No Easy Answers

A husband and wife clash over the Bible

Photo by Naassom Azevedo on Unsplash

H: The more I read the Bible, the more I notice that it doesn’t line up with itself at certain points.

W: What do you mean?

H: I mean the Bible contradicts itself here and there.

W: I don’t believe that.

H: Okay. Why’s that?

W: Because the Bible was inspired by God, and the Bible says that God can’t lie.

H: I’m not calling God a liar. I’m just saying it looks like the Bible has some errors, plain and simple.

W: That’s impossible. Just because you think something is an error doesn’t mean it is.

H: Well, of course. But don’t you even want to know what I’m referring to?

W: Uh, sure.

H: I’m not talking about anything scholarly. I’m talking about places where the Bible says one thing and then says something incompatible somewhere else. Haven’t you noticed stuff like that?

W: No. The Bible says that “All Scripture is God-breathed.” Don’t you believe that?

H: Believe it? I’m not even sure what that means.

W: It means that the Holy Spirit told people like Moses and David and Matthew what to write.

H: So He told them to contradict one another?

W: No! Why are you saying that? I thought you believed in the Bible.

H: I guess I’m just realizing that it’s more complicated than we’ve been led to believe.

W: Is that what you’re going to teach our children, that the Bible is full of errors?

H: What? No. Well, I suppose that depends on what constitutes an error.

W: But how could it have any errors when it says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for instruction, rebuke, and training in righteousness”?

H: Okay, great question. But even if we assume that Paul somehow meant for that statement to apply to his own letters — and that’s a big if — inerrancy isn’t part of his description.

W: Oh, so you think something that came from God would be full of errors?

H: Whoa, hold your horses, I didn’t say that. I’m only pointing out that if that’s our defense of inerrancy, we’re reading it into the text.

W: So? It says it came from God’s mouth. From God. How could it come from God and have errors?

H: Exactly! So if we think the Bible describes itself as error-free, we should be able to test that claim by reading through it as closely and as honestly as possible. Do you see a problem with that approach?

W: Well, it also says that God’s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

H: Which means what, in this context?

W: It means that you shouldn’t think you can scrutinize His Word.

H: That leaves us pretty hog-tied, though, doesn’t it? It’s like someone saying, “There’s not a single weed in my garden.” And then, when you walk through his garden and point out the weeds here and there, he says, “Not only do you not know what a weed is, there’s no way you could know.” But if so, then why is he even talking to you about the weeds?

W: Why am I even talking to you? This is a stupid conversation. If you were going to walk away from the faith, it would’ve been nice to know that before we got married!

H: Wait a second. You think I’m “walking away from the faith”?

W: You’re sure talking like it.

H: Not at all. Or at least, not yet. [Smiles mischievously.]

W: It’s not funny! If you don’t believe in the Bible, then our kids might not believe in it either.

H: And if they don’t believe in it, then they might go to hell?

W: Don’t even joke about that.

H: I’m not joking, but if that’s what you’re worried about, we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. I’m glad to know that that’s how you’re processing this, though. Your concerns are probably a good reflection of the way you were taught to read the Bible.

W: I can’t even tell you how patronizing that is.

H: Be that as it may, just let me finish. Here’s where I’m coming from: An error is simply a deviation from a standard. So the only way to establish the claim that the Bible has no errors is to come up with a shared understanding of what an error is, and then show that there are no such instances in the Bible.

W: Okay, so what’s your definition of an error?

H: Like I said before, my working definition is internal incompatibility — where the Bible says one thing and then, elsewhere, says something that contradicts the first thing. If two biblical claims are mutually incompatible, then at least one of them must be an error.

W: I’m sorry, I just can’t get over this. That’s what you’re going to teach our kids?

H: Well, yeah. It’s the kind of thing they’ll be able to see for themselves as soon as they can read.

W: So then the Bible is what, just another history book?

H: You know what, let’s take a breather. We can try to tackle this again some other time.

Two Weeks Later

W: Are you still having doubts about the Bible?

H: That depends. Does it still contradict itself?

W: I’m being serious.

H: So am I.

W: I talked to a pastor about this.

H: Yeah? What’d he say?

W: He said you’re probably overthinking it and that sometimes people’s heads get in the way of their hearts.

H: Ah, and never the reverse, right?

W: Whatever. He also mentioned something called the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. Have you heard of that?

H: Yes, ma’am.

W: Of course you have. Anyway, he said it was signed by something like two hundred leading theologians.

H: Yeah, I’m familiar with a few of the signers. From what I know of them, they’re serious scholars and true believers.

W: But you still think you’re right and they’re wrong?

H: I guess so. My only other options, as I see it, are to pretend that I understand what I don’t, or to pretend that I don’t understand what I do.

W: And what exactly do you think you understand?

H: Just what I was telling you last time: that as far as I can tell, the Bible disagrees with itself at certain points. Not necessarily on big doctrinal issues, but definitely enough to undermine any claim to perfect unanimity, or inerrancy.

W: So then what do you do with the fact that two hundred people who have doctorates in the Bible don’t see the problems that you see?

