The Bible Says… Don’t Trust The Bible?

Does the Bible contradict itself? Yes. We were just taught to ignore it or negotiate it.

The Bible Says It. I Believe It. (Sigh)

If you’re American, you might remember not long ago when the Republican party couldn’t agree on a Speaker of the House. After a string of failed candidates, the gavel finally landed with Mike Johnson.

I didn’t know much about him. Most of us didn’t. So when I happened to be watching the news and heard him speak, I paid attention.

A reporter asked Johnson to explain how he approaches political issues. His answer made headlines — and for a lot of people like me, it triggered something familiar.

Not in a dramatic way. But in a very personal, very evangelical way.

Here’s what he said:

“I am a Bible-believing Christian... Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘It's curious, people are curious: What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That's my worldview.’”

At first glance — especially if you grew up Christian — it sounds like a great answer. Almost a mic drop. The Bible is clear. The Bible is true. The Bible settles every question.

But if you’ve actually read the Bible — really read it — you know that’s impossible.

The Bible isn’t one simple, unified, clean instruction manual. It’s messy. Complicated. Ancient. Full of tensions. Full of contradictions. Full of evolving ideas about God, morality, and the human story.

In fact, much of what we were taught about how to read the Bible doesn’t survive actual contact with the Bible itself.

So today, let’s walk through five Bible passages you almost never hear preached — not because they’re hidden, but because they don’t fit the way we were taught the Bible works.

---

1. God Makes Mistakes

Genesis 6:6
“The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.”

It’s not just that God regrets making humans this one time. This is part of a much larger pattern that shows up all throughout the early chapters of the Bible.

The God we meet in the Torah is far more human — far more anthropomorphic — than most modern teaching is comfortable admitting. This is a God who reacts, negotiates, reconsiders, and sometimes seems caught off guard.

• God changes his mind: After the golden calf, God threatens to destroy Israel, but Moses talks God out of it (Exodus 32:14).

• God negotiates: Abraham bargains with God over how many righteous people it would take to spare Sodom (Genesis 18:16–33).

• God reacts to new information: At the Tower of Babel, God “comes down” to see what humans are doing before deciding how to respond (Genesis 11:5-7).

• God asks questions he shouldn’t need to ask: After Adam and Eve eat from the tree, God asks, “Where are you?” and “Who told you that you were naked?” (Genesis 3:9-11).

• God tests and adjusts: God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, then stops him at the last moment (Genesis 22:12).

Over and over, God is presented as someone in the story, responding to what unfolds — not as a distant, unchangeable, all-knowing being executing a fixed plan.

For those of us raised to believe that God never changes, never learns, never regrets, and never adjusts — the actual text tells a much messier story.

---

2. You Can Beat Your Slave (Up to a Point)

Exodus 21:20-21
“If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies… he must be punished. But if the slave gets up after a day or two, he is not to be punished, because the slave is his property.”

This one barely needs commentary.

The Bible doesn’t just acknowledge slavery.

It regulates it.

And in this case, it essentially says:
If you beat your slave to death, that’s bad. But if you only beat them badly enough that they recover in a couple days? That’s fine. After all, they belong to you.

This is part of the law of God in the Torah — the very law many Christians claim reflects God’s perfect and timeless morality.

If this verse appeared in any other ancient religious text, modern Christians would use it as proof that the religion was barbaric and false. But because it’s in the Bible, it gets ignored, softened, or reinterpreted away.

I use slavery as an example, but there are all sorts of commands in the Law of Moses and instructions by God in the Torah that we typically just pretend aren’t there: killing the babies of our enemies, stoning women who disobey, marrying your brother’s widow (even if you already have a wife), and on and on.

And if these verses do get addressed in church, it’s usually with some version of:
“But Jesus fulfilled the law — that doesn’t apply anymore.”

The problem is:
That’s not really what Jesus said.
You don’t believe that when it comes to LGBTQ issues.
And if that’s actually your explanation, then you’re admitting that the Bible was wrong from the beginning and Jesus had to come fix it.

And even when Jesus does directly address the Law of Moses — like in the Sermon on the Mount — he doesn’t soften it. He actually doubles down.

You’ve heard it was said, don’t murder? Now it’s don’t even hate.
You’ve heard it was said, don’t commit adultery? Now it’s don’t even lust.

