03- The Bible

Foolishly rushing in where angels fear to tread

The Bible. The Word of God. Our Absolute. The answer to every question. The solution to every problem.

I was taught all of this and more in the church of my childhood. The pastor would stand before the congregation and scream? yell? bellow? loud enough for his face to turn red, waving his Bible in the air like a banner. “This here is the 100% inerrant, infallible, perfect Word of God, and there is not a single mistake in it! And if there WERE a mistake in it, we might as well pitch the whole thing in the trash, because we couldn’t believe ANY of it!”

Oy vey. Yeah I learned a phrase or two from my Jewish wife. Sue me.

Where to even start with this ball of wax? I suppose, as long as I’m careening headlong into heresy, I might as well jump in with both feet. So here goes:

The Bible is NOT the Word of God.

There. I said it. Don’t clutch your pearls so hard. You’ll damage the cord.

The Bible tells us that God approves of slavery, blood sacrifice, genocide, and killing pregnant women, but if you work on the Sabbath you should be put to death. I’m sorry… WHAT?

Do you really want to worship a God with morals like that? I sure don’t.

So what’s going on? Should we chuck the Bible in the trash and see what’s on HBO? Not exactly. 

In 2 Timothy 2:15, Paul talks about “rightly dividing the word of truth.” In other words, separating the truth from the bullcrap. Just because it’s in the Bible doesn’t mean it’s true. 

Wait a minute, Art! You can’t take the parts you like and leave the rest! This isn’t a cafeteria!

Well, let’s see what Jesus had to say about that. From the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 4, we find:

16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.

17 And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,

18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

20 And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.

21 And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.

Now… Why were the eyes of the whole synagogue fastened on him? Because of what he did NOT read. He stopped in the middle of the passage. The words in Isaiah are:

“To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God.”

The Jews were waiting on a Messiah to come deliver them by might. When Jesus read all the nice stuff but left out the promise in Isaiah about the vengeance of God, they noticed. That was what they were all waiting for. The promise of having somebody come in to kick butt and take names was the highlight of that scripture. 

But Jesus wasn’t about all that violent stuff. So he rightly divided the word of truth by speaking of the positives, and leaving death and destruction out.

So don’t worry about picking part of the scriptures and leaving the others alone. We have it on good authority that Jesus did the same thing. Remember this? “You have heard it said, but I say unto you…”

There is a LOT of truth in the Bible. And a lot of outright bovine fecal matter as well. The value in reading the Bible is only found if you can rightly divide the word of truth. And realize that the Bible is the word of men ABOUT God, not the Word of God.

Citations for above:

Slavery: Exodus 21:2-11, Leviticus 25:44-46, Ephesians 6:5-9, Titus 2:9-10, and others.

Blood sacrifice: Leviticus 17:11, Hebrews 9:22, and others.

Genocide: 1 Samuel 15:3, Deuteronomy 20:17, and others.

Killing pregnant women: Hosea 13:16, 2 Kings 15:16.

Death penalty for working on the Sabbath: Exodus 35:2.