We return to the Bible this week, to the thorny topic of how we deal with difficult Bible verses, particularly verses about eternal punishment and divine vengeance. As our correspondent puts it, it’s like biblical whack-a-mole: you hammer one passage down, only to see new ones pop up.
In particular he was talking about 2 Thessalonians 1.8-9 which is full of vengeance and eternal punishment. In the podcast I do talk a bit about different ways of reading this – it’s not quite as unambiguous as it seems. But the real point is that the Bible is not a friend to systematic theology. There are always these difficult verses to deal with, whatever our theological position.
That is why I wrote The Badly Behaved Bible – and why I gave it that title. The Bible refuses to be put in our boxes. We make systems because we’re human; but the systems fail for the same reason. And that is true of the Bible as well. It is God-breathed, in that God give life to the words, but it was made by humans. That’s why, whatever your theology, you will always find something in the Bible to contradict it. Everybody, frankly, is whacking their moles.
For me, the challenge is to learn how to embrace and even enjoy mystery. The Bible is full of these burrowing moles and they will pop up now and again to ruin our lovely, systematically created lawn. But I’m not worried about them in the way that I used to be. I don’t need to have everything perfect. I need to live with the scriptures and listen to what God – a loving and just God – is saying to me through them.