BIBLE CONTRADICTIONS FROM A CHAT GROUP

 I keep searching the internet looking for Bible contradictions that actually hold up under scrutiny. And there have been some challenging ones from the American Atheists and American Humanists, but certainly not any which could not be adequately addressed or at least chalked up as a minor “typo” having no effect on the historical or theological truth involved. So now I am dredging the bottom of the barrel and have come across a chat group which is filled with misinformation, ill-formed deductions, and plain nonsense peppered with cuss words to boot. Here are the first three examples I came across:

    1. “Is God jealous? Compare Exodus 20:5 with Proverbs 6:34.”

There is no doubt that Exodus 20:5 clearly states that God is a jealous God. But Proverbs 6:34 has no relationship to that statement at all. It reads, “For jealousy arouses a husband's fury, and he shows no restraint when he takes revenge.” If you can figure out how that constitutes a contradiction, please let me know at dr2mccoy@gmail.com and I will share it.

    2. “The biggest contradiction is 'Thou shall not kill.' On a planet where just to exist you must kill something.”

This one goes back to the time when I was in high school, and I am pretty ancient by now. It was ignorant nonsense then, and it is ignorant nonsense today. To call this a contradiction reveals a total lack of knowledge regarding the nature of languages. In Hebrew as in English, there are a number of ways to express the idea of depriving something or someone of life. The command in Exodus used the specific word meaning willful, premeditated murder of another human being. But the Jews would no more use it to describe the destruction of a plant or animal than we would talk about “murdering” a turnip.

    3. Another contributor to the chat group piped up with the following: “If it is not God's will that any should suffer, what about the crippled man created to show his power and goodness?”

This is a prime example of someone garbling a Bible passage that they just dimly remembered but didn't know where to locate. And it results in a powerful argument for anyone who is just as ignorant as she is. Here are the passages the author was trying to remember and what they really say:

II Peter 3:9 comes the closest to the passage she must have had in mind: “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” The wording says nothing about “suffering,” only about “perishing” eternally on the Judgment Day.

In fact, the only promises we have from God are that we are sure to suffer here on earth, even (or especially) Christians. See passages such as Mark 10:30; John 16:33; II Corinthians 1:3-7;4:17; I Peter 3:14, and many more.

Finally, there is a misquoting of the miracle of the lame man being healed, as recorded in John 9. Verse 3 says that the man was crippled “so that God's works might be revealed in him.”

Since this chat group is for ex-Christians, their comments cause me to wonder whether their rejection of the Bible is not at all for the reasons they state, but for completely different reasons. That is why apologetics alone will often do little or nothing to change their mind. I have run into some people who will cite intellectual arguments which can easily be countered, but who will still continue to reject God's word because (1) it cramps the freer lifestyle they are leading or (2) it comes with too much baggage from bad prior church experiences.