H: Yeah, I’ve wondered about that, too.

W: And??

H: Well, if the contradictions I’m referring to weren’t so basic, I’d probably be more inclined to defer to the experts. But as it is, we’re talking about stuff that, once pointed out, a grade-schooler can understand.

W: Like what?

H: You sure you wanna know?

W: [glares in annoyance]

H: Okay. As the good book says, “A cord of three strands is not easily broken.” So I’ll give you three examples.

The first is in Exodus 24:9–11, which says that Moses and over seventy elders of Israel saw God. But then John 1:18 says “No one has ever seen God.”

The second is in Mark 2:25–26, where Jesus refers to 1 Samuel 21. Jesus is quoted as saying that Abiathar was the high priest in the 1 Samuel account, but when you read 1 Samuel, it names Ahimelech as the priest in question.

The third one is in Matthew 28 and Luke 24. In Matthew, immediately after Jesus is raised from the dead, both Jesus and an angel send word for the disciples to meet Jesus in Galilee, which they do (v16) — a journey of some 70 miles from Jerusalem. This doesn’t jibe with Luke’s account, in which Jesus himself tells the disciples to “…remain in the city [Jerusalem] until you have been clothed with power from on high” (24:49). So which is it: Did Jesus meet them in Jerusalem and tell them to stay there, or did He send instructions for them to meet him up in Galilee?

W: I don’t know about that one, but the one about the priests seems like it would be pretty easy to resolve. Wasn’t it normal for Israel to have multiple priests at the same time?

H: Yeah, that’s my understanding.

W: Well, maybe the one guy was the high priest and the other one was a normal priest.

H: Right — maybe so many things. The speculation on this stuff is endless. Maybe it was a copyist error, maybe the two names are interchangeable, maybe one was a nickname for the other, etc, etc. Maybe Jesus, being omniscient, named the one that Samuel should have named, correcting the prophet’s typo on the fly and leaving his listeners to sort out the details. My only point is that, with respect to the same question, the witness of Scripture is at odds with the witness of Scripture.

W: [Long sigh] I don’t know what to tell you. I still think there’s probably a good explanation. I’m not a theologian.

H: Yeah, there are explanations, but when you hear what they are, you end up in a world where words don’t mean what they mean — except when they do; where certain people are believed to represent other people — even though the text never says as much; where references to time become all but meaningless; where the future is used to interpret the past; where layers of symbolism are shot through with other layers, and it’s “the glory of kings” to disentangle it all.

W: Are you done?

H: Hardly. Explanations can explain without being true. And these explanations, at least the ones I’ve come across, tend to smack of circular reasoning and confirmation bias: making exceptions and excuses and leaning on alleged verbal nuances in an effort to justify their original position — all of which points to inerrancy as a foregone conclusion, not a working hypothesis!

W: [Digging fingers into scalp] How could there be mistakes in the Bible if it was inspired by God, who knows everything? He wouldn’t purposely contradict himself!

H: Hey, I get it. It’s disorienting to consider the possibility that the thing you’ve placed your faith in is not what you were told: that you’re going to have to think harder and look deeper, and that your efforts may lead to less certainty, not more.

W: I don’t like talking about this stuff.

H: Not talking about it won’t change it.

W: You’re so frustrating.

H: Yeah? Well, I’ve got frustrations of my own. I’m frustrated that I wasn’t told more about this stuff while growing up in the church. Bible study after Bible study was little more than an exercise in agreeing with the text. There was no journey, nothing more to discover about our infinite God, just inert facts to be absorbed. There was no room to fight it out with God like Jacob, no sense of the expansiveness that could countenance a sinner like David also being “a man after God’s own heart.” Looking back on it now, my experience of “Bible study” strikes me as a misnomer — propaganda, even.

W: Meaning what?

H: I mean, so often a “Bible study” is a way of reading the Bible with blinders on — reading it through a lens that tells you what to see. And now a whole industry has grown up around the marketability of the myth that our Bibles are somehow “perfect” and that that perfection is what justifies having faith in God. We end up having a relationship with an advertisement rather than the One the ad is supposed to be about. In my observation, this process sets believers up for a crisis of faith when they discover that their holy book — their “love letter straight from the mouth of God” — is, in fact, speckled with human imperfections.

W: And you just can’t wait to be the one to tell them. What if you’re ruining something good? Have you ever thought about that? What if you’re tearing down one of the few places people can still find hope?

H: I think you know that’s not my goal.

W: But don’t you see that that’s where this leads?

H: I suppose it could. But is our only other option to hang our hopes on a demonstrable falsehood? Maybe you don’t realize this, but there’s a huge divide between biblical scholars and laypeople on this point. Remember the document you mentioned with the two hundred signers? That’s a great example of this problem and probably the source of a lot of it.

W: How’s that?

H: Well, what I’m telling you isn’t news to people who really study the Bible. But then, for some reason, the rest of us are usually just handed their conclusions — as if from on high — and rarely told how those conclusions were reached. I’ve got a book called From God To Us that was co-authored by Norman Geisler, one of the signers of the Chicago Statement. In it, he says, “Inerrancy is not an empirically known fact but a belief based on the teaching of the Bible about its own inspiration…”

W: You actually like what he’s saying there?

