The Bible can't be trusted as it is full of errors
The first thing we need to notice about this objection is that it assumes that the Bible is a certain kind of book. It assumes the Bible is more like a telephone directory than a story book. For it would be a devastating criticism to hold up a telephone directory and say, 'This book is full of errors!' But if you said the same thing about (say) one of the disney books, nobody would be very impressed.
What's the difference? A telephone directory is a compendium of factual information. A story book uses facts in a rather different way...
Now the Bible does contain a lot of factual information. And some of it is critically important. For example, if you could prove that Jesus never lived, or that his teaching was very different from what the Bible claims, you would have undermined Christianity completely. But the Bible isn't just an encyclopedia of facts. It uses language in many different ways - and so it is not always appropriate to ask, 'Is this true or false?'
For a start, there's a lot of figurative language - statements which are not meant to be taken literally. When the Bible talks about the eyes of the Lord running throughout the earth, it's pretty obvious that we are not meant to take this as literal information! Again, we have to read the statements of the Bible in their context if we are to make sense of them. There's actually one verse which says, 'There is not God!' However, if you read the context, you find the full quotation is, 'The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God"' - quite a different message!
Sometimes the Bible isn't trying to be precise. For instance, the four Gospels sometimes list the events of the life of Jesus in a different order from one another. This isn't a contradiction; it's just that in those days historians weren't concerned with the order of events as much as we are today. Their chief concern was to record that these things happened, and how they took place.
Again, when Jesus began a story, 'A certain man had two sons', he was probably making it up. If the question was asked, 'Is the story true?' the answer probably has to be 'No, it didn't happen like that'. But if in fact the story is a parable, and the appropriate question ask about a parable is not whether the events described actually happened, but whether the point made by the story is 'true' in the sense of being valid: is it true that God will treat us in the way that the father in the story treated his sons?
When we read the Bible carefully, and ask it the right questions, most of these problems about errors and contradictions disappear very quickly. And in the parts where historical accuracy is absolutely vital, there is breathtaking exactness. Attempts to find inaccuracies in the Bible have rebounded again an again.
No archaeological find has ever disproved a biblical claim. No other ancient source has been so attacked, and so vindicated.
Full of errors? Not likely.
There are lots of other sacred books. Aren't they as valuable as the Bible?
The world is full of religious books. And to believers, they can seem the most precious objects on earth. 'Cling to the Bible, though all else be taken,' sing the Christians; while the Muslims wrap their copy of the Qur'an in expensive silk and will touch it only after undergoing ritual cleansing; and missionaries from pop Hindu cults sell modern translations of their bhakti scriptures on the streets. It prompts the question: aren't all these books on the same level? Why revere the Bible, rather than any of the others?
For the Bible does seem to make arrogantly exclusive claims for itself. It says that God has spoken through the prophets and fathers of the Jewish tradition (Hebrews 1:1-3) and has completed his revelation by sending Jesus. God has nothing more to say. And although the Apostle Paul admitted that the religious quest of other traditions could guide them in the direction of the real God (Acts 17:26-27), the attitude of the biblical writers was uncomprimising. Other religions were not paths to God. 'Turn from these worthless things,' Paul cried to a group of pagan worshippers in Lystra; the word he used means 'ineffective, ungrounded, useless, unprofitable'. In one of his letters (Ephesians 2:12) he refers to people who are not Christians as 'without God' - atheos, the word from which we derive 'atheist'.
Now this is not to say that non-Christian sacred books have no value. They may contain profound human insights, shrewd observations of the nature of things, subtle philosophical reasonings, noble ethical principles. But according to the Bible they're useless to do the one most important thing human beings need - to introduce people to their Maker. Only through Jesus Christ will they be able to form a friendship with him.
The Qu'ran contains a forceful picture of God and has a truly impressive moral pwer. Bit it shrinks from presenting God as someone with whom human beings can have a relationship of love. Allah is the all-powerful and all-merciful; how could he demean himself to come so close to his creatures? And so we can only be 'Muslim' - the word means 'submissive'. We are to live in obedient fear of God - not the confident friendship of which the Bible speaks.
The great scriptures of Hinduism and Buddhism offer many routes to the knowledge of God. But often is not clear in Hindu writings whether God is a person who can be known, or just a great force. And the point of life is to lose one's identity, to sink permanently into the cosmic sea - not to share a relationship of love with a God who treats out identity as important.
For the Buddha, the gods were remote beings who were not going to help human beings supernaturally. So Buddhism evolved as a self-help philosophy to enable human beings to make their own way through life without relying on a God who would not reveal himself. Again, the sacred scriptures fail to give us what the Bible considers most valuable.
But is the bible right? Can you have a genuine,unmistakable relationship with God of a kinda that transforms your life by its impact? This is the vital questions - and you can judge for yourself by reading further in this book. Obviously, if God can be met - and only the Bible contains the secret - the Bible contains the secret - the Bible is far more important than any book in the world.
You can't take the Bible literally today
Agreed. As I've already remarked in an earlier topic, there are many kinds of writing in the Bible. Some of them are supposed to be taken literally; others are not. And if you try to take them literally, you end up making incredible blunders.
You'll find poetry and imaginative writing in some part of the bible. And you must not take it literally. When the writer of the Song of Songs remarks that his beloved's hair is like a flock of goats descending from Mount Gilead, you mustn't imagine it bleating, jumping, and smelling horrible!
Sometimes Christians disagree over whether certain parts are supposed to be read literally or not. Take, for instance, the story of Jonah - did he really live, or is it fiction? It reads like a fictional story; but then Jesus seems to have believed that Jonah was real. I think he existed, but either way, you may believe in his existence or not and still be challenged just as strongly by the central message of the Book of Jonah.
