Reddit reviews The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (And Why Inerrancy Tries To Hide It)

tldr; There are millions of us that feel the same way. I hope you don't forsake Christ in name in response to those around you who are forsaking Christ in deed.

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I'm writing this during a break at work. Since I have to make it quick, I'll be recommending a lot of books. There is really too much here anyway to do justice to all of the questions you've put up, so even if I were to give a real, detailed response, I would probably have to resort to suggesting books anyway.

> 1.) I don't think that all of the Bible can be taken literally. I strongly believe in the sciences, so I think that Genesis was written either metaphorically or simply just to provide an explanation for creation. Are there others here that believe that or something similar? How do others respond to your beliefs?

There are many, many, many others who believe similarly. And not just recent people responding to evolution, there has long been a tradition of taking Genesis metaphorically. For a good group of scholars and prominent Christians that take a stand for a reading of Genesis that respects the way that science currently understands origins, see the Biologos Forum.

For a good book that shows the error of inerrancy, how it stunts your growth as a Christian and a moral agent, and how inerrancy limits either human free will or God's sovereignty see Thom Stark's excellent new book The Human Faces of God.

> 2.) Why does it seem that Christianity is such a hateful religion? I am very disappointed in many Christians because they spew hatred towards other instead of spreading love. I think that the energy that is going into the hatred that many spew could be used for good. Why aren't we putting these resources towards helping others? This would help bring people in instead of deter them away.

Again, millions of us feel the same way. It makes me sick as well. However, I don't think the answer is forsaking Christ in name in response to others forsaking Christ in deed.

There are many strands of the Christian faith that have strongly opposed violence of any sort. Look into the Anabaptists, the Mennonites. Podcasts from Trinity Mennonite are pretty good.

For a good book about Jesus and nonviolence see Jesus and Nonviolence by Walter Wink.

> 3.) How can people be against gay rights still? This is clearly religious issue and not an issue of morality. If you choose to follow the parts of the Bible that are against homosexuality, then why do you not feel the need to follow many of the other ridiculous laws that are in the Old Testament?

I'd like to stress that, again, there are millions of us that feel the same way. And many, many of those who still believe it's a sin think that we have no place emphasizing that in a world where LGBT teenagers are killing themselves from the humiliation. There are many, many of us that think that whether their lifestyle is "sinful" or not the only thing we should show them is love.

For more about interpreting the Bible in light of today's social issues, see Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis by William J. Webb and Sex and the Single Savior by Dale B. Martin.

> Do you believe that the government has the right to say who can and cannot get married? Why can't this just be left up to each individual church?

I'm actually strongly in favor of civil unions for everyone. I wholeheartedly agree that I don't want the government defining marriage... and the only way for the government not to define marriage is for the government to take its hands off marriage altogether; whatever the sexual orientation of those getting married.

> 4.) This was a question that I was asked in my other post that I was unable to answer.

Yes, the penal satisfaction view of atonement has its shortcomings. It's not a completely bankrupt idea, but it takes a lot of nuance to convey it in a way that isn't altogether abhorrent and senseless.

The first Christians believed something similar to what we call today "Christus Victor" atonement.

For a picture of the varied atonement theories available for understanding what Jesus did on the cross, see A Community Called Atonement by Scot McKnight. For a list of ways to understand atonement in a contemporary context, see Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross by Mark D. Baker. For more on a view of God that is consistent with the love of God as revealed in Jesus, see Rob Bell's Love Wins: A book about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person that ever lived.

> 5.) I asked this in the other post, so I feel that I should ask it here. How many of you do or will teach your children about other religions? Will you present them as options or will you completely write them off?

I'd be wholeheartedly open to exposing them to other religions. And I'd want to do it in a way that does them justice. Most Christian "worldviews" books frustrate me due to the way they portray other's religions. In the long run if you don't accurately portray the rest of the world and you try to shelter your children from it, they'll simply feel betrayed when they grow up and finally learn what's out there.

I believe Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. I actually believe this. Why wouldn't I try to raise my children as Christians?

But again, I wouldn't want to misrepresent the other religions and I certainly wouldn't want to shelter my children from them. For a book that I feel shows the good from many of the world's most prominent religions, see Huston Smith's The World's Religions.

Three books I recommend highly:

Thom Stark's The Human Faces of God. If you only read one book about the Bible before giving up on it, please make sure it's this one.

Scot McKnight's The King Jesus Gospel does a great job of laying out the ways in which the story the Bible is trying to tell has been distorted and misunderstood by a focus on personal salvation.

N.T. Wright's How God Became King makes a similar case, but fleshes it out from a more scholarly perspective and addresses the political implications of the gospel.

