The Bible is Wrong

I was inspired to write this post for several reasons. One reason is that most of the problems I face with people and my philosophy, or people and their rejection of God and the Bible, almost always stems from a misunderstanding of the inspiration of scripture and a poor interpretation of God's word.

Most conservative Christians have a very literal interpretation of scripture. They would even dare tell you that they do not interpret it at all, but simply let the Bible interpret itself. This is impossible, because it is impossible to read anything without interjecting your personal worldview into what you are reading. There is no such thing as an interpretation free of bias and personal thought. Liberals on the other hand will cherry pick what they like out of the Bible and disregard the rest, as was noted in Derek Flood's recent book "Disarming Scripture." As you can likely guess, both of these approaches to scriptures are completely wrong and will lead you into a misunderstanding of not only inspiration but God's character as well.

As I have pointed out many times throughout my writing, the writers of the Bible were human. This point cannot be stressed enough because so often it is forgotten as people read and interpret scripture. We have this human characteristic to idealize the past and even idolize it. Because we are 4,000 years removed from much of the history found in the Bible, we put it on a pedestal that no human work has the right to be placed on. The writers of the Bible were human. I know that most Christians would never dare say that any human was divinely infallible, that is boarder-line blasphemy. Yet all of a sudden when you transfer this knowledge to a reading of scripture, people abandon caution to the wind and place their entire faith in the hands of fallible humanity. Why is this? It is because of a misunderstanding of how inspiration works.

I'll bring this home with an example. I'll use Seventh-day Adventists as an example for this part because that is the faith I happen to belong to and was raised in. Many Adventists believe that Ellen White is absolutely infallible. They believe that God himself is the author of her books and every word that proceeded from her mouth is the express will of God, much as other faiths view the Bible. This leads many to believe things, such as the idea that pepper should never be used because it "excites the animal passions." Or that masturbation causes blindness, and many more medical inaccuracies. It isn't because Ellen White was weird, she simply wrote according to the medical knowledge of her day, which just so happened to be incorrect. Ellen White also changed dramatically in her writings after 1888. Why? It was Because Mrs. White's understanding of God changed drastically after 1888. The message of Righteousness by Faith preached by Jones and Wagner drastically affected her theology. She discovered an aspect of the character of God that she had never fully comprehended and without Jones and Wagner she would never have been able to write the Desire of Ages or Steps to Christ. Ellen White was human, just like everyone else, and she was influenced in her writing according to her own understanding of God and the cultural context in which she lived. It is that way with Bible writers as well. They are all human, they all understood God in their own way, and each of their understandings of God can teach us something about His character that we may never have contemplated otherwise.

As I wrote in a previous blog post, the beauty of the Bible is not found in the infallibility of its writers, but rather in its awesome portrayal of mans development of understanding. People are always talking about the difference between the old and the New Testament and their strikingly different perspectives on God's character. Several years ago I couldn’t understand people's concern with this. It did not seem to me like there was a huge difference between the two, after all there are some wonderful depictions of the love of God found in the Old Testament. Yet as I studied further, it became very clear that there is indeed a very distinct difference between the understanding found in the Old Testament and that found in the new. There is a very distinct progression seen with a common theme throughout the entire Bible. The theme is that God is different than all the other gods of other nations, and that He cares for His people. The details, however, are not always in keeping with an understanding of a God of Love and compassion, who seeks to woo the hearts of mankind and draw all nations to himself.

For instance, throughout the Minor Prophets you have men saying that God is pleased when His people bash infant’s heads against rocks, and murder women and children. You have commands for mass genocide that are attributed to God. David was a man of violence, which is also attributed to the fact that God was with him. Over and over again throughout scripture humans have been attributing to God what we would only be able to say was the work of the devil today. Why is this? Why would God allow such things, and why do the writers say it was actually God's command? The answer is very simple: humans wrote the Bible. Because of this, people have used the Bible in very terrible ways over the centuries. They have used it to justify Crusades that murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Catholics used the Bible to murder Protestants; Protestants used it to justify murdering Catholics; America used the Bible to justify slavery, and Adventists use the Bible to justify sexism. By their fruits you will know them; if your interpretation of the Bible leads you to believe such things, then you can be certain that your understanding of it is completely wrong.

