Most of the time, when I make a statement like this online, people immediately assume I’ve never studied the Bible or don’t know what it says. They say that only because they don’t know my history. I was raised Southern Baptist and stepped away from the faith until I started having children and began exploring spiritual training. I joined a small Southern Baptist church in my area, and not long after, I began attending a nearby Christian college to earn my bachelor’s degree. After that, I started preaching and leading Bible studies as I delved deeper into the Bible.
I remember conversations with professors, and because I was ignorant at the time, I started defending my existing positions more passionately, now actually studying the topics and able to verify my assumptions with Scripture. I loved systematic theology because it was taught as a kind of science. Several years later, I became a full-time pastor, and it was easy to find a struggling congregation that shared similar views.
For nearly 20 years, I studied “The Word” deeply and solidified my origin story beliefs into monologues that cast a positive light over everything. It bothered me a little that most Christian narratives lead to moments of ambiguity and unfounded assumptions. Still, I kept going, hoping some synchronicity would come our way because we were faithful and hardworking.
But clarity never revealed itself, even when I thought more like a mystic. The more I studied, especially as the internet evolved, the more my hope that Scripture would be the cookbook or manual we wanted slowly gave way to reason and logic, along with attention to detail. By the way, Logos has always been understood to involve logic and reasoning, even though most brands of Christianity promote the opposite, claiming it can only be understood spiritually (whatever that means).
The Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures of our Bibles, were written between 1400 and 400 BCE. The die-hard Christians who still believe in a 6,000-year-old Earth also avoid the reality that most of the Pentateuch (the first five books) possibly happened thousands of years before anything was written down. I have trouble remembering what I said yesterday, especially as I get older.
When people supposedly lived 600 to 900 years instead of 90, perhaps they had a supernatural way of remembering things that we no longer possess today. This was just one of my growing distrusts for the outrageous myths, such as humans living hundreds of years, animals talking, and a god writing on slabs of rock.
The described God was also very violent, even though one of his commandments was “Thou shalt not kill.” Millions of people were reportedly killed in the flood he caused, and later, Egyptians, Babylonians, and other nations were slaughtered at this deity’s command. This was a stark contradiction to Jesus’s teachings, such as loving your neighbor and doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. I also noticed, without much study, that Jesus often corrected certain Old Testament scriptures. At the same time, he ignored some of them and rewrote others (see The Sermon on the Mount and descriptions of his actions in the Gospels).
I challenge you to imagine this situation. In the ever-changing Roman world, something miraculous happened. A Jewish carpenter began openly preaching and performing wonders in the communities. He was skilled at bringing people together and often criticized those in power, especially religious leaders. Because those in authority didn’t know how to handle him, they crucified him and made him their scapegoat of the day. Many years later, people retold this story based on oral tradition, but no one at the time of his death (33 CE) bothered to report it, not even his followers.
It would take decades for secular historians to mention it (Josephus, 93 CE; Tacitus, 116 CE), and the Evangelists, Paul, Peter, and others didn’t start writing until 60 to 90 CE (most of them while they were in Rome). The majority of the New Testament writings were authored by non-witnesses in a different country at a much later time. We all know the Telephone game, which illustrates the limitations of oral tradition.
It would take another three centuries before these various writings were officially recognized and debated, and before we had a book called The Bible. Multiple church councils and Emperor Constantine played key roles in advocating for a standard set of scriptures, especially as the church at that time moved to unite with the Roman Empire.
It also troubled me that this alliance of church and state resulted in a lot of bloodshed over the years. One only needs to look at the Crusades, the Reconquista, the Hussite Wars, the Thirty Years’ War, and the French Wars of Religion to see why. Seeing Jesus’ name invoked during a violent uprising reminds me of Hitler’s army in World War II, which was 95% Protestant and Catholic, and fought among themselves in earlier conflicts. Netanyahu and Putin today strongly attack their neighbors, claiming faith in God and a righteous manifest destiny.
There are more subtle forms of conflict, such as the colonization of the Commonwealth by Britain and other regions by the United States and its proponents. We also constantly need to explain the slavery of African people and the mass genocide of Native American Indians. All these efforts proudly adorned themselves with the cross and justified themselves with the Bible. It concerns me when politicians promote modern ideas that suggest this type of colonization again in places like Greenland and the Gaza Strip.
Either something got lost in translation, or it’s not the holy book we thought it was.
Many wrongly assume that when people are deconstructing, it’s because they don’t understand the Bible. I strongly disagree with that view. Everyone I know who is currently deconstructing the Bible was deeply committed to studying, understanding, and sharing it. When they found themselves defending the book because their belief systems told them they had to, it eventually became too much of a contradiction. It seemed to be based on the assumptions of their ancestors, who didn’t have nearly the same access to information that we do now.
If the discussion ends with, “Well, God’s ways are not our ways,” it should make us question not only our assumptions (beliefs) but also the collection of myths, poems, and letters we consider sacred. If it is truly holy, then it must be much clearer, more coherent, and entirely reasonable. It’s so unclear that thousands of different groups still see it as their marching orders against others who think differently, even while committed to the same book.
Many acting pastors I know openly admit that their book can justify anything, yet they still hold onto it as the ultimate truth. This strikes me as a serious contradiction. I see these pastors struggle as they try to connect eternal truth to the unverifiable reality of the book they defend.
In my view, the first step forward is to recognize that the Bible is an important piece of literature with some usefulness. My main difference with evangelical Christians is that I don’t see it as a cookbook for what to do; instead, I see it more as a manual of what not to do and how not to think about God and spirituality. It can easily lead us to become war-mongering, bloodthirsty, human rights deniers, and persecutors of others, just like our ancestors.
Take a moment to consider the public figures most devoted to the Bible and see what they currently support. For example, they are taking food and healthcare away from children worldwide. They also support brutality against people of color simply because they fear anyone different. Additionally, they draw from the book to justify their mistreatment of women and the elevation of men, mainly white men. They use a vague verse in the Old Testament to justify the genocide of one group and the preservation of another. The widespread statistics about church abuse and clergy molestation are often hidden and enabled by Bible-centered clergy.
My denomination still covers up the 700 cases of abuse by youth pastors and refuses to create a database of offenders and mega pastors convicted of sexual assault, which is as common as school shootings in America. Just as I know school shooters are often white and middle-class, I also know that sexual abuse and cult leaders are usually white and fierce defenders of the Bible as the inerrant Word of God.
All of this hurts me on so many levels.
I chose to continue my journey of discovery. As I learn more about other faiths and holy books, I aim to understand them more deeply, uncovering truth from a new perspective, even though I see flaws and inconsistencies in all of them.
Lately, I prefer listening to people of peace rather than peaceful religions that have become linked with hatred and violence. I still believe in love, empathy, compassion, peace, and kindness. But I don’t think we arrive there by reading or pledging allegiance to a book, especially one that is poorly written like the Bible.
Be where you are, Be who you are, Be at peace!
Karl Forehand
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