Bible passages at times contradict Christian message

It’s a mystery to me how we two-legged types can be at once so brainy and yet so clueless.

How, for instance, is it possible that we can be utterly certain of so many things – even willing to bet our souls and wallets (much the same thing, alas) on many of them – and yet lack the least factual evidence for such a wager?

Betcha a quarter (all I ever risk) on this one: Where is it written, and who said, “God helps those who help themselves?”

Seventy-five percent of Americans – which is to say, the vast majority of Christians, since most Americans at least say that that’s what they are – think it’s from the Bible. And Jesus, I presume?

That would be a “no.” This decidedly un-Christ-like sentiment came from good old Benjamin Franklin, writing in Poor Richard’s Almanac, circa 1757.

But then again, how “Christian” was Jesus himself? I’m talking about when he initially refused to heal a non-Jewish child (Matthew 15:26), or mentioned burning nonbelievers (John 15:6) – a passage which was later used as justification by certain nasty folks for torching heretics at the stake.

And, especially, the Jesus of Matthew 10:34-37, whose words have generated no end of mental gymnastics to explain what he really meant.

To wit:

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace on Earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.’

“And ‘a man’s foes will be those of his own household.’ He who loves father and mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.”

It does seem kind of hard to twist “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on Earth” into something other than the rabble-rousing statement it was, but I’m sure people do it all the time.

The point being that folks, including me, can cherry-pick the Bible to death in order to justify what they want to justify. You can go, for instance, with the New Testament Jesus or the Old Testament guy, the one who upheld Mosaic law (John 5:46-47).

It appears to me that one’s Jesus of choice is a great indicator of personality type, not much more – especially when you factor in different versions of the Bible, some of which decidedly soften the language and message.

Let’s consider the John 15 passage that I alluded to, and see how it reads in a couple of different Bibles.

Here’s the King James version: “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered; and men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.”

And the namby-pamby New Living Translation version: “Anyone who parts from me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned.”

Gee, I wonder which phrase is most inflammatory, not to mention poetic? “Men gather them and cast them into the fire” sure looks like more of a commandment to me than “Such branches are gathered …”

Oh, and there’s the fact that the Bible was cobbled together over a lengthy period, by any number of authors, and that a whole lot was left on the editing room floor, leaving the “approved” gospels that made the cut.

Even there, disputes abound, including the shaky evidence that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote their own gospels.

Scholars debate the “Synoptic Problem” (figuring out the relationship between the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke) with different theories, e.g., the “Triple Tradition,” where verses appear in all three gospels, or the “Double Tradition” and “Q.” Never mind “Four-Source Theory.”

None of this matters, of course, to folks who know what they believe and why they believe it, and think any criticism of the Bible (or Jesus) is just noise, even blasphemy.

And none of it matters to me personally, at all, except again to say that people often base their beliefs on something other than what is demonstrably true.

I don’t read the Bible any differently than I do “The Iliad” or “The Odyssey,” and if you feel otherwise, I’ll just go with Thomas Jefferson on this one:

“But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”