Big alert! I’m traveling way above my pay grade today talking about the Bible. My thoughts come from Pastor Adam Hamilton, on-line, this past Sunday.
Hamilton agrees there are parts of the Bible that are just flat impossible, improbable, or morally wrong. His message was designed to help Christians who believe in the Word of God workaround, explain, or tolerate those questionable parts.
Point number one is that the Bible was written entirely by humans who were trying to explain their understanding of events they had observed and unfortunately in some instances, they simply got it wrong. Hamilton pointed out of the over 31,000 verses in the Bible less than 300 are considered controversial with some because they are taken out of context.
So, as Christians, how do we deal with these verses that call for killing people, wives being subservient to their husband, making slavery acceptable, or are simply not possible using scientific logic?
For starters, as was suggested earlier, we need to understand sometimes the author’s renditions are simply wrong, but an even better theory is that one of the reasons God put his Son, Jesus on this earth was to help straighten things out. Remember the words Jesus spoke came from God and in some cases do conflict with earlier versus.
Consequently, the teachings from Jesus serve as a lens or filter through which Christians are called on to evaluate every situation.
Hamilton shared a story from the Old Testament where a man discovered his daughter-in-law was a prostitute and was instructed to burn her to death. If we run that situation through the lens of “what would Jesus do?” we get an entirely different answer. Jesus actually befriended prostitutes.
I hope this simple attempt at explaining some of the controversial things found in the Bible helps you. It was enlightening for me so I decided the share.
I’ll conclude with scripture from my daily Guideposts devotions from Martin Luther King Day. It’s Matthew, 5:44.
“But, I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.”
That verse inspired Dr. King to say “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
Truly, some things to think about! I’m Steve Sauder