H: What I like is that Geisler is acknowledging that inerrancy is a faith-claim and not a fact-claim. That’s the kind of thing you don’t hear in church. At least, in all the years I went to church, I don’t recall hearing anything like that.

W: But that’s where faith comes in! Are you opposed to faith now, too?

H: Are you saying you think I should have “faith” in something that is demonstrably false? We’re not talking about faith in God here, we’re talking about a bizarre claim that people invented to prop up the Bible like a storefront mannequin. If outright contradictions don’t at least cast doubt on inerrancy, then we’re in Bill Clinton territory: denying the meaning of words and waffling over what the definition of “is” is.

W: If the contradictions are so obvious, then how did this Norman guy and all the other signers miss them?

H: They didn’t miss them! The Chicago Statement explicitly turns a blind eye to contradictions. Here, I’ll pull it up on my phone… In article XIII they say, “We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such as… variant selections of material in parallel accounts…” And in article XIV they say, “We deny that alleged errors and discrepancies that have not yet been resolved vitiate the truth claims of the Bible.”

W: So they’re basically saying that they’re going to ignore the problems and double down on inerrancy instead?

H: Bingo!

W: Well, I’ve never heard about that.

H: That’s my point! I hadn’t heard about it either! So often, we’re just spoon-fed the comforting conclusions in total ignorance of the details. And then we go about our lives with a sense of sanctimonious but unfounded certainty.

W: Ouch.

H: Textual criticism is not for the faint of heart, my friend.

W: No, it’s for people who have no heart.

H: It’s not that I don’t have one, it’s like the pastor said: my huge head just gets in the way.

Later That Night

H: Hey, what’s wrong? Are you crying?

W: [In bed, staring at the wall] I just wish you didn’t think the way you do. I feel like you’re always “out there” and I’m always “in here” and we’re never together.

H: I’m sorry about that. I don’t know what to do about it, apart from sharing my journey with you.

W: I guess I just had this idea about what it would mean to be one with my husband, and this is so far from that. It’s so so far from how I was raised and what I expected from you as the spiritual leader of our family.

H: I hear what you’re saying, but just to be clear, this is part of my spiritual leadership for our family. Remember in John 4 where Jesus told the woman at the well that the Father seeks those who worship “in spirit and in truth”?

W: Yeah.

H: And remember when he said to Pilate that he “came to testify to the truth”?

W: Yeah.

H: And when he said “If you continue in My word, you are truly My disciples. Then you’ll know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

W: That’s in John 8, I think.

H: That’s the spirit in which I’m trying to lead. I don’t believe we have to be afraid to acknowledge what’s true, even if that means parting ways with mainline dogma. I don’t think God is threatened by us admitting that the Bible is a treasure trove of literary and historical difficulties. It just is. And I don’t think Jesus, who was all about the truth, would pretend it was otherwise.

W: [Long silence]

H: What are you thinking about?

W: I don’t know what to think. I know they killed Jesus because he wouldn’t go along with their traditions, but he also quoted from the Old Testament as if he really believed it. Like when he said, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

H: And by “every word” you think he was referring to the Bible?

W: Yeah. Don’t you?

H: I think it’s so much bigger than the Bible. I hope someday we have a better understanding about words in this biblical sense. In that verse from Deuteronomy that Jesus quotes while resisting Satan, I think he’s referring to the kind of words God used to create the universe, not words on a printed page.

W: Maybe he was. I don’t know. All of this is just so hard for me to think about because we’ve built our whole lives around the Bible. I don’t want to cut off the branch we’re standing on.

H: Come here. Let me hold you. We’re not standing on a branch, baby — we’re standing on the Rock.

W: Can you try to be serious?

H: Sorry, yes. I know what you mean. I remember feeling something along those lines a couple years ago when I first started to notice this stuff. As I began to acknowledge the issues I was seeing in the text, it felt like letting go of a riverbank and floating off into the current. It was a little unnerving. But the other option — pretending I hadn’t noticed or making sure I could explain away every instance of it — just wasn’t an option for me.

W: I’m just worried that since you’ve let go of the riverbank, the current will carry you off and our kids will drown in the river trying to follow you.

H: Then we should teach them how to swim! Just like a mama duck does with her ducklings.

W: But why? It’s not worth the risk! They shouldn’t even be in the river. To me, the river represents sin and lies and the ways of the world.

H: Oh, you mean the place they’re going to spend the rest of their lives?

W: You know what I mean.

H: I think my line here is, “Au contraire mon amour, they will not surely die.”

W: What’s that from?

H: That’s what Satan told Eve in the Garden, minus the French.

W: I’m not saying that you’re Satan, but yes, I’m worried that you’re going to lead our family astray. I feel like God’s looking down on us in disappointment. Aren’t you concerned about the verse that says if we deny Him, then He’ll deny us?

