PART I : "THE BIBLE SAYS..."

A Response about God, Scripture, and the Gospel We Preach

I was watching a debate—atheist vs. theist. The moderator did the usual: a few formal remarks, introduced the topic, welcomed the speakers, and took his seat. The atheist leaned forward and fired the first question before anyone had really settled in:

“Do you think the Bible is true?”

I practically jumped out of my chair. I wanted to reach through the screen, pause the moment, and take over the conversation—not as a theologian or apologist, but as a moderator who actually wants the dialogue to go somewhere meaningful.

Here’s what I would’ve said: “Forgive me for interrupting, but before we go down the same tired road as countless other debates, can we start by clarifying the terms? Can we aim for a conversation that actually honors complexity—one that recognizes nuance and category differences?”

Then I would’ve turned to the atheist—not to challenge him, but to reframe the question: “If you walked into a bookstore, would you ask, ‘Do you believe all these books are true?’ Of course not. Some are poetry. Some are science. Some are myth, memoir, political commentary, children’s fiction. You’d know instinctively that each demands to be read on its own terms.”

The Bible is no different.

It’s not a single book—it’s a library. It contains history and law, poetry and parable, prophecy and lament, cosmic metaphor and political critique. And just like any good library, it includes contradictions, tensions, and multiple perspectives.

This isn’t a problem. It’s the point.

Sigmund Freud talked about the human psyche as complex, layered and deep. In other words beautifully rich, both mysterious and enlightening, and only partly knowable. I’d say the same is true of Scripture. Though divinely inspired, it was written by human hands and from human perspectives.

It’s full of metaphor and mystery. It reflects voices as varied as royal scribes in David’s court, exiled prophets, temple poets, angry apostles, and desert mystics. It doesn’t speak in unison—it sings in harmony and dissonance, through joy and sorrow, clarity and contradiction.

And yet somehow, much of modern theology treats the Bible like a courtroom transcript or a corporate handbook. Something to be systematized. Flattened. Made to speak in one voice.

And the quintessential phrase that reveals this misunderstanding of scripture,

“The bible says…”

I’m not saying the Bible doesn’t communicate. I am saying that the Bible doesn’t speak in a single voice about almost anything.

If you want to build a picture of God as tribal, punitive, vengeful, even fickle—you can. Those images are in the Bible. But so are images of a God who is patient and generous, overflowing with mercy, slow to anger, forgiving without precondition, and pouring out grace long before it’s earned—or even asked for.

The Bible doesn’t give us one picture of God. It gives us many. Sometimes they stand in harmony. Sometimes they seem to contradict. And that tension isn’t a failure of inspiration—it’s the fabric of revelation. Because faith isn’t certainty. And God isn’t a formula.

The Bible is not a single voice—it’s a chorus.

It contains poetry, lament, law codes, letters, prophetic declarations, parables, genealogies, battle hymns, creation myths, and resurrection stories. It was written by different people, in different languages, across different centuries, facing vastly different circumstances.

So if you want to construct a God of violence and retribution, a Gospel of wealth, or a gospel that prioritizes the powerful,—you’ll find verses to support you. And if you want to build a theology of radical grace, liberation, abundance, and nonviolence—you’ll find verses for that too.

And here is the revealing truth:

What someone says about the Bible says more about them than it says about the Bible.

When someone says, “The Bible says…,” they’re not just quoting the text. They’re revealing their theology. Their assumptions. Their culture. Their God.

Even Satan quotes Scripture. In the wilderness, he tries to get Jesus to leap from the temple by reciting a verse from the Psalms: “He will command his angels… lest you dash your foot against a stone.” But Jesus doesn’t jump. And neither should you—especially when someone uses a Bible verse like a weapon and calls it truth.

This is why it’s so dangerous to treat the Bible like a rulebook or a unified manifesto. Because once you try to systematize it—once you force it to speak in only one voice—you have to start ignoring parts of it. Or worse, twisting them to fit your framework.

That’s what makes theology dynamic and difficult.

Sometimes I wonder about the -logy in theo-logy. It acts very differently than the -logy in bio-logy or geo-logy. Words ending in -logy come from the Greek logia, meaning “the study of” or “discourse about.” But theology doesn’t behave like those other fields.

In geology, for example, scientists can determine the age of a rock by measuring the decay of its isotopes—because radioactive decay follows a fixed, measurable half-life. The universe doesn’t change the rules depending on who’s asking. That kind of consistency is what gives the physical sciences their credibility.

But if testing the same rock repeatedly yielded wildly different or contradictory results, the entire scientific method behind geological dating would lose its integrity.

Theology—and Scripture—doesn’t work like that.

