Month: June 2018

What We’ve Gotten Wrong about the Bible, and Why We Need to Reconsider

It’s a crazy book to be sure, and crazy people love to beat non-religious people over the head with it, despite the fact that Jesus (in the Bible) told His followers not to do that.

It’s an ancient book too. Our modern Bibles are copies of copies of copies – spanning thousands of years. The people who made these copies sat at a table, with a pen, and a candle, and were sure to make mistakes, and press their own agendas.

The most popular book ever written about the origin of the Bible (to my knowledge) quickly became a bestseller, mainly because it told us what we wanted to hear – the Bible we have today doesn’t represent, with any reliable degree of accuracy, what was originally written. Toss it. It’s garbage.

Eat that, crazy religious people.

The problem is that the archaeological evidence doesn’t support this book’s conclusions, neither does a book that the same author co-authored some years before writing Misquoting Jesus.

You can say that the Bible is a crazy book, and reject it, and I’d totally understand, and we could still be best friends.

But you can’t say that what we have today doesn’t represent what was first penned.

I know, I’m an Evangelical, and this smacks of me trying to defend my tribe at all costs. But I swear to all that is holy that I’ve done my homework here. I’ve considered as many sides of the argument as I can. And while this might sound like it’s going to be a boring, nerdy blog post, there’s an interesting story here. Hang tight for a bit.

The Dead Sea Scrolls.

Sometime in the mid 1900’s, a shepherd tending his flock near the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran threw a rock into a cave to scare out one of his sheep that had wandered in. He heard a crash, then entered the cave to investigate. His rock had broken a jar containing what he thought to be a bunch of old leather – a portion of it was sold to make shoelaces until someone got a clue that these were very old, very valuable religious documents.

Among these manuscripts was a complete copy of the Old Testament book “Isaiah,” dated around 125 BCE (the actual book was penned around 700 BCE).

At the time, the oldest copy of Isaiah known to be in existence was penned around 1000 CE.

There was a stretch of almost 2000 years between what was originally written and what we had in our hands. It was widely believed, understandably, that the 1000 CE copy of the Isaiah scroll could be nothing like the original. Too many scribes (and others) had gotten their hands on it – surely it was corrupted beyond restoration.

And now we could prove it. We had a copy of this scroll that was penned somewhere in the middle between the original and the 1000 CE version. Everyone knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that when the 125 BCE version was compared to the 1000 CE version of the Isaiah scroll, they’d be different, proving that the people who made all these copies, changed them – over and over again.

Here’s what happened, and it turned everyone’s understanding of the Bible on its head – for awhile.

When the 125 BCE Isaiah scroll was compared to the 1000 BCE version, there were differences. Here’s an example of one place where these two scrolls diverged – from Isaiah 53:3, what many scholars believe to be a prophecy of the coming Messiah:

  • He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 1000 BCE version
  • He is despised and rejected of men and man of sorrows, and he knows grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; and despised him, and we esteemed him not. 125 BCE version

Of all the differences now catalogued between these two versions, 95% of the time, they’re not a big deal, and don’t change the meaning of the text. Sure, there’s an occasional “big deal” change that was made by ancient scribes, but a) it doesn’t happen very often and b) modern scholars are really good at comparing all the manuscripts we have and getting at the original – sort of like people who restore old paintings, they can tell what’s missing by what’s there.

What the Dead Sea Scroll taught us was that, somehow, a bunch of ancient, different, unrelated people managed to transmit a very lengthy document for 1000 years with an alarming level of accuracy.

Misquoting Jesus

The same holds true for the scads of New Testament manuscripts that we have in our possession. There are differences – legions of them, but the vast majority are “small deal” differences; something akin to “see spot run” vs. “see spot hasten.”

For example, one copy of Galatians 1:4 reads “… who gave himself for the sake of our sins” while another reads “… who gave himself to atone for our sins.” Someone changed something, but both say the same thing.

To be sure, there are “big deal” changes that were made, something akin to “see spot run” vs. “see spot read,” but they don’t happen very frequently (liberal scholars put it at 5%, some say less), and again, there are folk trained in the fine art of getting close to the original based on what they have.

In the popular book I mentioned above, Misquoting Jesus, Dr. Ehrman only offers “big deal” examples of the changes scribes made. He doesn’t mention the fact that these don’t happen very often. This leaves the reader with the impression that every time a scribe changed something, it was a huge change that significantly diverged from the original meaning of the text.

It’s easy to read Misquoting Jesus and walk away believing that our modern Bibles are garbage.

But in an earlier book that Dr. Ehrman co-authored, the facts are more clearly stated – 95% of the time, scribes got it right, for thousands and thousand of years. For some reason, he left that out of Misquoting Jesus, which is a good thing if you’re trying to sell a book about the Bible to our modern culture.

Word of God?

Bart Ehrman’s spot-on. Scribes changed the Bible – they got sleepy, left out some things, added others. Sometimes they got uncomfortable with what they were reading. Sometimes they added explanations and qualifications, either in the margins or directly into the text. But, at worst, 95% of the time they did it right – no technology, no governing body, nothing to keep them in check, save the fact that they thought they were copying the very words of God, and they might get in a world of trouble if they screwed up.

