How could God write the Bible?

Last week I was doing a Holiday Club for primary school aged children in Accrington. During the first day of this I was trying to explain that the Bible is not just a book written by a few insightful people a few thousand years ago but that it's actually God's means of communicating with people. I was explaining that the Bible is God's book, written by him which records his dealings with humanity throughout history.

After doing this, quite expertly and clearly I thought, one of the children put their hand up and asked me the following question...

'How could God have written the Bible if he's dead?'

Now needless to say I was a bit taken aback by this question. I hadn't really envisaged having a follower of Neitzsche in this group. So I responded by saying that the Bible doesn't really say that God is dead, in fact it says that he's alive. The girl responds by saying

'I know he's sort of alive but he's also a little bit dead.'

Now after this clarification I was obviously fine.

Whilst this ended up a quite humorous, and very interesting discussion it did get me to start thinking. I guess many people's problem with the idea of God doing stuff is that he seems a bit dead. You see for us life is so bound up in the physical and as God is not currently physically in front of us then the idea of him being alive and doing stuff seems bizarre.

The strange thing is that the Bible says that the exact opposite thing is true. It's not that God is a little bit dead but rather it's that we're a little bit dead. We're alive physically but spiritually we're dead and so we are incapable of recognising spiritual life. This means that God seems a little bit dead when actually he is more alive than we can possibly imagine. However, humanity has always been better at seeing the problem in someone else rather than considering that it might simply be that we don't see and understand everything completely!