10 Things The Bible Doesn’t Say

[one...two...tree 2,762]

10) Ask Jesus Into Your Heart

Also known as part of the “sinner’s prayer”. Nope, the Bible doesn’t say it.

9) Slavery is a-ok!

Commonly used by those who wish to criticize Christianity and scripture, this canard is often pulled out by the New Atheist crowd. While, yes, the Bible does contain exhortations on how to treat slaves, going to the “the Bible condones slavery” position is horribly misguided. This is mostly for two big reasons:

1. Slavery was pretty much a cultural norm during the time period when those rules were written.
2. The slavery of the ancient near east (ANE) really was nothing like slavery in colonial through civil war America. You see, in scripture, slaves could earn their freedom. In early America… not so much.

8) God Helps Those Who Help Themselves

Nope. Not in the Bible. Best guess on origin is Aesop’s fable “Hercules and the Waggoner” and popularized much later by Benjamin Franklin. Scripture actually teaches the opposite, about community, about where two or more are gathered, about ‘lean not on your own understanding’.

7) Life Begins At Conception

Nope…again, not in the Bible. Life began, in scripture, when the first breath was drawn. Those who quote Psalms or Jeremiah are doing so incorrectly.

6) Capitalism Is God’s Preferred Economy

Again, nope. While there is no scriptural prohibition against working and earning a living… even Paul was a tent maker… there are plenty of passages on how workers are to be treated, how they’re to be paid fairly, and how the ‘job creator’ must not exploit the worker. The rules put in place in the Bible, if some brave legislator tried to enact them, would cause the “job creators” revolt. Most scriptural rules for economics are ignored and poo-poo’d by the “Free Marketeers” of today. Plus, usury was against the law and a sin.

5) Marriage Is Between One Man and One Woman

This is a popular one, and one that really isn’t explicit in scripture either. Many Biblical folks had multiple wives, concubines, etc, and , well, God didn’t really smite them for that, now did he? Plus,Exodus 21:10-11 sets guidelines for a man taking a second wife.

4) Guns Are Our God Given Right!

People will often point to the story in the Bible Jesus telling his followers to buy a sword as rationalization that God wants us to have guns. Well, that’d be great if that’s why Jesus asked them to do that. It’s not. It’s about fulfilling prophecy by being counted as transgressors according to Roman law.

3) Being Gay Is A Sin

Sorry, just not true. For a good bit on why, head over to PoliticalJesus and read Optimistic Chad’s series on The Bible, Homosexuality, and Christianity.

2) Hell Is A Place Of Eternal Torment

Crystal St. Marie Lewis really opened my eyes on this one. I had always had doubt about this bit of doctrine, and after reading her blog series on hell and the accompanying e-book “Quenched: What Everyone (Especially Christians) Should Know About Hell“, I began to understand that the afterlife, in the Jewish tradition described in scripture, bore little to no resemblance to the modern Christian view of hell. Well, at least the view that’s been widely accepted since about the 14th or 15th Century.

….and the #1 thing that the Bible never says is…….

1) The Bible Is The Inerrant, Infallible Word Of God

First, Jesus is the Word of God, not scripture. Second, biblical inerrancy is a 20th Century fundamentalist invention.

Scripture is God breathed… meaning it’s a living thing (you know, breath of life from God and all). As Zack over at The American Jesus says:

Because scripture is also “God-breathed” it means it too isn’t God. Nor does it even come directly from God, but instead it passes through an intermediary. In the beginning, the intermediary between us and God was dirt. God breathed into it and the result was that we were created.

In the case of the Bible, God breathed His truth into the hearts and minds of people and the result was that the Bible was created. But like that ancient dirt that gave birth to us, the people who wrote the Bible, God’s intermediaries, weren’t perfect. Which is why Paul says “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”

If Paul believed the Bible, or what parts of it he had, was perfect he would have simply said “We fully know because we have scripture.” But he didn’t because he knew that even with scripture as his source of knowledge that knowledge was imperfect because it was God-breathed not God Himself. –

The Bible Isn’t Perfect And It Says So Itself

Edited June 9, 2013 by Lincolns mullet

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Being gay isn't a sin according to the Bible, but the gay sex act is, just as adultery is, drunkeness, etc.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

You never heard of the Bible code?

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

So you are saying if the bible doesn't say it, then we cannot have it?

Should we be governed by the bible and not our Constitution and Bill of Rights?

[Bugs 455]

Being gay isn't a sin according to the Bible, but the gay sex act is, just as adultery is, drunkeness, etc.

So are crimes such as having cattle graze together, raising a variety of crops on the same field, cutting your hair, having flat noses, and wearing clothes containing more than one fabric.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

8) God Helps Those Who Help Themselves

Nope. Not in the Bible. Best guess on origin is Aesop’s fable “Hercules and the Waggoner” and popularized much later by Benjamin Franklin. Scripture actually teaches the opposite, about community, about where two or more are gathered, about ‘lean not on your own understanding’.

Somebody should tell Obama's white house.

Edited June 9, 2013 by The Patriot

[Darnell 8,479]

Yay Bible ! Go Bible ! Yay !

[spookyturtle 9,466]

So are crimes such as having cattle graze together, raising a variety of crops on the same field, cutting your hair, having flat noses, and wearing clothes containing more than one fabric.

Most gays don't raise cattle or own farms. The fashion issue is another story.

[GandD 5,966]

This is hokey at best. I don't even believe in the bible and this is rediculous. I hope you don't consider this as a real source for anything. Trying to link a book like this in one way or another to inherently modern day ideas like capitalism or guns is laughable. Swords are still around. Guns are different than swords. No ones debating whether or not people should be able to keep swords in their house.

Take the whole Old Testament and thow it in the trash. If you want a message to live by that will enhance your life, live by Christ's example in the 4 gospels. Love your neighbor as you would love yourself. Are you supposed Christians doing that? No, you're using other parts of the bible to justify not doing it.

[Darnell 8,479]

I will bow down to no space alien, regardless of DNA sequencing, joining, or splitting.

I refuse!

[Karee 4,191]

Who cares about 2000 year old fairy tales?

[Bugs 455]

Most gays don't raise cattle or own farms. The fashion issue is another story.

My point is if homosexual acts are considered wrong today because they were considered sin in the Bible then why aren't the above listed crimes considered wrong today?

[RGinWA 816]

The bible has been a great population controller...I mean come on, it's been used to rationalize the killing of millions throughout time.

But in all honesty, if there wasn't a bible we'd kill over something else.

Its funny to me that God seems to have become an absentee landlord about the time we murdered his son. Seems like he's not over that just yet.

If there is a god, I think he realized he created an insane asylum and then moved on.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

My point is if homosexual acts are considered wrong today because they were considered sin in the Bible then why aren't the above listed crimes considered wrong today?

Puritans. Blame the Puritans for that uncomfortable monkey suit people have to wear to work, and the bluenose attitude that still permeates much of the nation today. When Mother England created the colonies along the northern Atlantic coast, it was an opportune time to rid the crown, (and much of neighboring Europe), of deadbeats, petty thieves, political malcontents, con artists, smugglers, religious zealots, disenfranchised nobility, and other assorted undesirables.

[Karee 4,191]

When Mother England created the colonies along the northern Atlantic coast, it was an opportune time to rid the crown, (and much of neighboring Europe), of deadbeats, petty thieves, political malcontents, con artists, smugglers, religious zealots, disenfranchised nobility, and other assorted undesirables.

Sounds alot like the Mariel Boatlift.