You can say that the Bible is utter hogwash, or that the people who wrote it were crazy, but the belief that we can in no way recover what was originally written, or that our modern Bibles are a collection of horribly corrupted manuscripts has no sound evidence.

For me, the Bible has saved my keester on many occasions. In it, I’m commanded to unconditionally forgive, to invest in the lives of people who are poor, folk who are hurting. It paints the picture of a God who doesn’t fuck around, yet also loves and forgives without limit or qualification.

This book has taught me to give myself and everyone around me a break, which has brought a level of peace to my life that no other book has.

And when another Bible-believing brother or sister tries to convince me of things that are “un-Biblical,” like “fight the gays!” and “God’s a Republican!” I’ve been formally trained to use the Bible to straighten them out.

There are some things in the Bible that are difficult to reconcile, and hard to understand. If there is a God who can know and do much more than us, His truths will seem weird, even crazy at times. So I go with the stuff that seems clear to me, and leave the rest to the mercy and love that the Bible has led me to count on.

Got Low Self Esteem? This Forever Changed Mine

What follows always seems to be absent in our discussions about self esteem.

Articles on “how to heal from low self esteem” are all over the internet. And the advice they offer drives me crazy.

Find a New Challenge

Learn to Be Assertive

Focus on Your Positives

Take Care of Yourself

Avoid Negative Self-Talk

If you’ve tried any of these remedies, you know none of them work, which makes you feel like a loser because you couldn’t fix the problem, which is the last thing you need right now.

To get any victory here, you’re going to need to start with one of the most painful questions you can ask.

Where did your low self esteem come from?

Hint: you’re not born with it.

The #1 Cause of Your Self Esteem Issues

You didn’t come out of the womb with low self esteem.

Someone gave it to you.

Sometime in your early, formative years, someone passed their low self esteem to you. In many different ways, this person (or persons) conveyed the message that you’re not worth much.

And you believed them.

Maybe you were physically abused, sexually abused, screamed at. Perhaps it was more subtle. Maybe you were neglected too much – not enough for the neighbor to call Social Services, but just enough for you to believe there’s something wrong with you.

I have a friend who’s parents follow her around 24/7 and tell her what she’s doing wrong.

She’s grown up feeling like an idiot and can’t shake it.

Or what about the guy who’s parents only loved him when he did something good? He’ll spend the rest of his life only feeling good about himself when he manages some kind of accomplishment. He’ll live from mountaintop to mountaintop, struggling to be present in his own family because the only thing that matters is success.

Low self esteem drives all manner of problems from relational discord to addiction to suicide.

Unfortunately, most people have it.

And what drives me nuts is the fact that most of the articles and resources aimed at helping people heal don’t deal with the most important truth about your low self esteem.

It came at the hands of someone else.

The Best Self Esteem Advice I Ever Took

That might not sound like an epiphany to you, but that truth has a huge bearing on your healing.

Because your low self esteem came at the hands of someone else, the remedy is going to have to come through the same medium.

You’re going to have to spend time with people who love you, people who see the real you. Positive people. Healthy people.

These people, through their words and actions, just like the people who gave you bad self esteem, will tell you over and over again that you’re OK, that you’re not a bad person.

This truth about you can only come from someone else.

You can’t think your way out of this, or change something and watch your low self esteem magically disappear.

But because we don’t like who we are, we surround ourselves with the pretty people, the successful people – and they’re the worst. Their self esteem is just as bad as yours, they’ve just found a way to cover it up better than you have.

Healthy people don’t worry as much about style and other cultural alternatives for self worth. They’re not the sexy people; the people everyone wants to be around. Most of them can be found at churches, volunteer organizations, and nursing homes.

How boring is that?

But these people can, and will, change your life. All you have to do is put yourself in their arena. They’ll do the rest. It’s who they are.

Years ago, I drank the Kool Aide and started attending church. Because of my career, I ended up in a tiny, conservative, Evangelical country church in Texarkana, Arkansas.

While that might sound like death to you, it was the beginning of the end for my low self esteem. I was mentored by one of the elders who was an expert at encouragement. I became friends with the youth pastor who never took issue with my many unsavory qualities.

To be sure, this congregation wasn’t without its kooks. But for the most part it was filled with people who were committed to helping me see the truth about myself.

It’s who they were.

I’ll never forget them, or what they perpetrated against my low self esteem.

Now, as a Stay at Home Dad and a volunteer at our church, I deal with the unsavory qualities of others on a regular basis. I don’t spend nearly as much time as I should in the company of healthy people, but I get enough to keep moving forward.

Looking back on the last 20 years of my life, and at whatever success I’ve had in restoring my self-view, I see a long line of people who stood by my side and spoke truth, over and over again, about who I am.

Without friendships like these, I’d be a wreck.

Maybe dead.

If you’re struggling here, you’ll get nowhere without people in your life who have a healthy view of themselves. They’re the only ones who can undo the self-lying that you’ve been living with for so long.

Drop what you’re doing and find these folk.

They’ll change your life.