Attribution Reading Can Seriously Damage Your Ignorance

I was recently having a give-and-take with an atheist who had grown upwardly in a Christian family unit and had gone to church for the first twenty years of her life. Merely she became an atheist in her 20s.

When I asked her why she became an atheist, she said, "I started reading the Bible."

We Christians often tell people that if they would only read the Bible, they would come to encounter that God is real and that He loves them. We hear testimony afterward testimony about how drug addicts and hookers were considering suicide but somehow got a Bible and started reading information technology and ended upward giving their life to Christ.

I am not in any way denying such accounts or stories.

Simply I think information technology is besides fourth dimension to admit that while many people decided to follow Jesus as a result of reading the Bible, there are many others who turned away from God afterward reading the Bible.

Part of this, I am convinced, is because we Christians accept said that the unabridged Bible is the Word of God, but and then nosotros sort of ignore, gloss over, conveniently forget, or are simply dishonest near some of the more troubling portions of Scripture.

And there are many troubling portions of Scripture! (If yous don't believe me, read this book: Drunk with Blood).

I call these troubling texts "Atheist Maker Verses." They are verses that exercise not point people to God, but lead people away from Him instead. Here are a few of the more blatant Atheist Maker Verses:

Genesis 19:8

"Encounter at present, I take two daughters who have not known a man; please, let me bring them out to you, and you may practise to them as yous wish; just do nothing to these men, since this is the reason they have come under the shadow of my roof."

As a father of three daughters myself, I cannot imagine offering my daughters to go raped and then that I could protect the strangers under my roof.

And yeah, I have heard the Christian explanation of this text that this was how the ancient Middle Eastern people valued hospitality. Simply how does that brand it okay? It doesn't.

Rather than trying to explain away Lot's behavior according to "hospitality laws" nosotros must condemn his behavior as horribly barbaric.

Exodus 21:twenty-21

"And if a man beats his male person or female retainer with a rod, and so that he dies under his paw, he shall surely exist punished. Notwithstanding, if he remains live a twenty-four hour period or ii, he shall not be punished; for he is his holding.

This was a favorite verse of slave-owners during the period of slavery in our country. In fact, all of Exodus 21 talks about the rules for treating slaves.

And patently, you can beat out your slave all you want, even within an inch of their life, considering the slave is your property.

Of form, even if you kill your slave, you won't exist put to decease yourself, but only punished.

This sort of verse about slaves has caused many people to plow away from God and Christianity.

Leviticus 25:44-45

And as for your male and female slaves whom you lot may have– from the nations that are around you, from them you may buy male person and female slaves. Moreover you may buy the children of the strangers who dwell among you, and their families who are with yous, which they beget in your land; and they shall become your property.

This is another verse about slaves, but this one includes the children. According to God, it is okay to buy and sell children. So apparently, everybody today who is trying to raise awareness nearly the human trafficking of children only needs to close up. Apparently, God's in favor of it.

Note too that information technology is not just the Sometime Testament which says these sorts of things. Here is a quote from i Peter:

one Peter 2:18

Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the practiced and gentle, but too to the harsh.

So if you are a slave, and your master beats y'all harshly, the slave should just have it. After all, fear of your main is a good thing.

Every bit a little side note, what I notice most interesting virtually the numerous verses all over the Bible about slavery is that mod Christians almost unanimously condemn the practice of slavery, even though the Bible condones and accepts in in numerous places.

And even so when the Bible condemns homosexuality in three verses, Christians are divided over whether or non we should follow these verses. "God'due south Discussion said it; that settles it!" we are told. My response is, "Really? So can I meet your slaves?"

But the Bible is not just wrong about slaves. Certain texts about women are also quite appalling.

Deuteronomy 22:20-21

But if the thing is true, and evidences of virginity are non found for the young woman, then they shall bring out the young adult female to the door of her begetter's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done a disgraceful affair in Israel, to play the harlot in her father'due south house. So you shall put away the evil from amongst y'all.

So if a adult female has pre-marital sex, she should be stoned. Other texts lay guilt on the homo besides, just the guilty male gets less attention than the guilty female person.

Deuteronomy 23:1

"He who is emasculated by crushing or mutilation shall not enter the associates of the LORD.

Then if your penis is cut off or your assurance are crushed, God does non accept your worship. God just accepts worship from people whose genitals are in practiced condition (minus the foreskin of class … that sort of mutilation is required by God).

The thing that gets me about such verses is how people knew who could go in to worship God and who couldn't.

Did they have a picayune "inspection station" at the front door? And we complain well-nigh the TSA groping us when nosotros get on a plane…

Deuteronomy 25:xi-12

If two men fight together, and the wife of one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of the i attacking him, and puts out her hand and seizes him by the genitals, then yous shall cut off her hand; your center shall not compassion her.

So two men are fighting and a adult female steps in to defend her man, and ends up grabbing the genitals of her husband'southward opponent. Rather than discipline the men for fighting in the offset identify, the proper response in this case is to cutting off the woman's mitt.

That sounds fair.

I also wonder how this law came about… Was it a common thing for women to take hold of the balls of their husband's enemy when they were fighting?

Perhaps this poesy had something to do with the previous one about non getting to worship God if your balls are mangled. Maybe a man could no longer pray to God because some woman crushed his assurance, and and then they had to make a rule against that sort of thing.

Of course, at present that the woman has no hand, she can't worship God either, considering God doesn't allow deformed people into his presence either. On other paw, He doesn't care too much for women either…

Of course, it'south not only women God hates. He is also not fond of dwarves and hunchbacks, people with eczema, and those who take a limb that is besides long…

Leviticus 21:18-nineteen

For any man who has a defect shall not approach: a human being blind or lame, who has a marred face or whatever limb as well long, a man who has a cleaved foot or cleaved paw, or is a hunchback or a dwarf, or a man who has a defect in his center, or eczema or scab, or is a eunuch.

