I posted about this awhile back, but I want to get some more of my thoughts out on the subject. And seeing as how this is my blog, it sees like a good place to do it.

One of the things that really bothers me is that there are a good number of Christians who hold several peculiar beliefs that I disagree with:

1. The Bible is the infallible Word of God
2. Any part of the Bible can be used for instruction, or in other words, the entire Bible is scripture.
3. All parts of the Bible must be true, or the whole thing is false.

Here are my points that I have been thinking about that address those beliefs:

The Bible is almost entirely written as historical record. Why would God’s word be given to us in the third person perspective, or to phrase it another way, why isn’t the Bible directed at the reader? Everything is written from the perspective of a writer recording events that took place. Nothing is written down as a command to the reader. Even the Ten Commandments, when taken in context, are not commands given to the reader of the book of Exodus, but instead were written down as part of the history of what happened to Moses and the Israelites.

For the portions of the Bible not written as historical record, they are addressed to a specific person or group. For example, look at all the epistles. Each one is addressed to a specific church in a city, or to specific person. These letters are not written with the reader from 2000 years in the future in mind. My wife went to a Bible study group once, and when she asked who the book of Hebrews was written to, the group replied, “Us!” She explained that she meant the original recipient, and the group still replied, “Us!” No one there seemed to understand that these parts of the Bible were written to specific people at specific times in the past. My point is, they aren’t written to us today.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the Bible has no significance or value. I am saying that it’s not the literal word of God…and there’s no reason why it has to be. Christianity does not lose anything by the Bible being a collection of historical records and letters instead of the word of God. The illustration of man’s sin and need for a savior is still there, and the account of Christ’s death and resurrection is still there. Whether or not God wrote/inspired the writings is inconsequential because the truth is still there.

A down side to viewing the Bible as the word of God is that a lot of people, Christians and non-Christians alike, think that if one part of the Bible is proven wrong, then the whole Bible is wrong. When you view the Bible as a collection of historical writings, that way of thinking makes no sense. For example, a lot of people get bent out of shape about evolution because they realize that there are some pretty big differences between the creation account and the evolutionary time line that make creation account somewhat questionable. That in turn makes the whole Bible suspect…unless you understand that the book of Genesis was written by a different person in a different time than the book of Matthew or John was written. That means that the accuracy of one book in the Bible has absolutely nothing to do with the accuracy of the rest.

And that makes sense. I wouldn’t think that my National Geographic is false because I found out an inaccuracy in Time Magazine. But years of Christians being conditioned to see the Bible as one big book has lead to people making that rather obvious mistake.

It comes down to this. The Bible is not the word of God, and it has no authority of it’s own. There is no place in the Bible where it A) collectively claims to be a anything, much less the word of God, or it B) claims any authority over the reader. The Bible presents the reader with the history of the Hebrew people, the account of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, and the account of what happened during the early Church, along with some letters written between early Christians. The reader of these things is never commanded to do anything…which is logical…the Bible is a book, it has no power, no authority of it’s own that it could command anyone to do anything. Instead, the reader must consider the information presented, and decide what his or her response will be.