When Those Do You Wrong Read Bible Verse

I was recently having a discussion with an atheist who had grown up in a Christian family and had gone to church building for the first twenty years of her life. Only 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 run across that God is real and that He loves them. We hear testimony subsequently testimony almost how drug addicts and hookers were because suicide only somehow got a Bible and started reading it and ended up giving their life to Christ.

I am not in whatever style denying such accounts or stories.

But I think it is also time to acknowledge that while many people decided to follow Jesus every bit a result of reading the Bible, in that location are many others who turned abroad from God after reading the Bible.

Part of this, I am convinced, is considering we Christians accept said that the entire Bible is the Discussion of God, but then we sort of ignore, gloss over, conveniently forget, or are but dishonest about some of the more than troubling portions of Scripture.

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

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

Genesis xix:8

"See now, I accept two daughters who have non known a man; please, let me bring them out to you, and you may practise to them as you lot wish; only exercise nada to these men, since this is the reason they take come under the shadow of my roof."

Equally a father of 3 daughters myself, I cannot imagine offering my daughters to get raped then that I could protect the strangers under my roof.

And yes, I have heard the Christian caption of this text that this was how the ancient Middle Eastern people valued hospitality. Merely how does that make it okay? Information technology doesn't.

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

Exodus 21:20-21

"And if a man beats his male or female retainer with a rod, so that he dies nether his hand, he shall surely exist punished. All the same, if he remains alive a solar day or two, he shall not be punished; for he is his property.

This was a favorite poetry of slave-owners during the catamenia of slavery in our land. In fact, all of Exodus 21 talks nearly the rules for treating slaves.

And evidently, yous tin can beat out your slave all you want, even within an inch of their life, because the slave is your belongings.

Of course, even if you kill your slave, you won't be put to expiry yourself, but merely punished.

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

Leviticus 25:44-45

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

This is some other verse about slaves, just this one includes the children. Co-ordinate to God, it is okay to buy and sell children. So apparently, everybody today who is trying to enhance sensation about the human trafficking of children just needs to shut upwardly. Plain, God's in favor of it.

Note also that it is not merely the Old Attestation which says these sorts of things. Here is a quote from i Peter:

one Peter 2:xviii

Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fright, non simply to the good and gentle, simply besides to the harsh.

Then if you are a slave, and your primary beats you harshly, the slave should merely accept it. Later on all, fright of your main is a good thing.

Every bit a piffling side note, what I discover nearly interesting about the numerous verses all over the Bible about slavery is that modern Christians nigh unanimously condemn the practice of slavery, fifty-fifty though the Bible condones and accepts in in numerous places.

And yet when the Bible condemns homosexuality in iii verses, Christians are divided over whether or not nosotros should follow these verses. "God'south Discussion said it; that settles it!" nosotros are told. My response is, "Really? So can I come across your slaves?"

But the Bible is non but wrong nigh slaves. Sure texts near women are likewise quite appalling.

Deuteronomy 22:20-21

Only if the thing is true, and evidences of virginity are not found for the young woman, then they shall bring out the young adult female to the door of her father's business firm, and the men of her city shall rock her to death with stones, because she has done a disgraceful affair in Israel, to play the harlot in her father's house. So you shall put away the evil from amid yous.

So if a adult female has pre-marital sex, she should be stoned. Other texts lay guilt on the man every bit well, only the guilty male person gets less attention than the guilty female person.

Deuteronomy 23:i

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

And then if your penis is cut off or your assurance are crushed, God does not have your worship. God but accepts worship from people whose genitals are in expert condition (minus the foreskin of course … that sort of mutilation is required by God).

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

Did they take a footling "inspection station" at the forepart door? And we complain about the TSA groping us when we get on a plane…

Deuteronomy 25:eleven-12

If two men fight together, and the wife of one draws near to rescue her married man from the hand of the ane attacking him, and puts out her paw and seizes him by the genitals, then you shall cut off her mitt; your eye shall not pity her.

And so 2 men are fighting and a woman steps in to defend her human, and ends upwardly grabbing the genitals of her husband's opponent. Rather than discipline the men for fighting in the beginning place, the proper response in this case is to cutting off the woman'south hand.

That sounds fair.

I also wonder how this law came most… Was information technology a common thing for women to grab the assurance of their hubby's enemy when they were fighting?

Maybe this poetry had something to do with the previous one about not getting to worship God if your balls are mangled. Maybe a homo could no longer pray to God because some adult female crushed his assurance, and so they had to brand a rule against that sort of thing.

