Every Good Story Must Endure Conflict

Recently I started reading the New Testament again. My friend Ron Frost recommends reading the Bible all the way through, then reading it again, and then again, until you die. So I am taking his advice. And I'm enjoying it. I didn't start in Genesis this time, I started in Matthew, and so read the account of the Birth of Christ.

Each time I read the Bible I'm taken aback by how much we delude the power of its stories with sentimentalism. The story of Noah and his Ark has been reduced to a...