H: Not really. I know what you mean, and I’m familiar with that verse and the fear that has grown up around it, but I just can’t read it in isolation. How do you square that passage with the heart of the father in The Prodigal Son or what Jesus said to Peter after he denied Him three times?

W: Hmm… Well, in both cases the deniers repented after coming to their senses.

H: Yeah, but there isn’t the slightest suggestion that the father’s heart was closed to the son until he saw him coming up the road. My point is that I don’t believe we live under the gaze of an angry God. It’s incredible to realize that He’s the kind of God who sets people free even when He knows they’ll abuse that freedom. The way I see it, it comes down to how you want to live the life you’ve been given: Do you want to live it clutching the reeds for safety, bracketed by the fear of overstepping manmade boundaries, or do you want to live it with passionate interest — and even abandon — as if you really were a child of the Great Father, whose destiny is to return to his loving embrace?

W: So just live however you want and all dogs go to heaven?

H: Well, I don’t know exactly how God keeps his books, but I don’t think we can manipulate His policies by saying magical prayers. I think that stuff is mostly religious marketing.

W: What? Aaaahh! The Bible clearly says, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved”!

H: You’re right, it does say that. But then Jesus himself says, “Not everyone who says to me “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 7:21)

W: Probably because the “Lord, Lord” people didn’t believe in their hearts.

H: Maybe, but that’s not how Jesus explained it. He said it was because they didn’t know Him.

W: Well, maybe there’s a difference between being saved and entering His kingdom.

H: Maybe so, but then what does it mean to be saved if you still get left out in the cold — or rather, in the heat? All I’m saying is that it’s not as easy as we might want it to be. That’s why no one has written a book called Easy Answers In The Bible.

W: Actually, somebody probably has written that book.

H: Haha, yeah, probably. Some well-meaning pastor wanting to guide his flock through the complexity of Scripture, and without meaning to, fostering complacency and oblivion instead of faith.

W: It makes sense, in a way. He gets to be the hero, the know-it-all superstar, and we get to feel like we have the right answers. Everyone wins, in a way.

H: Right! Except, in another way, everyone loses. We get the comfort of spiritual certainty for the bargain-basement price of showing up, which probably discourages further investigation. If we already have the inerrant, invincible facts, why bother being like the Bereans? It’s salvation by incantation.

W: Salvation by association.

H: Or both.

W: Oh, that reminds me, the pastor told me that inerrancy only applies to the original manuscripts, not to the translations.

H: Ha! I guess that settles it.

W: What do you mean?

H: Well, where are the originals?

W: I don’t know.

H: No one does. Which makes inerrancy even sillier than it is when applied to the versions we can actually read — which are the versions we’re left to assume it applies to until we start doing our homework. I’ve spoken with several defenders of inerrancy, and this is how the conversation goes when I point out that we don’t have the autographs, the originals. That’s when they assure me that the originals were definitely error-free, as if that’s something they could know! Why not cut to the chase and just say, “My beliefs about inerrancy pertain to a Bible I’ve never seen and couldn’t read if I did. Wherever my Bible diverges from my beliefs about the Bible, my beliefs do not refer to my Bible!”

W: So, basically, Bible scholars are just assuming that the originals were inerrant, even though, based on what you’re telling me, none of them has ever examined the originals?

H: Exactly. That’s my understanding anyway. Which makes inerrancy a thoroughly untestable claim. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily wrong, but —

W: It just means that we can’t really know either way. But then… if the experts know all this, then… I guess that’s what you’ve been saying all along. I don’t know. I don’t like what you’re suggesting, but I’ve never really thought about this before, so it’s hard to know what to think.

H: That’s totally fine. I appreciate your honesty. The more we let others do our thinking for us, the stranger it will feel when we try to think for ourselves. And we’re bound to make mistakes, but God’s okay wi —

W: Hey, I think for myself!

H: If you say so.

W: Man, my head feels like it’s spinning. I just don’t understand… Why would we describe the Bible in a way it can’t live up to? That’s like lying to someone about how great your friend is, and then, when they finally meet your friend, they end up disappointed and probably trust you less.

H: Maybe it’s because you think otherwise they wouldn’t want to meet your friend. That’s why I say so much of this boils down to marketing. At some level, I suspect inerrancy is about shoring up the authority needed to peddle the faith. There’s no end to what we can justify to “get people saved.”

W: Wow. How dare you. My grandpa was a pastor, you know.

H: I know. That wasn’t a personal indictment. But you know about the Catholic church’s sale of “indulgences” during the Middle Ages. Don’t you think that same spirit still tugs at the hearts of people who make a living off the church? And all the more so for people whose status and reputation are built around the Bible. The sale of salvation is far subtler today, but the cardinal elements are still there: authority, damnation, payments, and absolution. If we think there’s no need for vigilance on this point, we’ll only be helping it along.

W: [glares] Perfect. I’m so worked up I could break something. Great! Now I won’t be able to sleep. You and your stupid questions!

