Don't You Love Contradictions?

(I’m writing this as I listen to “In the Light” by DC Talk. Though I am a little young, I miss 

them.  I’m glad Kevin Max is with Audio Adrenaline and Michael Tait is with the Newsboys. 

TobyMac has been successful by himself for a while, now.)

  Imagine this scenario in court: the defendant is masterfully evading every jab and thrust from the 

prosecution. Eloquent and convincing, he has everyone in the courtroom on his side. But, alas, the final

 question of the cross-examination is his undoing. The jury rules that yes, it was the butler, in the 

ballroom, with a stick of butter. But… how? The defendant contradicted himself. He could not have 

possibly been in the kitchen and in the bathroom at the same time. The rooms are on opposite 

ends of the mansion; he couldn’t have moved that fast. The butler is guilty.

            I am not an expert in legal lingo (or court proceedings), so please forgive me if I made any 

mistakes. But anyway, the point of the example was to show how contradictions really mess up the 

point someone is trying to make. So when someone tells Christians that the Bible is full of 

contradictions, this accusation cannot be taken lightly. By saying that the Bible contradicts itself, the 

person is implying that we can’t trust it. And if we can’t trust it, (fill in the blank with what you think 

that means for Christianity).

My next couple of posts will deal with supposed Bible contradictions, and how the discrepancy 

disappears when closely examined. But first, whenever someone says that the Bible is full of 

contradictions, you should ask, “Such as?” The majority of people have heard the whole “the Bible is 

full of contradictions” from someone else, the internet, or “experts”. They haven’t really investigated 

the issue or studied any examples. They’ll either tell you they heard that from someone else (which 

makes your job easy; you don’t have to defend any specific accusations) or will make a couple of 

feeble attempts at creating one (which is also easy. Just try the body-language tactic I use on my 

siblings. Whenever they are doing a bad job of implicating me in any family crime, I 

cock my head to the side and raise an eyebrow. It works every time. They say, “Okay, 

okay! So you didn’t steal those cookies.”)

  But occasionally you’ll run across someone who has an iron-clad example where it does appear  

that there is a contradiction. I’ll be dealing with a couple of those.

P.S. There are some great books that deal with some of the most popular contradictions. Here is the 

link: http://www.answersingenesis.org/store/product/demolishing-supposed-bible-contradictions-set/

If God Exists, How Could He Allow (fill in the blank)?

            One of the greatest arguments against God, or at least the God of the Bible, is the existence of pain and suffering. The people who use this are usually in two groups (though the line is often blurry): 1) the hardened skeptic, 2) the individual who sincerely wants an answer. The former uses the “if God exists, how could He allow?” argument as a smokescreen. He or she doesn’t really care for an answer. The latter wants to believe that there is a loving, all-powerful Creator, but sees a contradiction between the supposedly fluffy Santa Clause God of Christianity and reality.

            I plan on writing many, many posts on this subject, but I’ll limit my answer to the atheistic skeptic. A quick note, there is not ONE answer to this argument. There are several factors that go into how to answer this question. 1) Is the skeptic an atheist? 2) If not, what exactly does the skeptic believe? 3) Is the person asking it going through personal pain and suffering? For the purpose of this post, I am answering the atheistic skeptic.

            The atheistic skeptic believes in evolution. We are the result of chance. There is no purpose in life beyond eating, drinking, sleeping, procreating, and making sure our offspring survive to repeat the cycle. There is no supernatural anything.

            The problem with an atheist asking the question “God can’t exist because we see pain and suffering” is that there is an easy rebuttal. A Christian should ask, “do you think pain and suffering is bad?” The majority of atheists, if they have any heart, will say that yes, it is bad. The Christian could then respond, “Why is pain and suffering bad?” The atheist has no logical answer.

            By admitting that pain and suffering is bad, the atheist is admitting that there is morality. There is an absolute standard of right and wrong. Murder, rape, and theft are wrong, while caring, helping, and serving are right.

            But morality as humans know it, in the sense of the dictionary definition, is completely opposite of their worldview. Remember, in an evolutionary world, we got here by murdering those who were unfit, raping those who could produce desirable offspring, and stealing things we needed to survive. There is no right or wrong. There is just survival, pain, and death.

            So if evolution is true, we would not be any more moral than animals. But we are more moral than animals, which means evolution is not true. If evolution is not true, than the Bible is. Only Christianity can account for God giving us morality. So whenever the atheist says, “God can’t exist because He wouldn’t allow…” he is saying that he is moral, which only makes sense if God exists. If God didn’t exist, we would never complain about pain and suffering. Those two things would just be our reality; we wouldn’t know anything else.

            But because God ingrained the truth in us, we know there is a better life. We look at our crazy world and know that things shouldn’t be like this. We know that there has to be something better.

Where can we find answers? The Bible. Yeah, that book that everyone loves to bash (but loves to watch for some reason). Check it out. It’s fascinating.

P.S. Whole books have been written on this subject. This is just touching the surface of an ocean of answers. All this post was trying to do was show that, by asking why pain and suffering exist, there has to be a standard for right and wrong. Who gave us that standard? Not evolution, I can tell you that.

