the bible is messed up

The Bible is messed up.

How many of us have heard that comment?

And honestly, I have to agree. The Bible is messed up.

But does that mean God is messed up too?

"Everyone did what was right in their own eyes." 

This refrain or one similar to it is repeated in the Bible. In some ways it's so simple and straightforward, and yet in its simplicity, I've missed it. 

This phrase has always been synonymous with sin to me. And while that is an accurate interpretation, it's more than that. It's more than the action of sin and even more than the heart posture of sin; it describes what leads to rebellion, the very core of the rebellious heart. 

It's easy to see the Israelites one-dimensionally. Like they see evil, acknowledge it for what it is, and decide that they want to do it anyway. But for the most part, that's not how we pursue evil; we pursue evil by calling it good.

The Israelites turn from God's commands because He has told them that their pursuits are evil, but their own hearts tell them that their pursuits are right. They're listening to their gut . . . And that's the part I've missed.  

I see willful disobedience because of the allure of identified sin; I don't see willful disobedience because they have placed their own judgement and desires above God's.

Does this not reflect our own hearts?

Very few people want to be viewed as evil. For the most part, we all want to be seen as good, as likable, and even as moral though our terms for defining that may vary. And so we do not see our sin as sin. That's our natural human defense.

What we are doing is right--it makes sense to us as right--and if God opposes it, God is the one who is wrong.  

And if God is wrong, His commands must either be brought under and sifted by our own moral authority or God has to be discarded completely. Our primary rebellion is not the action of sin but the hearts placed above God's authority.  

And for most people doing what is right in our own eyes is not without restrictions. Too many reduce those turning away from God to those who want to do whatever they want. But most of us can see the cracks in that lifestyle. For the most part we have to create a whole other ethic and morality to support those beliefs and actions that are inconsistent with God while still allowing us to fight for something above ourselves. Because most of us want something higher than ourselves. In regards to licentiousness we might fight for control over our bodies and freedom from oppression and inequality; for legalism we might fight for morality itself (and whatever we define that as). But in every fight, we deceive ourselves. 

A life ethic of our own (or our culture's) design may even challenge us as individuals, but it remains a tool of self-justification. It allows us to feel that we are righteous by making some of our sins into part of our cause. 

And this is where the Israelites were. So far gone that their hearts were deceived by the very nature of right and wrong. Unable to be corrected by an authoritative God whose authority they failed to recognize.

And yet God repeats a cycle of grace that continually invites us back in. Only through His loving pursuit does the sinner draw back to Him. 

In a lot of ways the Israelites exemplify a rebellious heart in a culture surrounded by God. We can find our similarities in a lot of places, and yet so many who read the Bible with a critical heart reject the Israelites. They are, after all, the chosen people of this terrible God.

And while their exile and times of judgement affirm God's arrogance and wrath--instead of His patience and mercy over a long period of time--I often see people pointing more to what God did through them and not to them as evidence of His evil. We don't want to identify with God's chosen people when we don't want God, but we also have more details and thus more ammunition on the Israelites than on any other people group in the Bible. 

We can see the evil of individuals, leaders, and the nation as a whole and criticize God for failing to judge them sooner.

We can see the way God judges others through them and find further evidence of His cruelty. 

We know the evil of the Israelites, but the Bible doesn't list the cruelties of the nations being judged: skinning people, burying them alive and cutting out their tongue until they die of thirst, burning infants on the searing altar of sacrifice before the body slowly slips into the furnace. If it did, we'd likely switch our story to our previous critique: why didn't God judge them sooner? Why does He proclaim warning after warning after warning, giving them hundreds of years to turn from their wickedness before judging them? But as is, we miss the evil that would earn our condemnation and so we self-righteously condemn God instead. 

And that's why good teaching on the Bible is so important. Without the historical or literary context, we have to leave a lot to trust, but we can't expect people who do not know God to trust Him. 

I had a lot of these same perspectives as I read the Old Testament growing up, and I didn't know what to do with them. For so long I struggled with how the Bible could be so messed up and yet God could be good. I trusted God, but how could I?

I came to the Bible looking for the hero in each story instead of knowing that God was the only true hero hidden within its pages. That the people could do good or be favored by God and still compromise and fail; that the only example I could fully trust was the one set by Jesus. That the people could do evil and yet maintain a capacity for good because God can redeem even the worst of sinners; even when we don't like thinking of ourselves as on their level of sin. That God could use evil to work for good without affirming it. That the only lesson found in stories of rape, murder, and dismemberment might be how wicked the people had become. 

This was eye-opening for me, and yet I still slip so seamlessly back into this "hero/lesson" mentality when I read Scripture. Like with the story of Jephthah. 

In exchange for victory over his enemies in battle, he made a vow to God that he would sacrifice whatever first came out of his door, not expecting it to be his daughter. 

I remember spending hours scouring the internet trying to find an explanation for this story. I knew God was opposed to human sacrifice, and yet here one was laid out plainly in the Bible. 

I finally found an explanation that abated my worry. It parsed the language in a way so as to indicate that Jephthah probably dedicated his daughter as a virgin priest, sacrificing her future marriage and his role as her father to God. This may or may not have been true, but it appeased me enough to move on. 

It wasn't until years later when I heard two pastors discussing this story that I'd realized what I had done. I'd once again let a human act for God in my interpretation of the story. I'd once again sought to justify God by the actions of fallen and flawed people, but these pastors set me straight. 

They reminded me that God never asked Jephthah for a sacrifice. The warrior had made the vow on his own and foolishly so. And when his foolishness was revealed, he stuck to it instead of letting God's character--the God who had commanded time and time again against human sacrifice--inform his actions. God will never command us or want us to keep a vow that requires sin to carry it out; He will never lead us into sin. 

I read the Bible so narrowly at times, and whether you believe or do not believe in God, we will always come to His Word with ourselves. Our perspectives, interpretations, biases. That's why it's essential that the Holy Spirit breathes into our readings. That's why we have to test our hearts against Scripture instead of Scripture against our hearts.

Sometimes we'll even find that the Bible gives us answers to the very questions that plague us. 

How often have I read God command genocide only to see the people living and breathing in the chapters which follow? Heard the Israelites proclaim the complete decimation of a people in battle only to see them living together later? And this is more than a refugee group surviving and growing into a nation again. In the same passages where God commands a nation's utter ruin, He gives the Israelites rules for engaging with them in business, marriage, etc. Even if we don't understand how this is possible, we can spot the inconsistency, and we can pull on the loose thread. But even years after I've heard an explanation that shows how these can be consistent with each other (Middle Eastern military accounts used the language of total decimation to address victory over another people), I still so easily default back to my discomfort. And not my discomfort at judgement or sin or anything like that, but that discomfort which questions God and continually asks how this God could be good.

And yet He shows His goodness over and over. 

As important as it is to study and understand the Bible, however, we'll always have pieces that at times feel inconsistent. Not only in Scripture but in the Church today and in the ways God moves. God makes sense throughout time--He is consistent and He is good--and while He doesn't always make sense to us, He is faithful to reveal Himself in our questions. And as in any relationship, answered doubt after answered doubt eventually leads to a response of trust when questions arise. And that doesn't mean blindly moving forward and bottling up questions because God must have a reason but rather resting within His safety and security, knowing His character, as we seek to find that character revealed in every question. He is good and just and after our best, and when that is not the God we see, we have to ask why. Is it our lack of understanding or our resistant heart? Both have been true of me. And although, He does not need to prove Himself, He does over and over again because He loves us and wants to be known by us.