3 Reasons People Reject the Bible

The second most read post in this blog had to do with the Bible. What's interesting is that it's one of the more recent posts as this is being written. Several other posts existed before it and only one other post has been read more--The New Exodus. This tells me that blogs about the Bible are worth revisiting. It was entitled, 7 Tips on How to Read the Bible.

But, what if before people are even interested in how to read the Bible, they're still stuck on why they would even read it in the first place? If you're skeptical about the Christian faith and the Bible, you may think this list is barely scratching the surface. We get it. It's not meant to be an exhaustive list by any means. Please know that much of the audience I have in mind while writing this is those followers of Jesus who can't seem to empathize with the fact that many people still struggle with the Bible. Simply responding with, "Well, just read it; it's simple!" or "Why don't you read the Bible, it's about God! Don't you believe in God?" or "If you just read it, you can find out how not to go to hell" (of course, forgetting that skeptics may not even believe in the concept of hell to begin with).

This may come as a surprise to you, but most people who struggle with Christianity or the Bible don't find our little quips all that compelling. So, let me reiterate the main thought from 7 Tips on How to Read the Bible

Have some humility. 

Don't downplay a skeptic's questions. Jesus seemed to have grace, patience, and compassion for some of these folks.

Take a look at 3 reasons why people tend to reject the Bible:

1. It's too hard to understand: the Bible contains context that we don't always know without looking at other resources to compare our notes. It contains words, concepts, ideas, and names that are totally foreign to us in our modern understanding of the world. It's ok to acknowledge this. There are complexities when it comes to the Scriptures, and reading it on our own can be confounding if we don't have anyone else to help us read it. Here's where it gets tricky in our culture; many of us think we are medical experts about a pain or ailment we may experience simply by going to WebMD. We self-diagnose our problem by reading a couple lines on the site, unless, of course, our problem is much more severe and much more complex. Most of us will eventually go to a doctor who has actually studied medicine and who develops a relationship with us over time. However, when it comes to the Bible, somehow we're expected to all be experts in the Scriptures if we simply own a Bible. Just have a quiet time and read your Bible by yourself and come away with a clear understanding of what it says. There's a problem. Scripture is meant to be relational. If we read it only by ourselves and expect to come away with a "clear understanding" by ourselves, then perhaps the scriptures weren't all that clear. If something in life is hard to go through, we usually seek out relationship so as to not do it alone. Why would we expect the Bible--a collection of books about life itself--to be any different? Why would we expect the people of God's word to be void of complexity when we have complexity in our lives?
2. It's used as a tool for abuse: the Bible has been used for centuries to enslave people, to perpetuate one's greed, to disempower women, to quell intellect and scientific discovery, to push away people of other faiths, and to neglect people who don't fit a particular sexual identity. Notice that I said, "the Bible has been used" to do these things. The Bible itself, an inanimate object filled with words cannot necessarily be responsible for said actions of people. How one interprets and uses those words has far greater implications. While those uses have been, and in some cases, continue to be abusive; it's important to also acknowledge the many great and transformative uses of the Bible. Hospitals have been started, marriages have been healed, orphans have been adopted, schools have been started, addicts have been made clean, and those with mental illness have found refuge. This looks like the ministry of Jesus that very few would argue is unanimously important.
3. It's too violent, irrelevant, and outdated: many of the stories in the Bible make it seem that mass genocide and a brutal killing of a man who claimed to be the Son of God seems violent. Christians may argue that people watch violent movies all the time or read violent books all the time, so they shouldn't have a problem with the Bible. The problem that skeptics suggest is that this God who is supposed to embody love seems to have a violent way of going about showing that love. I would suggest the people of the Bible are a product of their time. Violence is how the ancients understood the world. Violence is not isolated to just the Hebrew Scriptures. Ancient people who didn't believe in the God of Israel may have believed in other gods that had their own literature describing the formation of the universe. Stories were told of gods battling with one another in order to bring about an arrangement of stars or form the mountains. Sometimes, we expect these ancient people to think and behave just like we would. We have an unrealistic expectation that because we understand the world using the scientific method, that ancient writing describing a primitive world should somehow be void of any meaning that could transcend time and space. And yet, what we are exposed to in the scriptures are people not all that different from us. They struggle with control, lust for power, greed, and sexuality. They don't know how to relate to people who are unlike them. They long for something transcendent and greater meaning in their existence. Last time I checked, in my pastoral work, this is the basis for every conversation I have in the modern world.

If you're a Christian who engages in conversation with people who struggle to believe the same things as you, please consider the possibility that their resistance to the Bible is not because they are a militaristic atheist out to get you and persecute you for your faith. They just have some reasonable questions. Don't use their skepticism as a justification for your frustration.

If you're someone who struggles with Christianity because of your resistance to the Bible, it's understandable. This list is not complete. Questions are ok. But even more, relationship is important. We, Christians, are broken, too. We don't always do relationships perfectly, even though we profess a God who is believed to be the embodiment of perfect love. We confess the very real possibility that we have been complicit in misrepresenting the intent of the Bible. We hope that you continue to read it and continue to bring your questions.