And for me, really, it was that I got to this point where Jesus was so compelling and so amazing and so beautiful and I just started to read the stories about Him and I’m just like this, holy cow. And stuff going on in my life and I was like, I’m going to give my life to Jesus. And so I did that when I was 20.

And so I got involved in that ministry to skateboarders and whatever was with it for a lot of years. And as I got to know Jesus more, I’m reading about Him and Jesus cares a lot about the Bible. Like He talks about it constantly. It seems like He had it memorized — His Bible, which was what we call the Old Testament.

And He was constantly alluding to it, quoting from it, talking where I’m okay, I’m a follower of Jesus. I need to not only really immerse myself in these stories about Jesus, I need to get familiar with this whole thing.