The Bible was not written to you! The various books of the Bible were written to the Kings/churches/people to whom they were written.

"We Westerners have a very egocentric view of life, thinking it is all about us, and we sometimes approach the Bible as if God wrote it as a “love letter” just to me, to give me guidance and instruction for my needs and my questions, and to help me get through my day.

Such a way of viewing Scripture has led to most of the abuses and misuses of Scripture throughout the history of Western Christianity. For example, when a king (in England or France or Spain in the Middle Ages) thinks the Bible was written to him, to guide and instruct him, he takes some of the commands and instructions in the Bible that God gave to other kings as things that he and his nation should be doing.

We do the same thing today. We use God’s biblical instructions on how to the build the temple as both guidelines and justifications for building massive and expensive church buildings. We use prophetic condemnations of other people groups to justify our wars and our own hatred of others who are not like us.

We cannot just take what the Bible says and apply it directly to our life, because the Bible was not written to us. The various books of the Bible were written to the people to whom they were written. These people lived at different times, in different cultures, in different places, and spoke different languages, had different beliefs and values, and faced different issues and challenges. The books of the Bible were written to them; not to us."

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