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

to understand what Bible verses mean we need to understand how these verses fit in the whole Bible.

How we read and study the Bible drastically changes depending on how we view it. At the heart of all the confusion about these Bible verses is a misunderstanding of what the Bible actually is and how it is unlike most any other book you will read.

The library of books in the Bible was written by human authors who each had God’s Spirit inspiring and guiding them.* The library of books in the Bible was and still is a primary way God communicates with us, giving us guidance. God wants us to know him, to know our origins and future, and to have guidance for life. So God intentionally and purposely oversaw the process of what was written, using the different personalities and life experiences and situations of each human author to communicate what he wished to say.

what we believe and understand based on our experience, worldview, culture, and knowledge. Our contemporary values and way of life are also part of the lens through which we read the Bible.

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.

many of the Bible verses that don’t make sense to us today usually made sense to the original readers. If we don’t step into that time and culture, there may be things we’ll find confusing or odd.

every Bible verse is written in a context, in a specific time period and for a specific purpose. Every Bible verse fits within a larger story, and whenever we read any verse, we want to: • Look at the specific Bible verse (many people stop here). • Look at the paragraph the verse is in. • Look at the chapter the Bible verse is in.

God’s Spirit comes to dwell in them in a mysterious way, helping them to fight against their evil desires and to live a life of purpose and mission on the earth.

I believe the Bible is true, and I believe there are reasonable answers and responses to each of these questions. It just takes some effort to read beyond the surface.

Knowing why they were originally put in place and when is the key to understanding.

it was put in place for a reason at a certain time for a certain purpose, a purpose most of us cannot relate to today,

ago. These weren’t written to us, nor were they written to answer the kinds of questions we tend to ask today. Each book of the Bible was written to a specific group of people in a specific place,