> no where in the Bible does the Lord go out of his way to scare people, he tries to love them

Nowhere? No holes in the ground swallowing people up as punishment for keeping plunder? Is it reasonable such dramatic and public punishment has any other major purpose than instilling fear in the rest of the people? How about killing people for lying to the church, which ends with "And great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things"? And that's just what happened to "God's People", I'm pretty sure if any of the conquest of Canaan, great flood, or judgement on Sodom and Gomorra was true a good deal of the reason for those things to happen would be that there would have been some fear instilled, and if you go back and read any of those narratives I promise it will jump out at you. For example, that the rainbow was supposedly given to calm fears of God acting like that again is no accident.

If by "the Lord" you mean to single out Yeshua and not YHWH, I'm pretty sure the whip that was used for the claimed clearing of the temple was to provoke fear, as were the parables of the Virgins, Rich Man and Lazarus, and many other teachings.

I agree with you, if Christians were more loving there's be less people leaving(but still probably more than you seem to think for other reasons), but the problem isn't just in the moral actions of many modern Christians: it is weaving all the way through the Bible as well. After you read the Bible, the only way to assume everything God is claimed to have done and said is out of love is to define Him as such, and that's exactly what people are not buying. The God portrayed in the Bible has serious issues that can't be explained away.

I will submit that if you want to have an impact on the world, the (American) Church needs to stop pretending the Bible is something it isn't, and figure out what that means for how they live life.. Only then can they be free to really love. There's always going to be a huge difference between the colonial "let's perform what we think are loving actions so we can be proven to be the good guys" and actions driven by a deep seated love directed towards the good of the other, and the things that do the most to keep American Christians from actual loving actions is the fact that it is still highly colonial and tribalistic.

The question is, do you really, honestly want to learn to love others as yourselves, or pretend to be better than others and use love as a mere weapon in the culture war? You can't do both. If it is your sincere goal to love others, you can do much worse than to read McLaren's latest book. Any or all of Richard Beck's books will help elucidate the why and the way forward for such a path.

If you want a good read that critiques the Chicago Statement check out The Human Faces of God by Thom Stark

Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament by Peter Enns addresses some of these issues and is oriented toward Evangelicals who have tried to build their faith on biblical inerrancy and literalism.

I also highly recommend The Human Faces of God by Thom Stark. Roughly half the book deals with the problems of biblical inerrancy, and half with the violence and cruelty of the Old Testament. It is ruthlessly honest in its approach to the Bible, something that I've never seen in apologetics or pro-inerrancy material.

That’s a HuffPost interview with a Christian scholar. You can read his book if you’d prefer. It’s worth checking out.

I went to university to study the Bible, thank you. My Anglican Bible professor, who specialized in the OT, was the one who first pointed this stuff out to me about Yahweh commanding child sacrifice.

Upvote for you - Misquoting Jesus is probably the most interesting, lucid, and clear Biblical commentary I've ever picked up. I'd also recommend Thom Stark's The Human Faces of God , which takes a similarly unabashed approach to exegesis, but with a focus on the Old Testament.

The story of the Old Testament is basically the story of the emergence of monotheism from polytheism: "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." See The Human Faces of God by Thom Stark. The story of the New Testament is basically the story of the emergence of Christianity from Judaism. But the story of Jesus is far more than just the story of the emergence of Christianity. The story of Jesus is also the story of radical non violent rebellion, as well as the story of the sacrificial scapegoating mechanism that is at the core of human culture.

That is probably a lot to digest so some places to begin are, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way, by Walter Wink and Violence and the Sacred by René Girard.

There is also an excellent synthesis of these two works The Jesus Driven Life: Reconnecting Humanity With Jesus by Michael Hardin.

The first book I read during my doubt/research phase was "The Human Faces of God" by Thom Start. Really good book written by a Christian dealing with problems in inerrant and literal readings of the bible.

I disagree with almost everything you said :)

I think our fundamental disagreement comes from how to interpret what the Bible means by "the LORD says X." You take it to mean that God actually said X, whereas I take it to mean that the author of that book supported X.

If you would like to understand my position, I would recommend reading Thom Stark's The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (and Why Inerrancy Tries to Hide It).

Yo everyone's in this thread trying to justify the un-justifiable.

The Bible has some fucked up stuff. And we have a long history of trying to deal with these passages.

I recommend Thom Stark's The Human Faces of God for a quick overview of different interpretive techniques that have been used through the ages to deal with passages like these.

He reaches a conclusion that I'm not sure I agree with, but is worth considering: that these so-called "problem scriptures" are part of our canon because they are counter-examples. They show that being God's special people doesn't save you from being terrible. That we're all deeply entrenched in sin and need our savior desperately.

You're very late to the party. Biblical scholars wrote whole books on the inerrancy of the Bible (The Human Faces of God), the problems with translation, errors, alterations, etc. (Hector Avalos, Bart Ehrman, ...)