Four Months Later

W: For the past few months, I’ve been reading the Bible a lot more closely than I used to. I have to say, it’s been a different experience, having the freedom to notice how strange some of the stories are. I also went back and looked up those three passages you mentioned. I see what you’re talking about now. I’m not saying I agree with you, but I see what the problem is.

H: That’s great! If it’s of any consolation, you’re not doing the Bible a disservice by really reading it. It is what it is. You’re not disrespecting it by finding out what it says.

W: Yeah, it feels a little awkward to read it with a questioning mindset rather than just assuming everything is water-tight. It’s kind of like the way you start to feel uncomfortable if you stare at someone for too long.

H: Right, you know that they probably feel like you’re scrutinizing them, so you look away — even if you’d like to keep looking — so as to reassure them that you’re not overly interested.

W: Haha, yeah.

H: Do you think it would help to remind yourself that questioning the Bible is not the same as questioning God? Not that there’s anything wrong with questioning God, but the Bible is not God.

W: Nothing wrong with questioning God? Have you read the end of Job lately?

H: Great point! And if that’s all the Bible said, it would be easy. But then what if I read about Gideon questioning God with his fleece or Jesus questioning God in Gethsemane? How can we see God as a loving Father who “will not give his son a stone if he asks for bread,” but who is closed off to his kids’ sincere doubts and fears?

W: You tell me.

H: This is one of the strange things about God. He seems to have this wildly hands-off approach to what we believe about Him. You can choose to see Him as angry, jealous, and vindictive, or you can choose to see Him as loving, patient, and understanding. And here’s the kicker: What we believe about Him shapes who He is for us. Believing in a good God can redeem the worst of things, while believing in a hateful God will spoil the best of things.

W: Or maybe He’s both.

H: Both hateful and loving?

W: No, I mean both the God who rages in the storm and the God who patiently reassures us in our fears.

H: Preach! Somedays I need me a God who can rage in a storm.

W: Okay, don’t get too excited — and I’m not saying I think this is a contradiction — but here’s something I’ve noticed. In Galatians 2, Paul says, “If righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.” But way back in Moses’ day, Deuteronomy 6 said, “If we are careful to observe every one of these commandments… that will be our righteousness.” And in Deuteronomy 30, God assures the people that, “This commandment I give you today is not too difficult for you…”

H: Hmm. So what do you make of it?

W: I don’t know. It just seems like God is saying that people can achieve righteousness through the law, which Paul then says makes the crucifixion pointless.

H: I think you’re just trying to turn me on with your shameless display of curiosity. And it’s working. But I won’t be deceived. I know how it worked out for Adam in the Garden.

W: You’re the shameless one!

H: “Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed.”

W: I’m pretty sure you have to believe in order for that to apply to you.

H: Oh right, belief: the sublime state of mind in which nothing needs to make sense.

W: Anyway, like I said, I’m not saying it’s necessarily a contradiction because there’s probably a reasonable explanation, but I’d never taken the time to compare those two passages before.

H: Well, you’re toast now. And so are our kids.

W: I know! What are we going to do?

H: I suggest lying to them. Or we could make sure they never become literate. And never meet anyone with a different point of view. We could just shackle them to the ol’

river bank.

W: Touché… I’m beginning to understand why the Catholic Church didn’t want laypeople reading the Bible.

H: Right. Questions threaten unstable power structures. And it’s probably for the same reason that Protestants, or at least Evangelicals, insist on the inerrancy of the Bible: without a Pope, the Bible is our final earthly authority.

W: Yeah, I’ve been wondering how this affects the Bible’s authority. I mean I still think it’s God’s word, but if He let little errors creep in here and there, how are we supposed to separate the errors from the truth?

H: Yes! That’s the question! If we don’t regard the text as impeccable at every point, why should we expect people to trust it on any particular point? So we came up with inerrancy — an over-generalization of an ancient literary mashup. And now the average Evangelical feels he has to defend the indefensible because if the Bible isn’t proclaimed as 100% flawless, then God won’t be seen as trustworthy.

W: Exactly.

H: That’s why I said earlier that the Bible is not God.

W: I guess I don’t see your point. I mean, that seems pretty obvious.

H: It may be obvious as a plain English sentence, but in a religious climate where the Bible is our final earthly authority, the two can become intertwined in a hurry.

W: Hmm. Especially where we use the Bible to prove how right we are.

H: Yep. Even though that was the program of those Jesus rebuked. With everyone else, he was gentle and encouraging. But with those who made it all about being right, using the authority of God to tyrannize their brothers, Jesus showed them they weren’t nearly as right as they thought.

W: Do you think that’s what the third commandment is talking about when it says not to take the Lord’s name in vain?

H: Yes! The more we think we’ve got God in our pocket, the more we need to be careful about how we try to use Him. Unfortunately, we tend to forget about the intellectual liabilities of trafficking in divine omnipotence.

W: Whatever that means.

H: It means you might wanna buckle up.

W: No, it means you’re probably gonna put me to sleep.

H: Likely. I’m talking about the cocktail of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias running on the horsepower of an omnipotent God. If you make the claim of inerrancy and then link that claim to infinite power and an inviolable character, you get a kind of unlimited intellectual license — a perfect motor for generating plausibility from any kind of input, including blatant contradictions.

