Theologian and missionary to India Leslie Newbigin liked to help Christians see the Bible as one story. He often told the story of a Hindu scholar who once challenged Newbigin:

I can't understand why you missionaries present the Bible to us in India as a book of religion. It is not a book of religion—and anyway we have plenty of books of religion in India. We don't need any more! I find in your Bible a unique interpretation of universal history, the history of the whole of creation and the history of the human race. And therefore a unique interpretation of the human person as a responsible actor in history. That is meaning of reality as a whole …

Newbigin commented on this story:

There is nothing else in the whole religious literature of the world to put alongside [the Bible]. We have fragmented the Bible into bits—moral bits, systematic-theological bits, devotional bits, historical-critical bits, narrative bits, and homiletical bits. When the Bible is broken up in this way, there is no comprehensive grand narrative to withstand the power of the comprehensive humanist narrative that shapes our culture. The Bible bits are accommodated to the more all-embracing cultural story, and it becomes that story—i.e. the humanist story—that shapes our lives.