Inconsistencies

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. Matthew 23:15

I have been a Christian for less than twenty years, obviously I was well into adulthood. Because of that I have had many people over the years mention, challenge, or compliment the changes they have seen as God has grown my faith in Him and my knowledge of His Word.

Every once in a while someone will tell me about the inconsistencies in the Bible. Early on I thought they must be right because many people said it and I didn’t know it well enough to defend it. As time has passed I have learned to ask for an example. So far only one person gave me some vague argument they had overheard about the Prodigal son but it didn’t even make sense to him when he said it out loud. That was many years ago.

The most common problem for most people is how awful and judgmental God appears to be in the Old Testament. For a long time I thought they were right. Then I studied it. God was and is so patient with His people you can’t even justify this statement. I now know that people who make these arguments just plain haven’t studied or looked into who God is or what His character is like.

All of this came to mind when I was approached as I got out of my car one day last week. Two ladies were headed toward my front door and I let them know it was my house. Okay, the truth is that I tried to stay in my car as long as I could but they weren’t moving fast enough and I wanted to protect my daughter (who was in my house) from having to deal with them.

They were very kind and for some reason I decided to engage with them as God had not given me an “out.” They started with small talk for a sentence or two and I stopped them telling them that I knew Jesus as my Savior and was pretty certain that we believed differently about Him. One of them assured me that He was also their Savoir. I asked about the Son of God. “Oh, yes, we believe He is the Son of God.” So then I asked about the Trinity. Well, no, they don’t believe that Jesus and God are both deity, only God the Father.

I thought about asking how the Son of God who is not God could be a Savior but they moved the conversation right along to some article in their “magazine” that would help me to see that we had many other things in common. I took the magazine and they excused themselves. I have no idea if they will return to discuss the article with me. I won’t be able to do that because I threw the magazine away shortly after bringing it into my house.

Before I did I glanced at a page that had a list of “Some Christians Believe this:” and “We believe this.” The thing that I remember on that list is that they do not believe in Hell. I think that if you are going to say that Jesus is your Savior and that He died for your sin that He was a pretty upright and great man. I can’t imagine that you could call your Savior a liar.

Jesus talks about hell a lot! He warns us about it and to fear it. He describes it as a place of “weeping and gnashing of teeth”, “hell of fire”, and “outer darkness”. How can someone believe in Him and not in what He says?

In Luke 12:5 Jesus said, “But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” This obviously refers to our fear of the Lord God Himself. We’re told that Jesus said and did only what the Father gave him to do. God the Father expressed His pleasure with Jesus. Jesus Himself, said, “I and the Father are One” in John 10:30.

This comes back to an argument I have made many times. You cannot take the parts of scripture that seem right to you and claim that the others are somehow wrong or just inconsistent. We believe the whole counsel of God or we do not. Jesus Christ is a liar, a lunatic, or He is the Lord God incarnate.

In John 17 Jesus prays a wonderful prayer for the disciples He was leaving here and those who would come to faith in the future. In John 17:5 He ends His prayer like this,

“And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.”

Jesus is and was and always has been what Hebrews1:3-4 describes about Him, “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, (4) having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.” These are the traits of God.

So, if two people knock on your door and start to tell you what you should believe – please ask them to get out their Bibles – not their magazines – to back up their beliefs. That’s where the inconsistencies will be found.