The Bible is not a perfect document. It was never meant to be a perfect document. It has only become a perfect document as humanity has moved further and further away from the source of the original "inspiration." We cannot ignore the negative things found in the Bible as the liberals do, or accept it all as the revelation of God's character as the conservatives do. We must recognize these passages for what they are and seek to understand the perspective of the writer inside of their own cultural context. All scripture is profitable for instruction, but it may not be true that all scripture is an accurate depiction of God's character.

The Bible gives us an amazing glimpse into the lives of individuals as they struggled in search of truth over millennia. There is no other book in this entire world that gives us such a broad depiction of humanities struggle with truth. In fact, the only way I was able to arrive at the conclusions I have come to about the character of God is because I stood on the shoulders of the Giants that came before me as they fought to discover who God was. They did the groundbreaking research and I reap the benefits and the privilege of pulling that information into a coherent and valid philosophy on God. I use the entire Bible in my search to understand God, but some of it teaches me what God is not, rather than what God is. When faced with a hard passage of scripture, I do with it what I do with all written works of other humans. I ask myself the question, "Does this understanding of God's character reflect the character of a loving God found throughout scripture and confirmed in Jesus?" If it doesn't, I try to understand what led that writer to see God the way he did. I put the writing in cultural context and compare it to the general understandings of God at the time.

It is actually very interesting, because as you read the Bible, you find glimpses of Gods character all the way through, but you realize that the full character of God took 3,500 years to develop. It wasn't until John the Revelator wrote down his record of Jesus that we had a full and complete depiction of the truly awesome character of God. John is the one who first recognized that God IS love itself. He was the one who recognized that an abiding relationship is the key to a changed life. He comprehended better than anyone else the mercy and love of God. God has been seeking to lead humanity to this understanding of His character from the very beginning, but it has taken us a very long time to arrive at this understanding. In fact, even though we have the knowledge today, we still have not accepted the character of God that was so plainly revealed in Jesus. We get stuck on an Old Testament understanding of God. This does not mean that we should not use the Old Testament but that we must recognize that God has moved past the Old and New Testament and is moving forward to even more truth! God is constantly ahead of our time, drawing us toward the future. We are constantly playing catch up with God, and it has been that way from the very beginning.

In order to come to these conclusions and continue on to a more complete understanding of God's character, we must read the Bible like Jesus read it. Here again I am stealing ideas from Derek Flood. Jesus read the Bible very differently than the Scribes and Pharisees. Jesus read the Bible with the knowledge that man has misinterpreted and misconstrued the character of God. Jesus constantly confronted the literal interpretation of the Pharisees. Jesus taught love for enemies. He revealed that God desired the hearts of everyone, not just His "chosen" people. Jesus taught that hating your enemy was the same thing as murder. Jesus fought the idea that God desired his people to conquer, kill, murder and rape their enemies. Jesus taught a message of love and compassion that was contrary to much of what the Pharisees quoted from the Bible. Jesus did not pick and choose which scriptures to read but rather confronted it head on and reinterpreted it’s meaning and revealed how we as humans messed up our understanding of the character of God.

On The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus started with what the Jews previously had thought. Then he proceeded to reinterpret everything they had assumed about the Bible and its depictions of God. The word of God was never meant to be infallible; I state that again because it is very important to understand. In Jesus' day there were different camps that adhered to different scriptures. It was like some today who stand behind this person's theology or that person's theology. Consequently, today we have both types of scripture in one book, which makes it difficult to discern. Jesus pulled from each of their philosophies and revealed the character of His father through all scripture. He revealed both what God was not and what God was. Jesus' interpretation of the Bible was founded on the central theme of His ministry: that God is love and he desires all to be saved. Upon this philosophy, Jesus based all of his theology. Framed in this context it is easy to discern the truth found in scripture for those who are seeking it.

Jesus understood from where scripture came and to what purpose it was intended. The scriptures have gone through several phases over the thousands of years it has been under construction. It was first written down as a record of how God had led His people in the past. Much of it was written to comfort an enslaved people. It was basically a record that said "if God did this for us in the past, then certainly He has a future for us." Some of scripture were letters written to individual people or people groups, they were letters of instruction and encouragement, much as you would write a letter today. Some of scripture was written as personal journals, or songs of praise to God. Still other parts were prophetic depictions of the hopes and fears of God's people. The point is that the scriptures were never written because the writer thought that his writings were timeless and perfect. Paul would probably be horrified today to find that we make a claim of perfection on his writings. He was a fallible human being, how could we place on his shoulders a burden that only God can bear?

