The blog Think Christian asks whether it is appropriate for a Bible teacher to question the Bible. A parent, angry about the appearance made by Kent Dobson in a documentary that raised questions but did not answer them, objected that “The Bible is never to be questioned!”
My own feeling is that this slogan is only used by people who have never studied the Bible in depth, who’ve never opened an academic commentary or any other scholarly book that might take their understanding of the Bible beyond the level of mediocre superficiality.
There is something profoundly ironic in the current situation. Those who know the Bible well enough to acknowledge the problems are denigrated as though they are unspiritual by those whose self-proclaimed superiority is based on their ignorance of it.
There is a real need for those who actually know what the Bible says and the problems with fundamentalist interpretation thereof, to be more vocal in highlighting that it is the spirituality of those who claim expertise in things they know little about, and pride themselves on understanding something they know superficiality, whose spirituality is most open to question. The claim that “the Bible is never to be questioned” is made by those who do not know it in detail, or who want to quote it out of context to support their viewpoint, or who want to relieve themselves of the responsibility for thinking and for wrestling with difficult issues by passing the burden to others who will tell them “this is what the Bible teaches”.
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