W: Okaaay. But you still haven’t answered my question.

H: Just hang with me for a moment because your question has far-reaching implications. Think about what happens at conversion, which often comes before discipleship. A big part of coming to God entails admitting our own deficiency and confessing our need for help. In this state of mind, we have the conviction, “I know that I don’t know, but I need to believe that God knows.” So we pray the prayer and signal our acceptance of dozens of doctrines developed by hundreds of strangers over thousands of years — and all without reading the “fine print” on any of it. This pattern produces the oddity of people who have a visceral sense of allegiance to beliefs that they have never truly considered.

W: That sounds eerily like what I’ve always imagined people go through when joining a cult. Essentially submitting themselves to the superior wisdom of the cult leaders.

H: Right. And once you’re in, a big part of your role as a member is affirming the dogma of the group. In the case of the average church, this means affirming a culture that claims to be all about the truth, but won’t acknowledge the inconsistencies in its own Book. A culture where, unless you’re already committed to the same unquestioning dogma, you can check your mind at the door, because like you said, “His thoughts are higher than ours.” All of this shepherds the flock toward pretending things make sense even when they don’t — dutifully deferring to the “authority” of those who speak for God, who can never be wrong.

W: That’s sounds exactly like the kind of church I grew up in. The guy behind the pulpit had all the answers and the rest of us were just supposed to fall in line. I think we all more or less accepted that he had some kind of special connection to God. What’s the word for being drawn to something and disgusted by it at the same time?

H: Ambivalence?

W: I don’t know. I just remember feeling comforted by being part of the group with the right answers, but I could also see that the pastor used his authority to hurt people, and then no one could ever question him or hold him accountable because he was “God’s man” or anointed by God or whatever. It was like no matter what he did, he could never be wrong.

H: I think you just… yeah, you just got hotter.

W: Haha, tell me how so I can write it down.

H: There’s just something timeless and attractive about saying it like it is. There’s no moving forward until we can admit where we are, personally, corporately, and culturally. We’re still fixated on being right. Just like the legalists of Jesus’ day. Just like the secularists of our own day. Each have their own standard of rightness, but both are clamoring over the same idol.

W: But don’t you think it’s important to be as right as possible? Isn’t that why you’re hung up on this inerrancy thing?

H: I do think it’s important, because even at the most practical levels, being wrong has consequences — which everyone recognizes. But being right has consequences, too, and we seem perfectly willing to ignore that fact in our rush to grab the prize. In a world that worships intelligence, rightness is a kind of currency, you know. It’s a proxy for power. That’s what you saw in your childhood pastor.

W: But not all pastors are like him. He was power-hungry for sure, and totally full of himself. But there are lots of other pastors who genuinely care about their congregations.

H: I truly hope that’s the case, and it almost certainly is with some, but the incentives that attend the limelight of leadership make it very hard to tell. You remember what Jesus said about hired hands.

W: Remind me.

H: “The hired hand is not the shepherd, and the sheep are not his own. When he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away.” (John 10:12)

W: Oh no. And today almost all pastors are hired hands.

H: It’s just the nature of the beast. It doesn’t mean that all pastors are cowardly or greedy. It just means we should take James’ counsel to heart when he says, “Not many of you should become teachers.”

W: Because teachers will be judged more harshly.

H: Right. And what does it mean to be “A workman who accurately handles the word of truth”? (2 Timothy 2:15)

W: I’m not sure, but I’m guessing it’s not someone who pretends to have all the answers.

H: Who was it that tempted man with having all the answers, having the knowledge of God? It seems to me that’s still part of his program today: taunting us with the bait of omniscience (and the power and status that come with it). For believers, the bait can take the form of an inerrant answer-book. For non-believers, it’s the hope that science will eventually become omni-science, omniscience.

W: And all the while, the main counsel of Scripture, from Eden to Jesus, is to know God rather than trying to make up for not knowing Him by knowing things.

H: Yes! And we commodify even knowing Him, turning Him into yet another thing to be known, another possession to stand on to elevate ourselves — an act that nullifies the very thing it claims.

W: Yuck. Okay, enough beating around the bush. Tomorrow I want you to tell me how you see the Bible, personally, and if it has any authority in your life despite its lack of clarity on certain points. Deal?

H: Deal.

The Next Day

W: Okay, I’m ready to hear your plea.

H: What’s the question again?

W: How do you see the Bible now, if not as the inspired word of God?

H: I see the Bible as a collection of stories — often grisly, deeply human stories — about mankind’s struggle to know our Creator.

W: That’s it? Just stories?

H: Well, what else could it be?

W: How about the truth? What happened to all that stuff you said about the truth?

H: Truth is an ideal we aim for, and I think the people who wrote down the accounts in the Bible were aiming for that ideal as best they could.

W: But then where does God come in? Why do we call it the “Word of God” if it’s really just the words of men?

