How (Not) to Read the Bible: Making Sense of the Anti-women, Anti-science, Pro-violence, Pro-slavery and Other Crazy-Sounding Parts of Scripture

by Dan Kimball

All too often, we take a nice-sounding Bible verse and apply it directly to our life. For instance, Isaiah 12:2 says, “Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The LORD, the LORD himself, is my strength and my defense.” We like to claim that Bible verse and own it. We take comfort in it personally, which is a good thing to do, as God is our strength and defense. That verse is truth for all times because it reflects the unchanging character and nature of God. But we avoid claiming two verses later in the same book. Isaiah 34:2–3 says, “He will totally destroy them, he will give them over to slaughter. Their slain will be thrown out, their dead bodies will stink; the mountains will be soaked with their blood.” Can you picture that Bible promise as the theme verse for the annual women’s retreat, with a coffee mug gift for each woman who attends? Not all verses are written to us and apply to us. And we often pick and choose by taking the nice-sounding Bible verses and claiming they are true and applying them to our lives, while skipping past the negative crazy-sounding ones. We need to stop and ask: who was the Bible verse originally written to and why? As we will discover, many of the Bible verses that don’t make sense to us today usually made sense to the original readers.