It’s not the measurement of fixed properties; it’s the wrestling with revelation. It’s the ongoing, unfinished conversation between people, text, culture, and God. Which means Scripture can’t be treated like a science book. Because in theology, context matters. Deeply.

The Bible is not static. It speaks in many voices, across many centuries. And it often speaks differently depending on who’s listening—and where they’re standing.

If a rich man asks the Bible a question, should we expect the same answer as when a poor woman asks? If the powerful search for justification, and the powerless cry out for deliverance, will the text respond identically?

The frustrating fact for theologians and churches alike is that the Bible contains its own opposite.

For instance, if you want to build a theology around the idea that God never changes, the Bible seems to give you solid ground. Malachi declares it outright: “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished” (3:6). And Numbers adds: “God is not a human being, that he should lie, or a mortal, that he should change his mind” (23:19).

Clear enough, it would seem.

But then you turn to Exodus. After the golden calf debacle, Moses pleads with God not to destroy the people. And Scripture says: “The Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people” (Exodus 32:14).

The same God who does not change… changes his mind.

So which is it? Is God immutable—unchanging and unaffected? Or responsive—relational and moved by prayer?

The same pattern shows up in questions about the origin of sin. Paul, writing to the Romans, places the blame squarely on Adam: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned” (5:12). For Paul, Adam is the origin point.

But 1 Timothy sees it differently. There, the blame shifts to Eve: “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (2:14). The logic flips. So again we ask: which is it?

Even something as fundamental as whether or not God can be seen seems to oscillate.

In Genesis, Jacob famously says, “For I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved’” (32:30). But in the opening lines of John’s Gospel, we’re told, “No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (1:18). Both verses sit inside the same canon. Both claim divine truth. Yet they point in opposite directions.

So what are we to make of this?

The temptation is to resolve it all—smooth out the contradictions, harmonize the voices, systematize the text until it fits into a tidy theology.

But maybe these tensions aren’t flaws to be fixed. Maybe they’re invitations—into a deeper, messier, more honest engagement with Scripture. Because the Bible isn’t a rulebook or a blueprint. It’s a library. A conversation. A wrestling match. And God is not a proposition to be proven, but a presence to be encountered.

None of these examples are proof that Scripture is flawed or unreliable. They’re proof that Scripture is human, dynamic, textured. That it emerges from particular contexts, urgent crises, and human voices crying out to be heard. Al trying to make sense of God in the midst of it all. And that, like any true conversation with the divine, it invites not certainty, but wisdom. Not control, but trust.

This is why I read Scripture the way I do.

Not to flatten it. Not to sanitize it. And definitely not to cherry-pick the parts that confirm my own biases. I read it slowly, reverently, contextually—because I want to honor its depth. I want to hold space for its tensions. I want to ask the deeper question:

What kind of God is being revealed here—and who benefits from this vision of God? Because every theology benefits someone. And every theology reveals the heart and desire and assumptions of the interpreter.

If your God demands payment before offering love, someone benefits.

If your God blesses wealth and condemns the poor, someone benefits.

If your God justifies violence in the name of purity or peace, someone benefits.

What does your God bless? What does your God condemn? Whose pain does your God ignore? Whose flourishing does your God prioritize?

Because your vision of God will shape your vision of everything else—of justice, of power, of love, of who belongs and who gets left out.

Though God does ordain violence in the scriptures—often in shocking ways—we are meant to wrestle with those texts, not explain them away. Take, for example, when God instructs King Saul, through the prophet Samuel, to wipe out the Amalekites in retribution for opposing Israel during the Exodus:

“Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey” (1 Samuel 15:3).

I believe the prayerful, patient, and pious use of Scripture doesn’t just snatch a few lines and declare, “The Bible says…” To do so—especially in defense of violence or domination—would not just be careless. It would be sinful.

The Bible reveals a long, layered story of God—and its clearest revelation, as the scriptures themselves affirm, is found in Jesus of Nazareth: the one who reclaimed the prophetic voice, embodied radical grace, and challenged the version of the world on offer from the Caesars of the world.

That’s why I preach. That’s why I study. Not to win arguments about religion— but to reexamine the theological foundations that shape our lives, our politics, our institutions, our assumptions.

So no, I don’t get angry at comments like Preston Scott’s. They don’t offend me. They break my heart. Because I recognize that God. The one shaped more by control than by love. The one too many of us were handed—and taught to defend.

That’s what happens when the Bible is filtered uncritically through systems of power—when we choose structures of human control over the model of divine love.

That’s how empire reshapes radical good news into something safe and subservient.

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Part II turns from Scripture to Church history—to explore how the theology we inherited isn’t just a misreading of the Bible. It’s also a departure from the earliest Christian movement and one Jesus and his first followers would hardly recognize. To binge read the entirety now -please consider becoming a paid subscriber.