{"id":1590,"date":"2013-02-01T11:10:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-01T11:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/02\/when-the-good-book-is-bad-challenging-the-bibles-violent-portrayals-of-god.html"},"modified":"2013-02-01T11:10:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-01T11:10:00","slug":"when-the-good-book-is-bad-challenging-the-bibles-violent-portrayals-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/02\/when-the-good-book-is-bad-challenging-the-bibles-violent-portrayals-of-god.html","title":{"rendered":"When the \u201cGood Book\u201d is Bad: Challenging the Bible\u2019s Violent Portrayals of God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/p>\n

The basic premise of my recent book,\u00a0The Violence of Scripture<\/a><\/em>\"\",\u00a0is quite simple: the Bible should never be used to harm others. One might imagine such a \u201cprofound\u201d truth to be self-evident and hardly worthy of a book length treatment. But the sad reality is that the \u201cgood book\u201d has been bad news for far too many people.<\/div>\n
The Bible has been used to inflict enormous pain upon others and to endorse all kinds of evil. It has been used to hurt and even kill people. Specifically, it has been used to justify warfare, oppress women, condemn gays and lesbians, support slavery, and legitimate colonization, to name just a few of its troubling legacies. When the Bible is used for such evil ends, there is no mistaking the fact that something has gone terribly wrong.<\/div>\n
Most Christians would attribute this misuse of the Bible to faulty interpretations and misguided \u00a0interpreters.\u00a0 And this certainly is part of the problem. But, unfortunately, the problem runs deeper than this.\u00a0 It runs right through the pages of Scripture itself.<\/div>\n
To put it bluntly:\u00a0not everything in the \u201cgood book\u201d is either good, or good for us.<\/strong>\u00a0I realize this may sound blasphemous to some people and flies in the face of everything they have been taught to believe about the Bible. When the Church grandly proclaims the Bible to be the Word of God, it gives the impression that the words of Scripture are above critique and beyond reproach. We are taught to read, revere, and embrace the Bible. We are\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0taught to challenge its values, ethics, or portrayals of God.<\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The basic premise of my recent book,\u00a0The Violence of Scripture,\u00a0is quite simple: the Bible should never be used to harm others. One might imagine such a \u201cprofound\u201d truth to be self-evident and hardly worthy of a book length treatment. But the sad reality is that the \u201cgood book\u201d has been bad news for far too […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen the \u201cGood Book\u201d is Bad: Challenging the Bible\u2019s Violent Portrayals of God<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The basic premise of my recent book, The Violence of Scripture, is quite simple: the Bible should never be used to harm others. 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