This article appeared in the Phelps County Focus print edition on April 18, 2024, and is now available online. Please visit their site to support my publisher!
Have you read the Bible? There’s some strange stuff in there. In Numbers 21, the LORD sends poisonous serpents among the Israelites, and then commands Moses to make a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. Anyone bitten by a poisonous serpent was healed by simply looking at the bronze serpent. Huh. I missed that first aid lesson in my Boy Scout training.
The Bible is also full of factual contradictions. Who killed Goliath? Well, in 1 Samuel 17, David did. That’s the story we all know. But in 2 Samuel 21, Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim did. Huh.
The more I read the Bible, the more strange stuff and contradictions I find. I grew up in the church, but then as I reached adulthood, my doubts began to grow. How could the sun stand still for Joshua? How could Elijah call down fire from heaven? How could a dead man come back to life? Doubts upon doubts upon doubts. The Gospel seemed like a house of cards. Some of those cards were pretty flimsy—concepts and events that I just couldn’t accept—and so the whole thing collapsed.
A lot of people have a faith like that. Some people claim that there are only two choices: take the Bible literally and accept everything in it as factually true, or take the Bible literally and reject it in its entirety because of its internal contradictions and its contradictions with science and known historical facts. Yet there is a third option.
Doubts are real, and are the natural result of taking the Bible seriously. If you start with a literal reading and use the inherent contradictions to reject it all, then you don’t have to seriously consider its teachings and its insights into the way to live with one another. But if you do take it seriously, you can see that God pervades the text from Genesis right through to Revelation. You can see that God’s messengers taught the Israelites what they needed to know in order to become a priestly nation. You can see that the major and minor prophets gave piercing commentaries on their own societies that still ring true today. And you can see that Jesus revealed the best way to live.
You can accept all of that without believing that Jesus was raised from the dead. I’ve heard people say that Jesus was a great prophet, or their role model. But he was more than that. He was the Son of the living God, the Source of our being, the Word made flesh. He showed us how to live, and how to die. He showed us that there is always hope. He showed us that he has conquered sin and death forever, and he invited us to live into his eternal kingdom now.
It’s OK to doubt what you have been taught. God can handle it. God is strong enough. In doubting, we find the flaws in our house of cards, and in seeking answers to our questions, we end up with a more flexible and resilient relationship with our risen Lord.
The Greek word in the Bible we translate as “faith” means something more like faithfulness or fidelity. Jesus doesn’t ask us to abandon our intellect or to stop seeking answers. Rather, he asks us to stay faithful to our calling despite our doubts. And that calling is to build God’s kingdom, to live into God’s kingdom, to forgive and to be forgiven, to work for the reconciliation of all, to create a community where everyone can thrive.
Doubt your beliefs. Doubt what you’ve been taught. Doubt the Bible, doubt all of the creeds from throughout the centuries, doubt everything. But never doubt that God loves you—you personally, each person, all of us together. Never doubt that God seeks a future where we can all bask in the glory of his love. And go and live as if you and everyone you meet are on a path that leads to that glory in Christ’s eternal kingdom. Amen.