they said, “You’re on this Sunday.”
I walked around the woods a lot that week, asking God to give me something to say. And if God could give it to me before Sunday, that would be great.
Sunday eventually came. I remember standing up to talk in front of those hundred or so people gathered among those pine trees and being aware of the presence of God in a terrifying way. Seriously, it was terrifying. But in a good way. The word that comes to mind is holy. I became aware of something so real, yet I couldn’t see it or touch it. I was standing there and I hadn’t said a word yet, and what did I do? I took off my sandals because I knew the ground I was standing on was holy and that my life was never, ever going to be the same again.
It was in that moment that I heard a voice. Not an audible, loud, human kind of voice, but inner words spoken somewhere in my soul that were very clear and very concise. What I heard was, “Teach this book, and I will take care of everything else.”
In that moment, my entire life changed forever. It was like a rebirth. I had been so restless and rebellious and unsettled and unfocused, and I had all this energy and passion but nowhere to channel it. Now I had something I could do with my life. In that moment by the side of a lake, barefoot, with my tongue tied and my heart on fire, I found something I could give my life to.
Or it found me.
It wasn’t planned. No angels were involved that I know of—just a young, restless soul discovering a purpose.
Like I said, I stumbled into this gig.
So for a little over ten years, I have oriented my life around studying, reading, teaching, and trying to understand the Bible. I continue to find the Bible the most mysterious book—the more insight I gain, the more I realize how much I don’t know. It inspires and encourages, and it also frustrates and provokes.
The Bible is a difficult book.
It’s Difficult
We all understand that ethnic cleansing is evil, and when someone announces that God has told him or her to kill certain people, we think that person is crazy. And yet there are passages in the Bible in which God orders “his” people to kill innocent women and children. The famous story of the people marching around the wall of Jericho, blowing their horns, and then the walls falling down is also a story about slaughter of the innocent. The text reads, “They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.” The section ends with this verse: “So the Lord was with Joshua.”1
God was with Joshua when he killed all those women and children?
Is God really like that?
What does a thinking, honest person do with a story like this?
And while we’re at it, what about those letters in the New Testament from one person to another group of people? Notice this verse from 2 Corinthians: “I am out of my mind to talk like this.”2 A man named Paul is writing this, so is it his word or God’s word?
Is God out of his mind?
Is God out of Paul’s mind?
Is Paul out of God’s mind?
Or does it simply mean that Paul is out of Paul’s mind?
And if the verse is simply Paul being out of Paul’s mind, then how is that God’s word?
Notice this verse from 1 Corinthians: “To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord) . . .”3 Here we have Paul writing to a group of Christians, and he wants to make it clear that the next thing he is going to say comes from him, “not the Lord.”
So when a writer of the Bible makes it clear that what he is writing comes straight from him, how is that still the word of God?
Now I think the Bible is the most amazing, beautiful, deep, inspired, engaging collection of writings ever. How is it that this ancient book continues to affect me in ways no other book does?
But sometimes when I hear people quote the Bible, I just want to throw up.
Can I just say that?
Can I get that off my chest?
Sometimes when people are backing up their points and the Bible is used to prove that they are right, everything within me says, “There is no way that’s what God meant by that verse.”
Several hundred years ago people used Bible verses to defend their right to own slaves.
Recently a woman told me that she has the absolute Word of God (the Bible) and that the “opinions of man” don’t mean a thing to her. But this same woman would also tell you that she has a personal relationship with God through Jesus. In fact, she spends a great deal of time telling people they need a personal relationship with God through Jesus. What is interesting to me is that the phrase “personal relationship” isn’t found anywhere in the Bible. Someone made up this phrase and then said you could have one with God. Apparently the “opinions of man” do mean something to her.
I was reading last year in one of the national news magazines about a gathering of the leaders of a massive Christian denomination (literally millions of members worldwide). The reason their annual gathering was in the news was that they had voted to reaffirm their view of the importance of the verse that says a wife’s role is to submit to her husband.
This is a big deal to them.
This is what made news.
This is what they are known for.
What about the verse before that verse?
What about the verse after it?
What about the verse that talks about women having authority over their husbands?4
What about all of the marriages in which this verse has been used to oppress and mistreat women?
It is possible to make the Bible say whatever we want it to, isn’t it?
How is it that the Bible can be so many different things to so many different people?
Nazis, cult leaders, televangelists who promise that God will bless you if you just get out your checkbook, racists, people who oppress minorities and the poor and anyone not like them—they all can find verses in the Bible to back up their agendas.
We have all heard the Bible used in certain ways and found ourselves asking, “Oh God, you couldn’t have meant that, could you?”
Somebody recently told me, “As long as you teach the Bible, I have no problem with you.”
Think about that for a moment.
What that person was really saying is, “As long as you teach my version of the Bible, I’ll have no problem with you.” And the more people insist that they are just taking the Bible for what it says, the more skeptical I get.
Which