To approach God, yous apparently had to be a perfect male specimen, with a working penis. Everybody else could not approach Him.

Simply it is non simply the dwarves and the bullheaded that God was against. He also was not a big fan of children.

Leviticus 20:ix

For everyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to decease. He has cursed his father or his mother. His claret shall be upon him.

How is this fifty-fifty remotely justified? I don't intendance if a kid cursed his parents with the worst curses ever uttered, does he deserve to get stoned to death for it?

Frankly, if a child has parents who would be willing to rock him to decease for cursing them, they probably deserved getting cursed.

Only no, God, apparently, sides with the parents.

And information technology is no wonder that the #1 sin Christians are terrified of committing today is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. I get dozens of emails about this sin every single calendar week, and without neglect, the people who think they take committed this sin feel that because they said something mean near God, God is going to burn them forever and ever in hell.

And where does such an idea come up from? Information technology comes (partly) from a verse similar Leviticus 20:9 where God tells parents it is okay to kill their children if he curses them.

So deplorable.

But God doesn't ever have children killed by stoning them. Sometimes He kills them with bears!

2 Kings 2:23-24

And then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going upwardly the road, some youths came from the city and mocked him, and said to him, "Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!" So he turned around and looked at them, and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the LORD. And two female bears came out of the woods and mauled xl-2 of the youths.

Plain, fifty-fifty though God doesn't desire people to worship him who are blind in ane center, or accept a limb too long, or have eczema, He is a big fan of bald men!

These youths learned that lesson the hard way. Bald men shall not be mocked! Particularly when that bald man is a prophet.

And when God cannot get children stoned or mauled by bears, He only pronounces blessings on those who fustigate babies' heads confronting rocks.

Psalm 137:9

Happy the one who takes and dashes Your little ones against the rock!

Happy? The word here could as well be translated as "blessed."

But try to picture show the scene. Was this like baby piñata twenty-four hours?

Imagine a soldier coming home from a day of baby-bang-up. His wife greets him at the door with a kiss. "So how was your 24-hour interval, dearest?" she says.

"Swell! God was actually at work in me today! I got to smash babies against a rock wall! We all praised God as we did it. The Spirit was really moving! I must have killed ten or twelve, just that Joash, he got over xx! He's a brute! The best office is that now nosotros are going to be blessed because of all the babies we killed. I'k standing on the promises of God!"

How to Handle Atheist Maker Verses

I could keep and on with these sorts of verses.

Only here'due south the point: What are we to do with these sorts of "Atheist Maker Verses?"

In that location are iii basic Christian responses.

1. We tin stick our head in the sand.

Many Christians await at these difficult and troubling texts and say, "God is good all the time, and He gave us His Discussion to prove us that He is good, then while I don't empathise how these texts can reveal a good God, we know they must, and then I believe they do."

Information technology is this sort of response that does non help people at all.

In fact, I would say that, more than the verses themselves, it is this response that causes people to become atheists. Such a response is so irrational and ignorant, that most of the world only cannot accept it.

Nor should they.

God cannot exist both good, kind, and loving, while at the same fourth dimension commanding genocide, praising the peachy of babies' heads against walls, and sending bears to maul children because they fabricated fun of a prophet'south baldness.

If Christians want people to run across God as He truly equally, every bit the God revealed in Jesus Christ, rather than sticking our heads in the sand, we must observe some style to side with the world in condemning such texts of terror. This leads to the adjacent 2 ways of responding to these texts.

2. Telephone call them Errors in the Bible and be Washed with It

Probably the simplest fashion to handle these troubling texts in the Bible is to handle them the same manner we handle violent texts similar this in Greek Mythology, in the Qu'ran, or in aboriginal historical documents.

How is that? We say that the people were flat-out wrong in what they did and the reasons they gave for doing it.

And while this arroyo is increasingly common with many Christians today, it makes many others quite uncomfortable, because so we are admitting that there are errors in Scripture, and that maybe God didn't inspire it after all.

So while this helps explain the violence in Scripture, it does and then at the expense of Scripture itself. We are left with something that, in my stance, is less than Scripture.

This is why I prefer the third approach:

iii. Realize that the purpose of the text IS condemnation

There is a way to both affirm inspiration and inerrancy while at the same time denying that God had anything to do with it.

I am working on writing a more thorough explanation for a future volume on this subject, simply the short caption is that we can view the Bible as a divinely-inspired text which inerrantly reveals human error. In this mode, we become a glimpse into our own hearts past reading Scripture.

We encounter ourselves on the pages. We run into our tendency to demonize our enemies. Nosotros see our desire to have what is not ours. Nosotros encounter our addiction to blaming God for our own evil deportment. We encounter our habit of scapegoating the outsider. Nosotros see how easy it is to alibi our ain sin and plough a bullheaded heart to our moral failures.

When nosotros approach Scripture this way, we can hold with the Atheists about the moral repugnance of these violent texts, merely so turn effectually and say that the reason God inspired these texts to be written in Scripture is not to justify such behavior and deportment, simply to challenge us to not practise such things ourselves.

Report the Bible with Atheists

At least, this is the fashion I have been learning to read Scripture, just information technology is still something I am working on

How nearly you? How exercise you read these trigger-happy and gruesome texts? How do y'all empathize them? What would you say to someone who has rejected God because of verses similar these? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Source: https://redeeminggod.com/atheist-maker-verses/