My Analysis of the Bible: Introduction

I get into many deep discussions with Christians about why I do not believe the Bible is God's Word, so I wrote a lengthy essay explaining why. I will divide each individual section into a separate post.

I do not believe the Bible is God’s word. This can be shocking (and sometimes offensive) to Christians when I tell them, as I hang out in Christian circles often. I do identify as a Christian in the sense that I follow Christ, but others have disagreed with me. I have engaged many Christians in discussion about their faith in the Bible, and many have encouraged me to write my questions down. This includes some of those questions, and addresses my beliefs that reflect them. This is not to convince or to provoke controversy. One of my favorite proverbs is Proverbs 17.19:

“One who loves transgression loves strife; one who builds a high threshold invites broken bones.”

I do not wish to cause strife, or to look for a fight to win. There are those who look to build up arguments to challenge others for their own glory, and those who look for truth which can cause controversy. I strive to belong in the latter group. While I am admittedly very comfortable with heated debates (which I could probably write another lengthy paper describing my family so you could understand exactly why that is), I have slowly come to understand that others are not. If you are offended when your faith is questioned, I would encourage you not to read this. This is a summary of my views presented rationally, which means I am critiquing views that contradict my own. I chose to structure this as an argument, but of course I can really only describe my side adequately. I have attempted to include others’ general reasoning in Part 2, but cannot go into as much detail as describing my own views. Describing my own views is a lot simpler than describing the plethora of other people’s individual views that disagree with me. I have attempted to keep from an arrogant tone, and have included others’ arguments in my explanations to demonstrate the fact that while we are arguing our beliefs regarding facts, our reasoning is certainly a gray area.