We need to remember that the documents found in the Bible were “people stories” for a long time before churches generations later elevated them to the status of “sacred writings.” They were the writers’ convictions about God’s nature and character, God’s requirements of people, the meaning of natural events, the outcome of national and cultural events, and current affairs. As such, the writers’ works were colored by their own non-scientific status, the superstitions and folk tales of their culture, the prevalent religious thought of their day, and the filters of their own beliefs.

I believe that behind these stories there exists some basis in a factual happening, and God’s ever-present Spirit seeking to guide humankind ever upward to higher and truer understanding and acceptance of truth, goodness, and a better quality of life. Taking both the divine and the human into account, I seek to find the meaning in each story that helps me toward understanding the higher revelation Jesus made about God, about us, and about life.

Stevens's A Study Companion on the Gospel of John is available here.