He doesn’t say:

"You’ve heard it was said, don’t cook a young goat in its mother’s milk — but I say, eh, it’s fine now. Do what you want. I fulfilled that one."

That’s not how any of this works.

---

3. Don’t Trust The Bible

Jeremiah 8:8
“How can you say, ‘We are wise, for we have the law of the Lord,’ when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely?”

Jeremiah drops a theological grenade:
The scribes — the ones who copied and transmitted the law — have corrupted it.

The Bible itself admits that parts of the written text may not be trustworthy.

This is devastating for any system that requires every word of scripture to be perfectly preserved and fully authoritative. The Bible acknowledges its own human fingerprints. The text we’ve inherited is not a flawless download from heaven — it’s a complicated, human story that includes error, editing, and contradiction.

And Jeremiah isn’t criticizing other religions’ scriptures. He’s talking about his own. Or, if you want to argue that he’s not referring to any texts that made it into the Bible, he’s at the very least saying that you can’t automatically trust the people who preserve Scripture for us.

---

4. Sell All Your Possessions to Get to Heaven

Matthew 19:21
“If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Jesus says it. Directly. No parable. No metaphor.

And yet, almost no Christian community treats this as a universal command. The most common move is to say, “Well, Jesus was only talking to that one rich man.”

Which is a fancy way of saying:
We get to decide which verses are for everyone, and which ones aren’t.

Of course, compared to almost anyone Jesus ever met, most of us today are the rich young ruler. If we applied this verse the way Jesus states it, very few of us would qualify.

It exposes something we don’t like to admit: even people who claim to believe every word of the Bible are already picking and choosing.

We like to say this was just for that one rich man. But we don’t do that with other things Jesus said to individuals. When he tells Nicodemus he must be born again to enter the kingdom of God, evangelicals take that as a universal command — they even call themselves “born again Christians.”

Funny how no one calls themselves “intentionally impoverished Christians.”

---

5. Hate Your Family If You Love Jesus

Luke 14:26
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters — yes, even their own life — such a person cannot be my disciple.”

Again — not a parable. Not hyperbole (at least not according to the text). Just a straightforward requirement.

Hate your family. Hate your own life. Or you can’t follow me.

Most churches never preach this passage. And if they do, they quickly soften it into something like:

“Well, it just means you should love God more than your family.”

Maybe. But that’s not what the text says.

And that’s the pattern: when a verse fits our system, we quote it as absolute truth. When it doesn’t, we reframe, reinterpret, or quietly ignore it.

---

So What Do We Do With These Verses?

There are basically three ways people handle passages like these (and the hundreds of others like them):

1. Ignore Them
   By far the most common move in modern evangelical churches.
   We simply pretend these verses aren’t there.
   We preach the parts that fit. We skip the parts that don’t.
   Most Christians today haven’t even heard of half the verses we just walked through — not because they’re secret, but because the church just quietly avoids them.

2. Negotiate Them
   This is where belief systems get creative.
   We reinterpret uncomfortable passages to make them fit our existing system.
   Instead of starting with:
   What does this mean?
   We start with:
   What must this mean, assuming the Bible can’t contradict itself or contain error?
   We call slavery “indentured servitude.”
   We say “hate your family” really means “prioritize God.”
   We explain away “sell your possessions” as a one-time command for one guy.
   We end up building entire layers of interpretive gymnastics to protect a doctrine that the Bible itself doesn’t claim for itself.

3. Weaponize Them
   This one’s more dangerous. Instead of underplaying the verses, we overplay them — and use them to justify harm.

• If slavery is in the Bible, then racism can be justified.

• If the Bible says to shun family members, we can disown anyone who disagrees with us.

• If Jesus told the rich man to sell everything, we label anyone wealthier than us as greedy and evil (while exempting ourselves, of course).

In this version, the Bible isn’t a source of grace or wisdom — it becomes a weapon used to dehumanize others.

---

Or — We Can Take A Different Approach

Maybe we can stop pretending the Bible is something it never claimed to be.
Maybe we can admit that it’s a messy, ancient, sacred, human library — full of voices, tensions, and evolving understandings of God.

And maybe the goal was never to avoid the tension, but to enter into it — with honesty, humility, and grace.

That’s what a lot of us are learning to do.

And it’s why some of us are still here — not because we found better answers, but because we’re finally allowed to ask better questions.

And finally able to see…if God can change his mind, so can I.