Christians - Which Passages Bother You?

Comment by: David

How about Leviticus 15?
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=3&chapter=15&version=31

Comment by: KSG

I’m challenged by Revelations (in general), and (in particular) Rev 3:15-16, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”
The implications are fearful.

Comment by: Paul

lots of passages i find difficult/challenging/wish weren’t here. But as I am reading genesis [the first book of the old testament] here’s my contribution…

Genesis 6

Giants in the Land

“1When the human race began to increase, with more and more daughters being born, 2the sons of God noticed that the daughters of men were beautiful. They looked them over and picked out wives for themselves.
3Then GOD said, “I’m not going to breathe life into men and women endlessly. Eventually they’re going to die; from now on they can expect a life span of 120 years.”

4This was back in the days (and also later) when there were giants in the land. The giants came from the union of the sons of God and the daughters of men. These were the mighty men of ancient lore, the famous ones.”

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=1&chapter=6&version=65&context=chapter

Now this all sounds a lot like the same sort of orgin of ancient greek myths or a future top blockbuster film!!!!!

Comment by: Peter in Pennsylvania

My favorite “hard” passage is the whole books of Joshua and Judges. So violent. I have had satisfactory explanations by numerous great Bible teachers, but I still am uncomfortable with it.

And I am SUPER-uncomfortable with hell. Not that I don’t believe in it, but any Christ-follower who is COMFORTABLE with it either has not pulse or no love for neighbor…

Comment by: KSG

I almost put John 3:16 too! Because it troubles so many people to think that a kind & loving God could be capable of allowing someone to choose to perish instead of choosing life.

Comment by: KSG

I see it differently now than in the past as well. It was the “guilt trip” thing for a while, but my view has changed to a God that has such passion for his creation that he gave us a free will and is unwilling to impose his own will upon us.

Comment by: Winn

One of the greatest diseases that readers of Scriptures have is a penchant for minutia which seems to assist readers of Scripture to read it fissiparously. The versification of Scripture and the propensity of modernity for propositional thinking has caused the plagues of versitis, topicalitis, and systematitis.

These three epidemics are caused by foundationalism, which among Evangelicals has caused too “low” a view of Scripture. Why? Evangelicals have come to believe in the authority of the book that we have made Scripture to be. Evangelicals believe that God somehow has given us the wrong sort of book and it is our job to turn it into the right sort of book by engaging in the fissiparous use of Scripture.

Most, if not all, of our reading of Scripture only reinforces a belief that the Bible is just a collection of little nuggets that one can choose from when a small portion is thought to be helpful. It’s like using the Bible as an encyclopedia of God’s knowledge. When you have a problem, just look up a reference and quote away. Readers of Scripture need to stop memorizing verses of Scripture and then quoting them as proof texts, brutally tearing them from their context and ordering them in another fashion, as if a reader could do a better job than the author in putting the text together.

I wonder what would happen if we learned to read the smaller stories, i.e., like the one Jim mentioned, in light of the larger story. I would go as far as to say that you can’t really understand a verse of Scripture by itself, nor even a story within Scripture by itself without understanding its purpose within the overall story. I often wonder how the readers and hearers of Scripture got along without verses. They didn’t appear in the text of the Bible until the 1500s. It seems to me that fragmented Bible teaching produces fragmented followers of Jesus who are anemic, listless, and weak with no sense of vocation as a follower. Surely, a Christian’s vocation is not to get to heaven when she or he dies because the “correct sinner’s prayer” has been prayed and the pray-er got the “barcode” on his or her butt registered so it can be scanned when the person take a last breath.

So Jim, I don’t usually think in “passages” so I’m not sure I can write to that idea. I’m guess that you can see by the above that I didn’t, but wrote a small “rant” instead.

