Uncomfortable Scriptures
August 27, 2000
Dear Friends:
Perhaps you have come across passages in the Bible that, if it were left up to you, you would like to remove. Thomas Jefferson created such a Bible where he simply removed the passages that he did not like or disagreed with his conception of God and Christ.
We all have passages or verses that really make us squirm. Perhaps it is the commandments of God to Israel in the Old Testament to kill everyone in neighboring nations -men, women and children. Perhaps it is the numerous passages referring to demons in the New Testament. Perhaps it is the advice from Paul to Timothy where he says “drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake.”
As an example, take the passages referring to polygamy in the Bible. Some of the most faithful believers in the Bible had more than one wife. David, a man after God’s own heart, and faithful Abraham are perhaps most obvious examples. Sure, we can cite all of the problems that followed their taking more than one wife. We can turn up the passages that talk of the ideal as being one man and one woman. We can even call to mind the type of God marrying both Jew and Gentile in a sort of polygamous union of saints. Yet, we are left with an uncomfortable silence on the part of God on the actual deed of polygamy. This is exacerbated by New Testament passages such as 1 Timothy 3:2 where it states “A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife…” If you did not esteem to the office of a bishop, could you have more than one wife in the first century ecclesia?
The fact is we want God to come out and state clearly that polygamy is wrong. Perhaps, you, the reader, want me to come out and state unequivocally that polygamy is wrong right now. But that is the point of our thought this week. It’s not that easy.
The Bible is full of passages that make us uncomfortable. Maybe we would love to get out our Jeffersonian exacto knife and start snipping. However, the lessons to be learned from such passages are numerous. They should be pursued in earnest for the jewels that they contain.
The first and foremost is found in Is. 55:8, 9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” This is not to say that we should not seek an answer. We should. “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.”(Prov. 25:2) We should not satisfy our curiosity as so many do by saying that “it is a mystery.” We should approach the answers with the intellectual and spiritual honesty that understands God’s intellect is not limited by our ability to comprehend Him and his message.
We should also seek to explain these verses, not explain them away. “ALL scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable”, not just some Scripture.
We can take comfort that many who have gone before have not understood exactly what was being presented. “For he taught his disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day. But they understood not that saying, and were afraid to ask him.” But let us not draw back in fear, but follow the example of the Bereans who “received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”
Have a great week!
