Marking Up the Bible
P eople have a tendency to pick and choose the things they want to believe in the Bible. Some people are blatant about it, while others of us may do it without realizing that we’re doing it. Martin Luther thought that the book of James conflicted with his theology and wanted to edit it out of the Bible. Thomas Jefferson thought it was a good idea to rewrite the Bible with the references to angels, the genealogy of Jesus, the prophecy of his birth. He also wanted to remove miracles, the divinity of Jesus, and Jesus’ resurrection. All he had left were 46 pages that he thought were “pure and unsophisticated doctrines.” Recently, one commenter to this blog told me that she disagrees with a lot of what Paul wrote. She didn’t like what he said about women being submissive to their husbands and about women not teaching men in church. But how often have we simply not read a passage because we didn’t think it had anything interesting? Or how often do we look for verses about a particular subjec...