I finished reading Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall the same day I was in a discussion where someone asked, “Why is the Bible so important? Why do Christians study it, spend so much time on it?”

Wolf Hall is set in the England of Tudor times. The main protagonist is Thomas Cromwell, the man who served Henry the Eighth and directed England’s departure from Roman Catholicism. It happens mostly in the head of Cromwell, and I am in awe of how Mantel keeps us there, anticipating the next move in this political drama that changed all of Europe. In a historical novel, we often know the main plot. Yet, it’s the character of Cromwell that so intrigues us. He is set against Thomas More, the hero in A Man For All Seasons, which presents More as a martyr for choosing death rather than bow his conscience to the will of a sovereign king. Not surprisingly, More is a less admirable character in Mantel’s book.

Weaving in and out of the story is the stirring caused by forbidden translations of the Bible into English, the language of the common citizen. People are tortured and killed in ways that sicken us for possessing an English translation.

The story, with its awful renditions of burnings at the stake and other cruelties, is the sort that causes critics of religion to decry religion, to scream that we’d all be better off without it. However, it’s not religion, but power that is the sin here. One shudders at Henry the Eighth’s megalomanic view of himself. Religion was simply a handy club he picked up to beat people who threatened him. History is crowded with tyrants who used other clubs.

It’s the human condition, the propensity to crave power and wealth, to hoard rather than share, the fear of powerlessness, that tempts all of us to the weapons of fear and hatred.

Which brings us to the other theme. The Bible in the hands of everyone who desired it was perceived by Henry as a threat to his power.

The Bible, after all, is for Christians the story of God as love, God who suffered rather than use power to work his will.