Besides having many different goals and purposes, the scriptures have also been used many different ways over the years. As mentioned they were used as simply a written record of God's dealings with His people. They were used to lead worship; they were used to construct faiths and philosophies. The Bible was assembled in its current form very recently, only in the past 600 years or so. There were many books that were hotly debated as to whether or not the church should accept them as scripture, such as the book of Jude in the New Testament and many others. The scriptures were diligently pored over to try and come up with a list of books that most accurately represented the Christian faith and were consistent with themselves. However, because the Bible was compiled by mere humanity, it is not an infallible document. In fact it wasn't until Martin Luther that we begin to view scripture as we do today.

Martin Luther took the scriptures and placed them on a pedestal that they had never occupied before. Never in the history of religion had the Bible been so firmly upheld as the absolute word of God and the soul foundation of our faith. Luther did not make a mistake in this; this understanding of scripture was absolutely necessary in order for truth to be carried forward. Christianity needed to understand that truth does not originate from the understanding of one man. For so long the church had placed its entire beliefs in the hands of the clergy. No individual had the ability to discern truth for him or herself. Luther placed the gospel in the hands of the individual and revolutionized our understanding of scripture, revelation, salvation and the relationship between the sinner and Christ. He brought grace within reach of the poor and the uneducated. You see an absolute understanding of scripture was the firm foundation Christianity needed in order to break free of the dark ages.

Every age had a different understanding of scripture and used it in many different ways, this was needed then but it may not be what is needed now. What was understood in Jesus' day was not the understanding that Luther needed in order to pull the church out of a doctrine of control and hate propagated by Christianity, but what Luther needed is not the same thing that we need today. We need a firm foundation on scripture but with a different understanding of what scripture is. We need scripture because like the Jews of old it points us toward how God has led His people in the past and where He intends to lead us in the future. Like Jesus pointed out, we need scripture because it points us toward a God of love and compassion for all people. Like Martin Luther we need the scriptures because it gives us a firm understanding that truth is available to the individual and is not a monopoly of priests and kings. We need all these understandings of scripture, prefaced with the knowledge that humanity was intimately involved in writing, committing to memory, translating and compiling the document we have now. There is just way too much humanity in that process for us to have a perfect document. However, in terms of its value to the furthering of truth and the knowledge of the character of God, the Bible has no equal.

So is the Bible wrong? The answer is two fold. Yes, it contains depictions of God that are not accurate and not in keeping with the knowledge of a loving God. But the Bible also contains the very principles that have led me to the knowledge that God is love. Without the Bible, it is unlikely I would have ever arrived at the conclusions about God that I have. So yes and no, the Bible can be wrong, but even in the concepts that are not entirely accurate, valuable information can be found about the tendencies of the human mind. Like I have said all the way through this post, the Bible is a record of mans progression toward truth, all of it is important for us to know and understand in order to construct an accurate philosophy that incorporates the knowledge gleaned throughout the ages. If we have this understanding of scripture rather than either the understanding of absolute conservatives and cherry picking liberals, we will arrive at a truth that far surpasses any philosophy on God ever constructed. If we have this view of scripture we will find what John found, that God is absolute love and His one desire is an abiding relationship with the individual.

Love of the World is Righteous

You hear it so often, in fact, if you haven't said it then in most Christian circles, you aren't truly converted. It usually goes something like this, "I used to love the world, but now I no longer care about this world, I just desire heaven." This isn't a terrible sentiment of itself, it stems from the biblical thought that you cannot serve two masters, either you serve the world or you serve Christ. It sounds great, but I believe that the way it often is played out in our churches destroys our relationship with those around us and has led Christianity to be careless with the world we live in.

I was in a Facebook conversation about the holiday season, particularly Christmas. There were people arguing for its values and people arguing against its pagan roots. It might sound ridiculous to you, but in conservative Christian circles this is a real issue. Should we celebrate a holiday that the church clearly adopted from paganism? One individual wrote something along these lines, "The closer we get to the coming of Jesus, the less we will care about this world. I no longer have any interest in Christmas, I just long for Jesus to come back." It sounds nice, if you ignore the almost blatant holier-than-thou attitude, but it actually disturbs me a great deal. You see, the closer we get to the second coming of Jesus, that we all look forward to so much, the more we should care about this world not less.