H: The word of God is that which communicates the mind of God. The Bible does this through human language. Jesus, the Word made flesh, did it through a human body. The Holy Spirit does it through direct impressions on our inner man, our spirit, our mind, or heart, or soul — whatever you want to call it.

W: Yes! And that’s how the Bible was written: The Holy Spirit inspiring the writers with what to say.

H: To some extent, yes. Which seems to be the case more in some books than others. Isaiah, for example, essentially channels God’s stream of consciousness for chapter after chapter — and says he’s doing exactly that — whereas the gospel writers seem to be relying more on memory, personal experience, and third-party testimony. Not one of them begins by saying, “This is what God told me to say.”

W: [Groans in frustration]

H: I know it’s not as straightforward as we might want it to be. I think we should see the books of the Bible as the accounts of earnest seekers of God who have come before us. If we ourselves are truly seeking “His kingdom and his righteousness,” then we should take their accounts just that seriously — as the discoveries of previous seekers. The Bible doesn’t have to be technically immaculate in order to be a vital trail of bread crumbs left by others who have sought the same path. To me, ideas like inerrancy are the watchwords of those who want to deify a document in God’s absence, and some whose authoritarian agendas call for an invincible bludgeon.

W: [Glares in silence]

H: What? Why are you looking at me like that?

W: You!

H: Oh. So this isn’t about the Bible after all.

W: [More silence]

H: Do you want to tell me what’s going on?

W: You’re just above it all, aren’t you?

H: What do you mean?

W: You won’t be accountable to anyone, not even God! You just pick the Bible apart until it doesn’t have any authority in your life!

H: Hmm. Okay.

W: Right? This way you can have the final say about everything. You get to play God.

H: That’s one way to see it.

W: What other way is there!?

H: Well, you’re right in one sense. There is a part of me that wants to have the final say. But there have also been times when God has urged me to do the very last thing I wanted to do, and on some of those occasions, I’ve done it His way instead of mine.

W: And other times, you’ve thrown me to the wolves!

H: I’m sorry. You’re right, and I’m sorry. I’m not Jesus. But you know as well as I do that paying lip service to the Bible doesn’t make people perfect.

W: It’s better than nothing.

H: It’s both better and worse. A good standard is better than nothing, but good standards are often badly abused. That’s the thing about authority: it can easily kill what it’s meant to protect. I think you’re looking for love and security, and you’d like to be able to use certain Bible verses to squeeze those things out of me. Isn’t that about the size of it?

W: [Staring daggers at the husband]

H: Isn’t that the pattern you experienced growing up?

W: Whatever. Just get away from me. You’re always right anyway.

H: Just wait. Don’t check out on me, please. This is important. There’s a certain parallel here, between the love-crushing authority of the Bible… I mean, do you really want to be loved by someone just because they’re technically obligated to you?

W: Like I said: it’s better than nothing.

H: But why settle when it could be so much better than that?

W: Because I’m scared, okay! Is that what you want me to say?

H: Yes, if that’s the truth. Man, just hearing you say it is a breath of fresh air. Throughout our whole marriage, I’ve felt a kind of silent pressure (and sometimes not so silent) to play along with certain unspoken expectations. It’s like you just want me to get in line and play my part in a charade designed to protect you from something inside yourself.

W: Well, you don’t have to do it anymore, okay?

H: What do you mean?

W: What’s the point of staying married if you don’t want to love me?

H: Whoa, I didn’t say that. What I’m trying to tell you is that love isn’t something you squeeze out of people. If you have to pressure someone to get it, what you’re getting probably isn’t love.

W: Good to know. And don’t speak to me like a child.

H: Look, this isn’t personal. It’s just how love works. Slaves may serve a dictator, but they don’t love him. Even Jesus, who apparently had “all authority in heaven and on earth,” didn’t go around demanding to be obeyed. We emphasize authority at the cost of love, which is what I’ve tried to tell you about our relationship for years.

W: Yeah? Well, I’ve tried the freedom thing and look where it got me.

H: That’s not because the freedom was wrong, it’s because you’re married to a human being. It should be obvious by now that I’m not perfect, and I can’t save you. I can’t save you from yourself, and I certainly can’t save you from me.

W: I don’t need or want you to save me.

H: Then why are you so devastated when I fail in that department?

W: Because you’re supposed to take care of me! We made vows! You promised!

H: I didn’t promise to be superhuman. Or did I? Maybe marriage vows are an ideal, like truth. But we’ve both let each other down in our own ways. What did you expect?

W: How have I let you down?

H: [Deep breath, long sigh] How to answer in a way you’ll be able to hear?

W: [Folds arms across her chest]

H: You’ve said throughout our marriage that you want to be one with me. But if I can be brutally honest, I think the dark side of that impulse is the desire to turn me into an extension of yourself — so that I’ll never say or do anything that makes you uncomfortable.

W: No, it’s that I want us to be on the same page!

H: As long as that page is your page.

W: But it used to be your page, too! And what’s so wrong with expecting my husband to not make me uncomfortable?

H: I never agreed to it. You never asked me if I would dedicate my life to being a living shield for your ego, all while pretending that you’re a well-adjusted adult.

