Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Why contradictions in the Bible don't make me question God

Every time I start reading the Bible through again, there is an unspoken question that keeps lurking in the back of my mind.  "When am I going to run into my first contradiction or logical inconsistency and when I do, what does it mean about how I understand, read, and interpret the Bible?"

It happens every single time.  The very first time I read the Bible, way back in the way back I remember reading Genesis 4 and thinking to myself, "Where did all the people on the earth who were going to kill Cain come from and where did Cain's wife come from?  I thought there was only Adam, and Eve, and Cain, and Abel on the earth at that time."  Which got me thinking about how the Bible figures "time" and that either we don't understand Biblical time (meaning the 6,000 year old earth theory is toast) or, Adam and Eve are just one story out of many other stories going on at the same time and the Bible doesn't tell us about all the other people alive on the earth and populating the earth.  So obviously when we read accounts of "lineages" in the Bible, the people mentioned are not necessarily the only sons and daughters of the people mentioned before them, and perhaps not even the first or oldest son or daughter, or perhaps not even a son or a daughter, but simply a descendent somewhere down the line.  And maybe the earth could be millions of years old.  So what?  God is still God and He still created it and us.  

Recently I began to read the Bible through again (this time as part of my ordination process) and for the first time I noticed something interesting in Exodus 9.  I've read Exodus 9 hundreds of times but for some reason, this time, I noticed an apparent contradiction I hadn't noticed before.  It isn't a big deal, but for people who are raised to believe in verbal inspiration, this could pose a tiny problem.  Exodus 9:6 tells us that the plague on the livestock killed ALL the livestock of the Egyptians.  All of it.  Nothing escaped.  Oh, wait, maybe some did because Exodus 9: 20-21 says that the Egyptians who feared the Lord ran to bring in their livestock from the fields before the plague of hail.  Now perhaps 9:6 should have told us that only the livestock of the Egyptians who didn't fear God died, but it doesn't. Apparently, God told Moses to write down that all the livestock died.  So he did.  But then God also told him to write down that in order to avoid having their livestock die in the hail storm, the Egyptians also saved their livestock by bringing it inside.

Or, maybe, just maybe, the whole theory of verbal inspiration where every word is completely the inspired word of God and the author's were only robots dictating exact words has a few problems with it.

I absolutely believe the Bible is a revelation of God's will and God's story to the world, but I also believe that flawed human beings wrote it and they wrote what they remembered, AND as is the case with every author, they wrote it within the historical and cultural context in which they lived.  This is pretty basic stuff and it in no way diminishes the Word of God.  If anything, it makes it easier to apply and easier to understand when you realize that as an example, women in today's society don't have to be silent and not speak in church and that short hair isn't a sin for women or long hair a sin for men as it appears Paul was trying to tell the church in his time and culture.  If the Bible were verbally inspired and every word is God's laws for us, then Joyce Meyer is in big big trouble and her church is an abomination to God, not to mention that sinful short hair she wears.  And don't even get me started on women worship leaders...

Or maybe it is time for us to start using the brains God gave us.  

Reading the Bible in light of God inspiring ideas, rather than actual words, allows people throughout history and through the ages and across vast cultural differences to apply the principles in God's word to their cultural context and still be able to follow God's plan for their lives.  It allows for contradictions in the Bible without throwing the whole thing out as some critics of the Bible do.

Moses, who we believe wrote Exodus, probably just forgot to write stuff down as he was remembering everything that happened.  He most likely added some stuff in there too (like his assertion in Exodus 11 that Pharaoh and the Egyptian officials highly regarded him or his assertion in Numbers 12:3 that he was the most humble man on the face of the earth).  If he didn't write it himself, than some scribe or person later on inserted it (which wouldn't be very appropriate to do unless God also inspired that scribe to add something he forgot to inspire the original writer to say, which then just becomes very confusing as we try to figure out if God forgot to inspire the original author or exactly what was going on there).

This view of the Bible also allows us to read a book like Ecclesiastes and realize that these are the words of a man struggling to understand life and a relationship with God in the midst of depression and uncertainty, rather than God inspiring the author to write something so uncertain and mainly negative.

It also allows us to enjoy Joyce Meyer without judgment (if that is your thing) and to worship along with Christy Nockels or Misty Edwards or that Darlene lady with the hard to spell last name from Hillsong (I know your last name is Zschech and it is pronounced like "check" I think).

Most importantly it allows me to read through the Bible and when I encounter those inconsistencies and contradictions, I can move beyond them and ask myself "What is God teaching me in this passage or in this story" rather than becoming bogged down (like I have in this blog) with questioning the sovereignty of God, or getting tied up in knots trying to figure out the exact theology of inspiration.  It also allows me to still view the Word of God as the Word of God without throwing it all out because some of the literal words contradict each other or don't apply to across thousands of years of cultural change and growth.

Most importantly, it allows God to speak to me here and now in my situation and it doesn't keep him confined to a set of standards and cultural values that are thousands of years old.  God isn't in a box and neither is His Word.  It is alive and still speaking actively today to me, where I am, where you are, in the cultural context in which you find yourself.