Awhile back I was engaged in a bit of channel surfing and stopped on an episode of Piers Morgan interviewing some evangelical. The conversation, as it is prone to do, went to the topic of gay marriage. Morgan informed the evangelical that Christians really ought to update their Bible’s to fit the cultural change. Of course, any God-honoring believer knows that mere man doesn’t have the authority to “update the Bible”, but for those who so desire to set themselves up as deity, here are a few suggestions.
Key to the gospel of America is this notion that Jesus never rejected anybody. We all know that such a loving Savior accepts everyone as they are now and forever. No need to change. No call to die. All he really asks is that you love yourself and you don’t become one of those dumb Pharisees who is so worried about rules and holiness and inconvenient things like that.
The Bible as it is currently written flies in the face of such a tolerant and inclusive message. And we can be certain that the real Jesus is just like us and values the things that we value. He would never risk rejecting someone or losing out on a potential worshipper, so we know in reality that he too bows to the gospel of Americana. In order to protect the Bible from embarrassment I propose a few changes.
In John 7:53-8:11 we read the story of the woman who is caught in adultery. What a beautiful passage for us. We see that Jesus does not condemn this woman though all the Pharisees do, what with their obsession for holiness and all. They have the audacity to have a doctrine of sin—and we all know this is the problem and not their rampant hypocrisy. The passage is tremendous except for a little piece in verse 11 where Jesus tells the woman, “go, and from now on sin no more”. I propose we strike this from our Bible’s as it applies this woman needs to change.
Matthew 10:32-33 is obviously a later addition to the text. We know that the real Jesus would never deny anyone. He wouldn’t be so vain as to think that someone must worship Him and swear allegiance to Him in order to be accepted. We all know that Jesus isn’t so shallow. It’d be best to strike the verse altogether but if we must keep it I propose we change it to, “but whoever denies me before men, I will still never deny them before my Father in heaven because I’m cool like that, and 2 Timothy 2:13.”
Matthew 7:21-23 will prove to be a terrible stumbling block to the American. It seems to imply that our stands for social justice, our desire to be the hands and feet of Jesus, our loving our neighbors, our feeding people, and all of the mighty works we’ve done in the name of Jesus could still somehow cause us to fall short. Not to mention that Jesus here puts upon himself the prerogative of condemning people to hell. We know such a gentle Savior would never do this. Even if he were (oh, perish the thought) given the power and authority to do such a terrible thing we know that he’d never actually exercise this divine right. After all is it not evident that even though these people “never knew Him” they still were trying their best to be good people. This passage has got to go.
I’m beginning to realize that we’ve got so much more work to do than I previously thought. At first, I thought maybe we’d only need to scrub a few verses. But my goodness, it is so difficult to read through the New Testament and find the real Jesus. What we find in the Gospels is a Jesus who takes a stand on issues, he even has the audacity to believe He is the only way to heaven. We know that the real Jesus never would have taught such a thing—his whole ministry was built on love. It was built on the here and now, he wasn’t foolish and backwards enough to believe in an after-life. And we know the real Jesus wouldn’t have been arrogant enough to make Himself the zenith of biblical revelation. Or the deciding factor upon ones eternity. But it is so difficult to find this real Jesus in the Bible.
Thankfully, once we finish our scrub of the New Testament our Bible readings will be much shorter. Once we get rid of all that archaic stuff I’m confident there won’t be much left of your Bible.
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Photo source: here
Hopefully the astute reader is able to see that my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek here.
