Is it still “the Good Book”? That depends on how we read it.
Atheist “evangelist” Andrew Seidel once said, “The road to atheism is littered with Bibles that have been read from cover to cover.” In my pastoral experience, he’s not wrong, unfortunately.
Over the past 10 to 15 years, I have seen significant shifts in our culture’s critical attention on the Bible, shifts that are impacting both believers and unbelievers negatively. While in past years many objections to our faith centered on Christian attitudes or church cultures, increasingly it is the Scriptures themselves where the “trouble” is. From anti-religion memes on social media or atheist sites like EvilBible.com, to the more urbane lectures of the new atheists, it is clear that the Bible is not automatically assumed to be the Good Book anymore. In fact, it’s seen by a growing number as a book for the unintelligent at best, and at worst an actively evil text that justifies slavery, hatred toward women, disdain for science, genocide and more.
“We need to improve not just how much people are reading the Bible, but how they are reading it in the first place.”
Of course, the words such critics pull out of context can be found in the Bible. And even in context many of their objections and questions are hard, worthy of real discussion and sometimes without tidy answers. But for the most part, what is frustrating is that such vocal critics are not reading the Bible correctly. The Bible is being misquoted to try to prove it wrong. This would be an easier problem to fix, except that churches often aren’t doing much better. We all can admit that much usage of the Bible by churches has become sloppy and often out of context. Should we be surprised if now the not-so-nice Bible verses are being pulled out of context in the same way? Read More
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