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

Of grade, it's non just women God hates. He is also not fond of dwarves and hunchbacks, people with eczema, and those who take a limb that is also long…

Leviticus 21:18-19

For any man who has a defect shall not arroyo: a man blind or lame, who has a marred face or any limb too long, a human being who has a broken foot or broken paw, or is a hunchback or a dwarf, or a human being who has a defect in his centre, or eczema or scab, or is a eunuch.

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

Only it is not simply the dwarves and the blind that God was against. He also was not a big fan of children.

Leviticus 20:9

For anybody who curses his father or his female parent shall surely be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother. His blood shall be upon him.

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

Frankly, if a child has parents who would be willing to stone him to death for blasphemous them, they probably deserved getting cursed.

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

And it is no wonder that the #1 sin Christians are terrified of committing today is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. I become dozens of emails virtually this sin every single calendar week, and without fail, the people who retrieve they have committed this sin feel that because they said something mean about God, God is going to burn them forever and ever in hell.

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

Then sad.

Just God doesn't always take children killed by stoning them. Sometimes He kills them with bears!

two Kings 2:23-24

Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up the road, some youths came from the city and mocked him, and said to him, "Go upward, you baldhead! Get up, you baldhead!" Then he turned effectually and looked at them, and pronounced a expletive on them in the proper noun of the LORD. And two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

Evidently, even though God doesn't want people to worship him who are blind in one center, or have a limb too long, or accept eczema, He is a large fan of bald men!

These youths learned that lesson the hard way. Baldheaded men shall non be mocked! Especially when that bald man is a prophet.

And when God cannot go children stoned or mauled past bears, He just pronounces blessings on those who bash babies' heads against rocks.

Psalm 137:nine

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

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

But endeavour to pic the scene. Was this similar baby piñata 24-hour interval?

Imagine a soldier coming home from a twenty-four hours of infant-smashing. His wife greets him at the door with a kiss. "And so how was your 24-hour interval, love?" she says.

"Great! God was actually at work in me today! I got to smash babies against a rock wall! We all praised God every bit we did information technology. The Spirit was actually moving! I must accept killed ten or twelve, but that Joash, he got over 20! He's a beast! The best part is that now we are going to be blessed because of all the babies we killed. I'm standing on the promises of God!"

How to Handle Atheist Maker Verses

I could go on and on with these sorts of verses.

But here's the signal: What are we to do with these sorts of "Atheist Maker Verses?"

At that place are three basic Christian responses.

1. We tin can stick our caput in the sand.

Many Christians look at these difficult and troubling texts and say, "God is good all the time, and He gave us His Word to show us that He is adept, then while I don't sympathize how these texts can reveal a skilful God, we know they must, and and so I believe they do."

Information technology is this sort of response that does not assistance people at all.

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

Nor should they.

God cannot be both skillful, kind, and loving, while at the aforementioned fourth dimension commanding genocide, praising the smashing of babies' heads confronting walls, and sending bears to maul children because they made fun of a prophet'southward baldness.

If Christians want people to see God as He truly as, as the God revealed in Jesus Christ, rather than sticking our heads in the sand, nosotros must find some style to side with the globe in condemning such texts of terror. This leads to the next 2 means of responding to these texts.

2. Call them Errors in the Bible and be Done with Information technology

Probably the simplest way to handle these troubling texts in the Bible is to handle them the same way we handle violent texts like this in Greek Mythology, in the Qu'ran, or in ancient historical documents.

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

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

So while this helps explicate the violence in Scripture, it does so at the expense of Scripture itself. We are left with something that, in my opinion, is less than Scripture.

This is why I prefer the third arroyo:

3. Realize that the purpose of the text IS condemnation

In that location is a style to both affirm inspiration and inerrancy while at the aforementioned time denying that God had annihilation to do with information technology.

I am working on writing a more thorough caption for a future book on this field of study, only the short explanation is that we can view the Bible as a divinely-inspired text which inerrantly reveals man error. In this way, nosotros get a glimpse into our own hearts by reading Scripture.

Nosotros run across ourselves on the pages. We see our tendency to demonize our enemies. We see our desire to accept what is non ours. We meet our addiction to blaming God for our own evil actions. We come across our habit of scapegoating the outsider. We see how easy information technology is to excuse our own sin and plough a blind eye to our moral failures.

When we arroyo Scripture this way, we tin hold with the Atheists nigh the moral repugnance of these violent texts, simply then turn around and say that the reason God inspired these texts to be written in Scripture is not to justify such behavior and actions, but to challenge us to non do such things ourselves.

Written report the Bible with Atheists

At least, this is the mode I accept been learning to read Scripture, but it is all the same something I am working on

How about you? How practice you read these tearing and gruesome texts? How do you empathise them? What would you say to someone who has rejected God because of verses like these? Share your thoughts in the annotate section below.

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