WHY I DON'T BELIEVE THE BIBLE IS THE INERRANT WORD OF GOD


1. It doesn't need to be
There are plenty of people in the underground church that know Christ better than we do, are more passionately serving and more obedient to this will... they don't have Bibles.

Jesus is the full revelation of God's will and character.  The stories are in the Bible but the stories are not the Bible.  It is the story that matters not the pages and the binding.

The purpose of the Bible is to serve as a guide to God... TO SUPPLEMENT the revelation of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

2. It threatens to compete with the authority of Jesus
I was at a youth camp in Carson-Newman TN and the director walked on stage cradling a Bible in her arms, she had swaddled it like baby.  She said 'until we get to heaven, this (holding the Bible) is the closest we will get to God.

'The Word of God' is a title that belongs exclusively to Jesus.  Calling ANYTHING other than Jesus 'the Word' is blasphemy.

The moment you say Jesus isn't enough, when you have to add something to make your faith work, you are no longer a Christian.  You can be like Christians, but you have to call yourself something else.  

*on a side note, I also have an issue with what Christians call 'holy'. From what I read things that are holy will melt the face of a seraphim.

3. It is an obstacle to our ONLY MISSION ON EARTH
Atheists are not stupid.  The idea that all the crimes against humanity outlined in the old testament are offensive not consistent with the true definition of love.

Religion is meant to comment on revealed truth.  Science is meant to observe the laws of the physical world.   It is only when these disciplines comment outside of their purpose that there is a problem.  The OT is filled with ancient near-east cosmology vocabulary (flat earth).  It is expected that writing reflect the it's cultural context... and social context.  Let's get over it.
*btw, just read an interesting study that sexual orientation did not exist as a phenomenon until the 1800s.  Maybe some of us have been reading the Bible in an erroneously modern context.

4. It is neither a spiritual nor rational doctrine
"all scripture is god-breathed"
'All scripture' doesn't mean what you think it means.
At that time there were more than Hebrew writings (the word 'scripture' just means writing) in circulation.  Ugiritic, Cannanite, Zoroastrian, Babalonian, Greek, Akadian... you name it.

So does that mean all of that other stuff was the word of god also???
'God-breathed' doesn't mean what you think it means.
Spiration goes both ways, one way is inspiring and the other inspired (subject and object).  Either way, inspiration or inspired, it's not that big a deal.  Artists inspire and are inspired all the time, it only affects their experience by degrees.  Granted when it is God inspiring or has inspired then it is different, but that doesn't make it something to be revered.  In fact reverence is only something we give to people with relational distance, certainly not for someone we would call 'daddy' (Abba), certainly not for someone who's spirit dwells within you.