Comment by: Ir

I thought of another one…

The Creation account, Genesis 1:1 is beautiful and poetic and says neat things about God. However - if it (and one or two other verses which are based on it) weren’t in the Bible, no Christian would have a reason to argue about the age of the earth. It never seemed to me that arguing about the age of the earth achieved anything except a) alienating people who aren’t Christians; and b) making Christians well-versed in mainstream science feel guilty if they couldn’t help thinking that what mainstream science says about the age of the earth made more much sense than it being less than 100,000 years old. I know it does make Christians feel guilty, because I used to be on the mailing list of a Christian ministry which believes the text can be reconciled with mainstream science and through that I’ve read many letters from Christians saying how relieved they are that because of this ministry, they can finally be confident that the Bible is true.

Char, you might appreciate the following Bible-based defense of women and women’s roles:

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/femalex.html

I love how Willow Creek not only differs from most other evangelical churches in considering all leadership positions open to men andwomen, but even (I once read) insists on new leaders signing a statement that they are open to it too.

Winn, I hear you. Yet, it seems to me that the authors of the New Testament have a tendency to pull fragments from the Old Testament text in support of what they are saying and the way they use the fragment often goes beyond whatever meaning the original context gives it. This is not a problem if everything they wrote was inspired by God. I’m mentioning it just to say that pulling fragments of text in support of this or that was already going on long ago — even before the text of the Bible was complete.

Paul, I would love John 3:17 if I could find support in the rest of the Bible for the hope that everyone is somehow, eventually, saved. (I tried once because I so much wanted that to be true)

Comment by: Ir

Win -

Actually, what I said about the NT authors pulling fragments was just based on my own observation. Perhaps my observation coincides with “popular theology” in this instance. Thanks for telling me what Richard Hays says. That’s very interesting. I will need to think about whether that seems to fit what I see NT authors doing (with all due respect to Richard Hays). My sense is - well, they were doing it to prove a point; maybe this is a ‘both/and’ rather than an ‘either/or’ situation.

Anyway, even if they were doing it to prove a point, there’s a big difference between the NT authors proving the point that Jesus is a new part of God’s story He was telling all along, and Christians today who try to use fragments to prove that what God wants for them happily coincides with they wanted anyway. (See, I can rant too :))

Comment by: Winn

Ir,

Maybe you should read Hays. “…Christians today who try to use fragments to prove that what God wants for them happily coincides with they wanted anyway.” Deception is easy to come by. It would be helpful if Christians would just learn to think on their own instead of being so gullible. The church has done more to expedite the latter and somewhat of a poor job at doing the former.

Somewhere I read that the average reading age is somewhere between 6th and 8th grade. I think that the average Scripture reading age is much lower. Here’s the scary part, say the average Scripture reading age for a follower of Jesus is that of a 4th grader. It would follow that that person would be making decisions about her or his life from a biblical perspective would be like a ten year old makes decisions, and that with just fragments (Bible bits) glued together our of thin air. No wonder followers of Jesus are often messed up and gravitate to “popular theology,” which has little to no merit and is aimed at those who will follow and not question what they are being sold. Of course, I’m not pointing any of this toward you, Ir, it’s just a continuation of my earlier rant.

Comment by: Ir

Thanks, Winn. I assumed your rants weren’t directed at me personally :)

seeker, those are good questions. I think Islam is the most violent (at least some sects of it) because it overtly sanctions violence in a way that Judaism doesn’t. At least in some sects of Islam - such as the 9/11 terrorists were in, as best I understand - God rewards those who destroy ‘infidels’. I don’t think Judaism has anything equivalent to those teachings.

I’ve heard Islam defended as a peaceful religion and perhaps it is in some of its manifestations.

Comment by: Ir

I agree about extremists, but I still thought I’d read/heard that the principles of Islam (some sects at least) actively encourage violence whereas the principles of Christianity don’t.

However, I am open to correction; perhaps what I’ve heard is second-hand information from people who aren’t of the Islamic faith - and I have observed that what people who don’t belong to a group claim about that group is often over-simplified and distorted.