W: Excuse you?

H: Oh, you liked that? How about some more? How about the Christian perfectionism you learned growing up? Not in the pursuit of holiness, but in order to worship at the altar of human acceptance. But it’s not just a family culture thing. It’s not even strictly a religious thing. We live in an age of superficiality that amounts to a denial of our humanity. It gives people two options: play along with the pretense or don’t play at all. This idiocy sends people into hiding just for being normal. It’s like you’re playing a game, putting on an act, and hoping other people won’t notice. But at some level, the act has become normal to you, making it not an act, but just how you do things — perhaps how you think everyone does things. And yet at the same time, despite the sense of normalcy, it’s also something you feel compelled to hide.

W: I never should have married you.

H: Just let me say this, okay? It’s been on my mind for about a decade. Perfectionism is isolating. It’s practically antithetical to intimacy — in that a perfectionist has to hide her ugly side, and therefore can never really be known. And of course, if no one can know you, then no one can reject you. But more importantly, if no one ever really knows you, then no one can truly accept you. Even if the whole world adores you, all of their adoration is directed at the thing that isn’t you — driving the real you even deeper into hiding. My experience of being married to you is that you don’t want to be known — not by me, anyway. And when I show that I see you more than you’d like me to, flames practically shoot out of your eyes. You become visibly disturbed, as if I’d just walked over your grave.

W: I hate you!

H: And then you yell at me. But at least I finally understand why. For years, I could sense that something was missing, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. The truth is, you’ve used our marriage as a place to hide from intimacy — from being known — because (correct me if I’m wrong) you saw the commitment of marriage as your best shot at securing permanent acceptance.

W: [Head in her hands, hot tears spilling from her eyes] You don’t have to do it anymore, okay? We don’t have to do this anymore. We can each go our own ways and live our own lives.

H: That’s not what I want. Don’t you get it? I want you. I want the real you, the whole you, the person who’s been missing from our marriage.

W: [Sits in contemplation for a long moment] I don’t really believe you. Because I’ve tried — every now and then, I bring out a little of the real me, and you almost always shoot it down.

H: I can own that. I’m sure, to some extent, I’ve made it harder to be who you really are. I can be so critical. But then also, you’re poised to see criticism even when there is none.

W: It’s a defense mechanism. Assuming the worse protects me from the pain of disappointment. At least that’s what I tell myself.

H: I love it. That’s beautiful. Because it’s true. Thank you for telling me that.

W: Uh, you’re welcome, I guess.

H: Maybe I’ve been asking too much of you, just as you’ve been asking too much of me. You wanted me to be a kind of stand-in savior, while I was asking you to love me with God’s perfect, unflinching kind of friendship. And you were probably just reflecting back to me the same lack of grace that I’ve shown you.

W: Are you saying that if I’d been a better friend to you, you wouldn’t have looked for it outside our marriage?

H: I think there’s some truth to that. Not that that’s any excuse. Even if you’d been the consummate partner — which, in many ways, you are — I would still have my demons, my defects, and my self-serving desires.

W: But what does it mean to be the kind of friend you’re talking about?

H: Hmm. I suppose the way I experience it from God is that He’s willing to go anywhere with me. It’s like the psalmist says, “Even if I make my bed in hell, you’re still there with me.” And when I ask him, in my spirit, “Are you going to stop me from doing this?“ He seems to say, “I wouldn’t dream of it.“

W: I don’t know if I can do that.

H: That’s okay. Like I said, it’s probably too much to ask of anyone.

W: But I will try.

H: Okay.

W: And I’ll try to be better about showing up with my full self. I’m going to need you to be patient with me, though. There are probably parts of me that I barely know anymore, and maybe some that I’ve never even met.

H: I can be patient. We’ve got time. If it’s okay with you, I plan on giving it the rest of my life.

Author’s Note

The point of this dialogue is not to undermine Scripture, but to offer a discussion of some of the ways in which dogma can undermine both institutional credibility and personal intimacy.

The historical case for the reliability of the Bible is extremely strong. When compared with other historical documents, it’s in a league of its own. No other ancient account even comes close in terms of 1) the sheer number of copies, 2) the fidelity between copies, and 3) the interval between the events recorded and the time of writing.

Because of this, the above discussion will strike some readers as needlessly contentious. Why join the growing chorus of detractors? But I would suggest that such discussions are needful precisely because of the detractors. Do we have the courage to listen to what they’re saying, to hear their pain, and to wonder how we might do better?

If we would be ready to “give an answer for the hope we have,” we must also “give the devil his due.” In my opinion, it’s uncharitable and even smug to pretend the other side has no case. If we cannot empathize with our detractors, it will only affirm their opposition.

I hope this fictional conversation has had at least some of that mysterious ring of truth for you. Although I’m sure I’ve missed the mark in many ways, the perceived relevance of this discussion will likely hinge on where you are in your own journey of faith. For some, it will seem needlessly contentious. For others, it will feel like finally being felt.

Value for value: If you enjoyed this read, here’s an easy way to send the author a token of your appreciation.