What’s Wrong With The Bible?

2022년 7월 24일

What’s Wrong With The Bible?

< Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time  >

 For many, many years now, the Bible has been the Number One Best Selling book in the WHOLE world. Only one problem: although many people own Bibles (often more than one!), but fewer read it all the way through. Of those who read it, fewer bother doing the necessary research to understand it correctly. And of those who do understand it, a smaller number bother to believe, much less live by its wisdom. But there is something even more worse than this! It’s distorting what the Bible really says and then politicizing its teaching to advance a political agenda. This, I’m ashamed to say, has been going on in the United States more blatantly in recent years.

Today’s first reading is a perfect example of people distorting what the Bible says. So many so-called Christians hear the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and think this is God condemning homosexuality. Yet if they really studied the Bible, they would know that interpretation is wrong. If anything, the sin of Sodom was rape. To Jews, even to this day, treatment of strangers is a top priority. You could do nothing more evil than to sexually assault a guest, male or female. Want more proof? Judges 19 contains a similar story except the men rape and kill a visitor’s concubine. Further proof? Ezekiel 16:49-50 says “‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. And finally there’s Jesus himself who says it will go better for the inhabitants of Sodom on the day of judgment than for those villages who do not welcome the disciples! Lack of hospitality for a guest is the sin that cries to heaven. So let us read our Bible and research its meaning and run away from people who insist on using it to harm others.

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