I love this world. It is evident that Jesus may be coming soon. I do desire that, but the more I see of this world and what it has to offer, the more in love with it I grow. Our earth is special. The green rolling hills, tall jagged mountains, flat plains, open deserts, and vast ice caps all combine to make such a miraculously crafted planet. The earth is full of diversity that I haven't even begun to explore; I am not ready for Jesus to come because there is yet more for me to do! There are cultures that I have not studied, there are places I have not been, and there are people that have yet to impact my life. Diversity is a beautiful thing.

God loves diversity. If you get nothing else from your study of this planet, this is something to take with you forever. Diversity is at the heart of God's design. He designed this planet to diversify, to change with time, to mold to our desires, to adapt to the environmental influences. He designed within animals the ability to adapt, to adjust, and yes to evolve. Why did he do all of this? Simply because of this, God loves diversity. It was part of the plan all along. It is the same with humanity. We were meant to change the world, to explore, to subdue, to tame, to make wild, to protect, to design. In return, we ourselves were not to be left unchanged. As we explore, as we learn, as we adapt and grow, we ourselves have changed. We have hundreds of etiologies, religions, economic doctrine, philosophies, sociologies, faiths, beliefs, and superstitions. Humanity has become as diverse as the world is diverse and it is beautiful. I believe God saw this diversity coming and said, "it is very good."

Why do I believe God designed the world like this? It stems from my beliefs of who God is. You see I do not believe that it is possible for God to be understood in just one way. You cannot simply take the written word found in the Bible and expect to know all there is about God. No matter how far you dig, or how deep you search, you will never come to a complete understanding of God. Imagine you finally make it to the very edge of our universe, the logical question after reaching the edge is, "what else is behind that?" There is always something else to the story, much more to understand that we can't even comprehend, and it is that way with God as well. God required diversity in order for us to know Him. Not only do we need the diversity of the entire universe and nature found on our little speck of dust called earth, but we also need the diversity of each other. Each person reveals something different about the aspects of who God is. Everyone's understanding of God is essential to our comprehension of His character.

I know people who think their religion has a monopoly on all truth. It is an extremely self-centric idea, "because I believe it to be absolute truth, it is." People believe things simply because they want to. It is comforting to think that you are involved in a religion that has nothing to learn, and no need to change. There are a very few people that I have ever sat down and talked to that believe their church does not have all truth. You speak with Anglicans, you speak with Catholics, or Adventists, or orthodox, all of them believe they have a monopoly on absolute truth. Here is the kicker; they all hold to that belief because they are all partially correct. You see there is no one religion that will ever have absolute truth. The only person with a monopoly on truth is the one who recognizes that there is always more to learn, more to explore and more of God that their current understanding may not know. All religions are valid, some might have more truth than others, but that is only because they borrowed from the old and added to the new, yet all have truth, and all are useful in understanding the character of God.

I love this diversity. I love that people groups have different theories and understandings of God. I love culture and tradition. I love to see mans interpretations of the reality they occupy. It is fascinating to me, and the closer we get to the second coming of Jesus, the more I desire to know about the thoughts and theories of others. I see God everywhere. In the scientific ideas and discoveries of humanity I see amazing revelations about the way in which God has created us to interact with Him. In the cultures and religions of the world, I see amazing revelations of the way that God has led us in the past and continues to lead us toward the future. I love Christmas, because in it I see remnants of God leading the thoughts and ideas of man. Seeing how the holiday has changed over time, even in the last 20 years has made an impact on how I understand God. God is working, and he is leading all men to knowledge of Himself.

As Christians we often have this idea that we must go in to the foreign field and change the culture and religion of those who live there. We are ethnocentric; we believe that the western ideals are the ideals of God himself. It actually makes me angry how twisted our missions are. God did not create western culture, humanity created it. Who is to say that our culture is better than the natives that run around naked in the woods? Because we believe modesty to be a gift from God, we force it on cultures that don't even understand it. It isn't a gift from God; it is simply a development of culture, and a product of society.

