The Bible is essentially a very old Jewish book, written by vast array of independent authors. How can it possibly say anything coherent to us today?
Of course, some people think that the Bible is just nonsense; if there is no God, that is clearly true. Others think that it tells us something about God and how we should live, but that those truths need to be teased out from what is essentially a collection of myths, half-truths and incomplete information. Yet others consider that it is, at least as originally written, completely infallible in every word. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere nearer to: what it says is the accurate Word of God, but the phrasing was left to the authors.
There are many authors of the Bible, but what they all have in common is that intended what they wrote to be taken seriously.
Personally, I think that a book whose meaning is so unclear that only scholars can hope to understand it, and even then disagree about much of it, is not a useful book for God to have given us. If it says what it means, then we all know where we stand.
A complete story
The Bible is a complete book, albeit made up from a series of writings from various authors over thousands of years. Therefore, it tells a complete story. God made us, as well as the whole Universe. He wanted us to love Him, but we have chosen to go our own way. God cannot have imperfect, rebellious people living in Heaven with him, so we are doomed to live without him after we die; however, he does not want that, because he loves us. Therefore, he sent his son, Jesus, to die for us and, in so doing, take the punishment for our rebellion before rising from the dead two days later. We can either accept that, give our lives to Jesus and become destined for Heaven, or reject what Jesus did and remain destined for eternal life without God in Hell. This is summarized nicely in the Bible by John, who was Jesus' closest friend while he was on Earth, in his Gospel (John chapter 3, verses 16-18).
On the face of it, that is the story that the Bible tells. Along the way, there are a lot more details, a lot more lessons to be learned, a lot of history to discover and a lot of poetry to enjoy. Yet, the underlying story is reiterated and emphasized all the way through. We can safely take this on face value, or risk throwing caution to the wind and interpret it to mean something else.
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