Fighting over a Book (to be Literal or Not to be Literal)

         (All my posts up to now have been foundational to my blog. This is the first one to deal with how to deal with a controversial topic on the Bible)

            When reading a book, knowing the genre is extremely important. For instance, when reading (the late) Tom Clancy, you have to keep in mind that it is fiction. The plot is made up, though the details are very realistic. But while it is fiction, it is meant to be literal. To understand the plot, you have to understand the writing style.

            Contrast that to a poem. It is meant to be symbolical. Maybe some of the details are literal, but overall, the meaning becomes apparent when you understand the objects or feelings and what they represent. When I say “my love is like a fire”, I do not mean my love will burn you into a crisp. It is symbolic.

            Can you take this logic to the Bible? Yes, you can, otherwise anyone could read it and come up with his or her own conclusions. “Well, I like to murder people, therefore the Ten Commandments can’t be literal. All God was saying is that human life is valuable, and when possible, try to preserve it.” No, once the genre is established to be literal (as the book of Exodus is), there is no symbolism or wishy-washy generalities in that area of the Bible. It is to be understood as 2 + 2 = 4 is to be understood.

            Paul’s writings are literal, though there is some symbolism. Overall, the symbolism is dependent on the literal truths established in the surrounding verses (context). Proverbs, on the other hand, contains poetic language full of general truths. For instance, it talks about parenting. When you train up your children in the Lord, when they are old they will not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6). But this can't be true. Some of the greatest bashers of Christianity were raised in the church and/or by godly parents. Does that make Proverbs wrong? No, because it is not to be taken literally (as in 2 + 2 = 4), though what it states will generally come true. So… what does this have to do with Genesis? Everything, as it will be shown.

            I do not pretend to be an expert in the writing styles of different cultures. But, from what I have heard and read, the beginning books of the Bible were meant to be literal history. You will not find people who read the following books and believed them to be similar in style to Job or Psalms. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, etc, were written as if they actually happened, and they happened in the manner described in their own books. If you don't believe me, read a psalm or a proverb, then read the beginning of Genesis. Yeah, they aren't similar at all. What does this all mean for Genesis 1-11? It means, quite simply, that the author of Genesis (Moses) wrote the beginning of the universe exactly how he (inspired by God) thought it happened.

            Now this is where I would normally lose the evolutionists. They would say, “Evolution has shown” or something like that, and then stop reading the rest of the post. WE ARE NOT GOING IN THAT DIRECTION. A discussion on science is for another time (I’ll get there eventually). All we are talking about is the best way to read a book, then applying that same logic to the Bible. It’s really that simple.

Part II

            Now that we’ve established that it is necessary to know the genre of a book (including books of the Bible) to understand its meaning, let’s move on to the resulting inconsistency of those who like to mesh the literal with the symbolic within a single book.

            Imagine this conversation:

            “Hey Jimmy, I want to make money one day.”

            “Well, Rob, the only way to become rich is be a Christian. We have eternal riches.”

            Rob says, “I know, I know, but I want to make a lot of money running a restaurant, then maybe I can branch out and have multiple restaurants, and–”

            “No, Jesus said to fulfill the Great Commission. The goal of life is not to make money–”

            “I’m a Christian too, you know. I’m talking about the physical means of taking care of myself.”

            “But you are aiming to build riches in a place where they won’t last!” Jimmy says.

            And so on, and so forth. You see, Rob is talking about physical money and success. Nothing is wrong with physical things. Jimmy is looking at things from a spiritual perspective. Yes, money ultimately doesn’t matter in the big scheme of life, but Rob wasn’t talking about eternity. But because Jimmy was looking at things from the wrong perspective, he understood the conversation differently. While this is far from a perfect example (people will probably love to poke holes in it), I will try to use it to illustrate a point.

            Because Christian evolutionists look at something that was meant to be literal the incorrect way, they end up with the wrong result. They look at Genesis 1-11 and say, “I believe it is meant to be symbolic” because they do not understand the genre behind Genesis. Genesis was meant to be taken as literal as your dad when he says, “You’re grounded.” Imagine responding, “Oh, I don’t think you really mean that, because I don’t like it." Would you do that? No, you will take that punishment at face value. Why? Because that is how the speaker (or writer) intended it to be taken.

            If you are a creationist, you can expose this error by asking a Christian evolutionist if Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were literal people. Most likely, they will say yes. Why? They would say because Genesis was being literal there. Then you can ask them why Moses was being symbolic in the first 11 chapters (give or take a few chapters), and literal the rest of the way? There is no logical answer to that. By logical, I mean a chain of reasoning you can apply across the board to other books and speakers and so on. It basically comes down to:

1.  All of Genesis was literal

2.  None of Genesis was literal

3.  Genesis is wrong either way

            Some Christians will try to mesh the first two, but the method in which they do that is arbitrary. Why is the first chapter symbolic? Why is the 12th chapter not? The method in which they decide what goes and what does not is completely inconsistent with how they read other books. Why would they turn around and do that to the Bible?

            When a writer makes a literal point, he is either correct or incorrect. Once you understand the genre behind Genesis (literal history), Moses is either correct or incorrect to say the earth was created in six days. There is no other option. Why? Because Moses left no other option. Some don’t like what Moses said, so they have to try to create another option. But why do they do that to the Bible when they don’t do that to any other author they disagree with? They just stop and say he or she is wrong. They don’t proceed and try to force a correct meaning out of the author’s text. Again, this is being inconsistent.

P.S. A great website to go to for more on this subject is Answers in Genesis: http://www.answersingenesis.org/