It is also not our job to convert everyone to our faith. That was NEVER the purpose of Jesus. Why do you think Jesus never converted people to Christianity? In fact, Jesus didn't even convert to Judaism. You look at His interactions with humanity over the course of time and what do you find? Jesus did not convert to religion, but rather to an understanding of God that transcended religions and ideologies. He didn't ask people to abandon culture and forsake society; he called them to adjust their understanding. If Jesus came today, he would not call people to Adventism, he would not call them to Judaism, he would not call them to any religion at all, not even Christianity in General, Jesus would call people to a higher understanding of the character of God. If Jesus preached the holiness of the Sabbath, it would not be in the context of Adventism, it would be in the context of relationship with God. If Jesus preached a healthy lifestyle, it would not be in the context of an established religion, but would be in establishing a proper understanding of the character of himself. God does not care what religion you belong to. The only people who will be in heaven at the end will be those who are seeking after a relationship with Jesus.

I feel so strongly about this in fact that I find it absolutely terrible that we call people out of their church families to join ours. We convert people to the "truth" and then make them leave the very place that they have an influence and a family of believers that cares for their well-being. We remove them from their community and place them in one that they often cannot relate to. How much better would this world be if we merely converted people to a correct understanding of his character and then called them not to leave their churches but to influence their community for good. What if every new believer simply began to lead others to an understanding of the true character of God? I guarantee you we would have a Christianity that was more unified and committed to truth.

Let me share with you my ideal situation, perhaps it is an idea you have never even considered. I know I never did, but I believe it is the only truly "Christian" way to live, and yes, I am being a little self-centric myself. I would prefer to permanently delay the second coming of Jesus. Yes you read that correctly. My goal in this life is to put a permanent hold on the second coming of Jesus. Why is that my goal? It is simple really, because from what I read in the Bible, the second coming only happens because humanity makes a final decision to reject God forever. Perhaps you have never imagined there could be an alternate ending to the story of humanity. Let me share with you my ideal version of events.

My alternate ending would go someone like the following: humans finally come to a realization of the awesome and wonderful character of God, they come together in unity of purpose and commit, once and for all, their hearts to doing the will of God, which is to love. We end war, hunger and waste, we band together as one people under a common rule, which is the rule of love. We allow the Holy Spirit to take control of our life and we become changed in to the image of the character of God. We end the slaughter of animals for food, we begin to heal our broken planet, and rather than using our resources to gain power over each other, we instead begin the exploration of creation. Perhaps we would solve human aging and disease, we could explore our deepest oceans, and apply our technology to stabilizing the earth once again. We could explore our solar system and all it has to offer and establish colonies on other planets, maybe even begin terraforming Mars to be a second garden home, creating a breathable atmosphere, warming it's crust and making water flow there once again. We would then begin to explore far beyond the reaches of our solar system and venture out in to the galaxy to explore what else God has to offer. That would be my alternate ending to the destruction of humanity and this world that is found in revelation. What if?

Until the day comes when humanity makes the ultimate choice, I am determined not to leave this world unchanged. I desire to change it for the good. I am in love with this home of ours, I am in love with its peoples and animals, it's cultures, and diversity. I love the world. I want to visit other countries and the cultures inside of them to learn what they have to teach me about the character of God. I want to celebrate their holidays and immerse myself in their lives to know who they are and what has impacted their life. I do not want to call them all to forsake their country, culture, and religion; I want to learn from them and them from me as we all seek out God for ourselves. God is drawing humanity to himself, he is not only working with Adventists who understand the Bible and Sabbath, no, he is working with people who know nothing of such things. He is working with Buddhists and Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, Christians and Jews. The character of God is being revealed all around us. Will we simply shut out the culture around us and snub our noses at society because "this world is not our home." As for me, I will continue to study the culture I live in, I will learn the philosophies of our time, I will seek to understand the world views behind the movies our culture uses to express its deepest hopes, imaginations, desires, and fears. Jesus did not come to destroy the world, but to save it, and I desire the same. I do not desire for God to destroy this world, I desire to save it from itself and teach as many as I can about the true and perfect character of a God who is so much different than anything anyone has ever imagined. I admonish you, love this world, because if you fail to fall in love with such an amazing creation as is already here, what makes you think you will love heaven any more?