Similarly, Christians disagree about whether the beginning of Genesis is supposed to be a literal account of human origins or not. However they read it, though, the same important, inescapable messages comes across: that we are not a chance production, that we are actually made in the image of our creator, and that we are responsible to him for the mess we have made of this planet.
But this doesn't mean that everything can be read symbolically or non-literally. There are parts of the Scriptures that make a plain, open claim to be telling the straight facts, and appeal to us to accept them quite literally. Jesus Christ really did live, die, and rise again. He really was the Son of God. There really is a choice to be made in this life which will lead on to a real, inevitable judgement at Jesus' real return. There are definate ways of living in this world which we really must adopt if we want to please God. We are not at liberty to change everything in the Bible to suit ourselves.
'We did not follow cleverly invented stories,' says the Second Letter of Peter, 'when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.' 'I am not insane, most excellent Festus,' said Paul to a Roman governor. 'What I am saying is true and reasonable.' The early Christians staked all their hopes on the belief that a man really and literally had risen from the dead: 'If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.'
These vital, central claims still need to be 'taken literally' today. In fact, if you don't read them that way, you'll never make sense of Christianity.
It is impossible to live by Bible standards in this day and age
Do you seriously believe it - or is this just a cop-out statement which leaves you free to avoid the moral challenge of the Bible and selfishly live your own way? Forgive me for starting by insulting you, but I've found that the majority of people who make this statement to me have never really seriously considered the possibility that the Bible's ideas on morality might have a place in their lives. They're just too comfortable the way they are!
Anyway, let's assume you're serious in your objection. You may have four different reasons for making it. You may think that the Bible's standards of conduct are too idealistic - great in theory, but impossible to live up to. Well, that's true, if we have to struggle to do it by ourselves; but the Bible claims that God can give us a supernatural ability to withstand the toughest of temptations and live a life of new power by surrendering ourselves to the authority of Jesus Christ.
(By the way, please don't make the mistake of assuming you know what 'Bible standards' are until you've checked carefully. Hindus often critisize Christians for killing animals for food, since the Bible says 'Do not kill'. Surely this is an example of hypocritical believers cheerfully ignoring the commands of their own religion? But when you check, you find that the verse would be better translated 'Do nt murder'. It isn't talking about the killing of animals at all.)
You may feel that Bible standards are too repressive for the twentieth century. That was certainly the opinion of many people in the sixties, when Christian sexual morality was laughed to scorn in the heyday of the 'permissive society'. But now even Cosmopolitan magazine is running articles with titles like 'Why Living Together is a Rotten Idea' and 'The New Chastity: The Right to Say No'. And Time magazine proclaimed on its front cover, 'Sex: The Revolution is Over'. Slowly and painfully, thousands of 'liberated' people worldwide have been finding that God's standards are the real way to freedom after all.
You may feel that Bible standards are outmoded - that because we know so much more about human motivation and personality today, the Bible's naive and simplistic view of humanity is inadequate. If so, you may well wonder why researchers have found people with a religious faith to be better adjusted and more altruistic than the average person, and why even today prominent scientists and psychologists still build their lives around the teachings of the Bible.
Living, as we do, in a selfish, materialistic, pleasure-mad civilization, where we spend more on bombs every fortnight than it would take to solve the hunger problem for a year, where one marriage in three is currently crashing in flames within ten years of its beginning, where we haven't enjoyed more than fifteen years of peace within the last two thousand - are we really so superior that we can throw away the best guide we have?
Experience is what counts - any set of words is just an inadequate imperfect record
Which would you rather do - meet (put your favourite celebrity's name here!!!) or read about what it's like to meet him/her? Surely there can't be any substitue for a face-to-face encounter. Words can only describe the reality in a secondhand, partial way...
And so - some people argue - if God is a person, as the Bible claims, he must reveal himself in personal encounter. Not through the words of a book. The Bible may be a valuable record of how people have met God in the past; but it's just a record - no substitute for the experience of meeting God personally.
There is truth and falsehood in this argument. Yes, God reveals himself personally in people's lives. But the Bible is more than a record of how it has happened in history! Thousands of people have testified that it was through the Bible that God first spoke directly t them and convinced them of his reality. The Bible isn't a dead textbook of religious data, but the means God uses to communicate with us:
The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
It enters into an intimate dialogue with our lives and creates an awareness of what God himself is saying to us.
And it's just as well that this is the case. For it the Bible were merely a catalogue of strange and wonderful experiences that once happened to privileged people, it wouldn't help us a bit. We could only marvel at the stories and wish they would come true for us. But if the Bible itself can make God come alive in our experience, then it ceases to be 'just history' and becomes an exciting practical possibility for ourselves.
Anyway, we need to be careful not to be too dismissive of 'mere words'. They may be no substitute for experience, but in fact speech is one of the most characteristic activities of persons by means of which personal relationships are made possible'. Suppose that a soldier falls into enemy hands, and then from the prison camp is able to smuggle a message out to his wife, assuring her that he is alive and well, and still loves her.
She would not have wanteded to say that is was impersonal and that nothing but a personal meeting with her husband would do. Nor could the message and the concern which it embodied have been conveyed in any other way than by words... Words are essential and words suffice... In short, to say that God cannot make use of words and statements to reveal himself is to go against all that we know of persons and how they relate to one another.
This is why the Old Testament prophets begin their words again and again with 'Thus saith the Lord!' They knew that God was speaking directly through them. And that when their words were written down, God would still speak through them. And also that he would continue to speak through them as long as they were preserved and read.