It happened again and no doubt I will see a lot more of it in the upcoming season of Advent. It is one of those little burrs that get under my saddle and leaves me gritting my teeth and and wanting to scream. The Bible has been translated into perfectly good English. Sure, various translations may offer variations on nuances, but you can still pretty much get the facts straight. Read the Book and get the facts straight! Use the Bible with integrity.
The most recent incident took place with a preacher who described the fall of man into sin in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). The passage is often used to show that the first man was not guilty of sinning first but rather the first woman. How this excuses the man I am not sure. In the current case the preacher said that the man was not there and the woman made the decision without him implying that if he had been present, he would have been strong enough to stop the whole terrible event. Problem was, he was there, standing beside her. Read the Book!
Another misuse that I hear all too often is that from creation to Noah's flood it never rained. Sorry, that doesn't show up in my KJV, NASV, ESV, or any other translation. It is not even in the old Hebrew. The verse quoted says that, "And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and not a man to till the ground" (Genesis 2:5, KJV). The rather obvious implication here is that there were no plants because there was no rain. When it rained, we got plants. Noah had lots of plants and so did everyone before him all the way back to Adam. Read the Book!
Genesis is not the only part of the Bible that can get misused. In II Kings 2 we find the story of the final hours of the prophet Elijah. All my life I have seen paintings of the prophet's departure from earth into heaven. Consistently the pictures have him riding a chariot of fire into the clouds. Only the scriptures describe Elijah ascending in a whirlwind and the chariot remains behind to keep Elisha the servant away. Have some integrity and read the Book!
With only a little more than three months to go until Christmas, we are already seeing store displays going up touting the season. We will get a good view of all the iconic emblems including trees, lights, reindeer, fat guys in red suits, angels, shepherds, and mangers in stables. We will also get to see on a regular basis three tall, stately men dressed in fine robes. The problem is, even if you accept the traditional date of the birth of Jesus in mid-winter (it was probably in the spring), the magi did not arrive for another eighteen months or so and they found Jesus with his parents living in a house (Matthew 2). Have some integrity and read the Book!
These may all be innocent oversights or perhaps embellishments to create more interest in the story. Even so, we must be careful in our use of the biblical texts lest we start influencing our theology and daily life decisions because of a loss of integrity. A retired pastor, Ray Hodge, twenty years ago compiled a list of statements of dubious veracity (Familiar Quotations, True and False). A couple of them reveal how we misquote the Bible.
The most obvious one comes from I Timothy 6. We often hear, "Money is the root of all evil." The actual wording in the Bible includes more explanation, "The love of money is the root of all evil." Money has no moral nature. Our tendencies toward greed and fear of being without drive us to crave money and the power and security we believe it can provide.
One biblical misquote Hodge does not include is from a Greek fable and is often placed in the Bible. "God helps those who help themselves." The reality is that God wants to be generous to all and particularly to those who CANNOT help themselves, the poorest, the widows, the orphans, and the homeless stranger. We make and accept these misquotes when we refuse to approach the Bible with integrity.
Like the good detective on the television program Dragnet was prone to say, "Just the facts, ma'am".
