Being an Amazon Prime member and the dad of a three year old means that I don’t have the luxury of going through an entire day without a Daniel Tiger song invading my mind. (For those of you who aren’t three or don’t have a three year old, Daniel Tiger is a children’s cartoon show inspired by Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.) Daniel has a song for every circumstance: when you get jealous, when you’re sick, when something seems bad, when you have to go potty… Name a childhood (or adult!) conundrum, and Daniel has a catchy song to help you handle it. And by “catchy” I mean, “It won’t let you go.” That song is going to be with you long after the show’s over and days have passed since your last viewing! If you haven’t seen Daniel Tiger yet, you’ve been warned. We’ll revisit Daniel and his songs in a moment.

Being a pastor and Bible teacher means that I spend time thinking through the Christian faith and the objections raised against it, and it seems to me that there’s a deep irony in most of those objections or accusations. Here’s a popular quote that’s representative of this irony:

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."  (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion)

Here’s the irony: most people who tend to make accusations against the Bible do so on the basis of morals and values that come from the Judeo-Christian worldview. In other words, they take the values they have and use them to attack the very thing that gave them those values in the first place. The Judeo-Christian worldview gave the world a radical and unprecedented view of the inherent value and dignity of every human being, irrespective of status, bloodline, talent, etc. In comparing Greek philosophy with Christianity, the French secular-humanist philosopher Luc Ferry observes:

"The Greek world was fundamentally an aristocratic world, a universe organized as a hierarchy in which those most endowed by nature should in principle be ‘at the top,’ while the less endowed saw themselves occupying inferior ranks. And we should not forget that the Greek city-state was founded on slavery."

In direct contradiction [emphasis mine], Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity—an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance. But this notion of equality did not come from nowhere.

In other words, we in the West today take it for granted that every human being has inherent dignity, despite having a wide range of external qualities, but that is not an idea that ever took root in the world until Christianity came on the scene in a global way. So often, those who are most visceral in their attack of the Bible—the Old Testament, in particular—argue based on values whose sole source is the Judeo-Christian tradition. To take those values and then attack the thing from which those values comes makes no sense. These are not self-evident values. It’s only “self-evident” in those parts of the world deeply touched by Jesus and his followers.

So, have you ever been rattled by an accusation against the Bible? Has anyone accused God of a crime against which you had no defense? Do accusations against the God of the Bible (specifically the Old Testament) make you uncomfortable and unsure how to respond? Daniel Tiger has a song about how to respond when you’re afraid (when you see a scary shadow in your room, or you hear a noise that frightens you, etc.), and I think it’s relevant for us when we come across accusations against the Bible that make us uncomfortable: ♬ “See what it is. You might feel better.” ♬ (Go to YouTube at your own risk.) I have found that most accusations against the Bible, especially on issues of morality, are best handled by reading the issue in question in context. Go read what the Bible actually says on that issue, read it in its larger context, and use common sense when arriving at a conclusion. Go “see what it is.” You might just find what David expresses throughout Psalm 119 to be true. God is good and so is His Word.

I’ll offer one of my experiences recently which deals with Numbers 15:32-41 (keep Exodus 31:15; 35:2-3 in mind and in context when reading this account). This one stumped me for a moment. When I heard the accusation that God killed people for working on the sabbath, I thought it was an exaggeration. Then I read Numbers 15:32-36. It seems excessive to kill someone for gathering firewood on the sabbath, right? But keep reading. Numbers 15:39-40 emphasizes obedience to God rather than following “after your own heart and your own eyes, after which you played the harlot…” This account isn’t the case of someone doing innocent and necessary work. This is someone ignoring a clear commandment of God’s and doing his own thing. According to the law, working on the sabbath was punishable by death (Exodus 31:15). That sounds harsh, but if that’s how things are, then why work that day? Furthermore, Exodus 35:3, right after repeating the punishment for working on the sabbath, says, “You shall not kindle a fire in any of your dwellings on the sabbath day.” The man gathering wood on the sabbath was in complete defiance of God’s clear commands. He was blatantly ignoring God’s way and choosing his own. If we ignore God and choose our own way on something as simple as not working or making fires, then what are we going to do with the rest of it? Is it going to be our way or God’s? Does our way lead to true life and goodness? Or is God good and does He have good in mind in all that He does? Reading the larger context for this specific situation gave me a deeper appreciation for what was really going on and what was at stake, as opposed to reading an incomplete account which paints a more disturbing story when torn from its context. 

So, when you come across a difficult passage or issue, ♬ “See what it is. You might feel better.” ♬ Of course, feeling better about it isn’t the point. The point is that many accusations against the Bible represent misunderstandings or mischaracterizations. Checking those things out for yourself is important and may give you greater confidence in the goodness and faithfulness of our amazing Creator.