Newsweek Article “The Bible: So Misunderstood It’s a Sin” & response by Darrel Bock
Photo by Newsweek
On December 23, 2014 Newsweek published the article “The Bible: So Misunderstood It’s a Sin” authored by Mr. Kurt Eichenwald. The full text of the article can be read here: Newsweek – The Bible: So Misunderstoof It’s a Sin.
An excerpt from the article is given below:
They wave their Bibles at passersby, screaming their condemnations of homosexuals. They fall on their knees, worshipping at the base of granite monuments to the Ten Commandments while demanding prayer in school. They appeal to God to save America from their political opponents, mostly Democrats. They gather in football stadiums by the thousands to pray for the country’s salvation.
They are God’s frauds, cafeteria Christians who pick and choose which Bible verses they heed with less care than they exercise in selecting side orders for lunch. They are joined by religious rationalizers—fundamentalists who, unable to find Scripture supporting their biases and beliefs, twist phrases and modify translations to prove they are honoring the Bible’s words.
This is no longer a matter of personal or private faith. With politicians, social leaders and even some clergy invoking a book they seem to have never read and whose phrases they don’t understand, America is being besieged by Biblical illiteracy. Climate change is said to be impossible because of promises God made to Noah; Mosaic law from the Old Testament directs American government; creationism should be taught in schools; helping Syrians resist chemical weapons attacks is a sign of the end times—all of these arguments have been advanced by modern evangelical politicians and their brethren, yet none of them are supported in the Scriptures as they were originally written. Click here to continue reading…
Photo from GospelCoalition.org
Dr. Darrell Bock who serves as the Executive Director of Cultural Engagement and Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary gives a response to the Newsweek article. The full text of the article can be read here: Darrell Bock responds
An excerpt from the post (conclusion) is given below:
Click here to read… The final exhortation in the article is to read the Bible and do so carefully. We could not agree more. That means not cherry picking out of it. That means reading all of it. That means appreciating the cultural and historical background as we have shown. It means reading it with literary sensitivity and rejecting an approach that too quickly says difference simply equals contradiction. It means reading Scripture as a whole carefully and accepting the way it challenges the way all of us live. The Bible often leads us into a spiritual self critique where God’s words can challenge us about how we live and lead us into living distinctly, humbly, lovingly in a pursuit of holiness that is as selfless as Jesus’ own offering of himself for our sin (Titus 2:11-14).
Our desire is to quickly say, as Eichenwald does, that we should be slow to judge another as Jesus taught. Yet here again the exhortation needs qualification in light of what Jesus actually taught. A closer look at that text says we should be serious about seeing the plank in our own eye before worrying about the speck in the eye of another. Jesus goes on to say do engage the brother after an honest self-examination. So Jesus’s point is not to avoid judging all together, but to do so with an awareness of one’s own need as well. What is needed by all is a conversation where we all recognize our shortcomings and need for God.
Maybe we should add that one should not be too quick to judge the Bible as well, a point Jesus also taught. The one who commanded love your neighbor as yourself also commanded love for God with all of your heart as a part of the greatest commandment. That means respecting God’s word and recognizing God’s right to make judgments about how we (should) live. It means letting the Scripture tell the story from an array of angles that should not be cancelled out by premature claims of contradiction. It means reading with a literary sensitivity that sees the scope of what a passage addresses and wrestles with the array of proposed options for how to read the text. This is how we understand the Bible and read it well so as not to sin.
The articles maybe academic in nature to a certain extent, however it will be worth the time to go through these articles to understand the misleading information and how to respond to it politely.
