Can the Bible Be Trusted? Part 1

07 Jun Can the Bible Be Trusted? Part 1

One of the most important questions is, “Can the Bible be trusted?” This question must be answered on two different levels: 1) a philosophical level, and 2) a practical level.

Philosophical Level

On the philosophical level, there are two issues at stake regarding the trustworthiness of the Bible.

1. Can truth be known?

We are living in a post-truth world. In Western civilization, our historic understanding of truth was rooted in God and the Bible. For centuries, we believed that truth was what God said it was, that we could all know it, and that both our temporal and eternal welfare depended on aligning ourselves with truth.

Western civilization has now jettisoned God, and along with God, also jettisoned truth. So, while we may all still agree that the world is still round, the sky is still blue, truth regarding our beliefs and behavior is increasingly regarded as a personal decision.

Regarding beliefs, it is perfectly reasonable today to say, “your God may be angry and judgmental, but my God is loving and tolerant.” Resolving the question of how God could be both things is not considered necessary. We may each have our own belief.

Regarding behavior, it is perfectly reasonable to say, “happiness is the highest good in life, and I am free to pursue whatever I believe will make me happy, and so are you. I won’t judge you, and you cannot judge me.”  We are each welcome to our own behavior.

These are examples of the fact that we now live in a post-truth world. But we do not live in a post-reality world, or a post-facts world. Reality is still reality, and facts are still facts. Former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once famously said, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts.”

Imagine that I have a puzzle box in front of me. I ask you to tell me what you think is in the box. I shake the box and it sounds like pieces of a puzzle. So, you tell me that you think there is a puzzle in the box. However, I open the box to reveal a bunch of pretzels, which sound like pieces of a puzzle rattling around in a box.

Here’s the question: Did what you think was in the box have any effect on what actually was in the box? Of course not. What we think about something has absolutely no effect on it. Pretzels are pretzels, regardless of what we think.

Facts do not care about our feelings, and are not affected by whether or not we believe them. So, to remain in touch with reality, we must be concerned about truth, whether we can know it, and what to do about it.

So, can truth be known? Yes. It can. And it is almost mental-illness level denial to insist that it cannot. Western civilization, led by progressives in the United States, has collectively agreed to go nuts and pretend that such truth cannot be known. But that doesn’t change reality or facts.

This brings us to God and the Bible. God either exists or He doesn’t. The Bible is either true or it isn’t, regardless of what we think, regardless of what we believe. It is nonsensical to believe that God exists and doesn’t exist. The only reasonable thing to do is to try to determine what is truly true, and act accordingly.

2. Did God communicate truth to us?

The next philosophical question is, “Did God communicate truth to us?”  That is, assuming God exists, and assuming we are accountable to Him in what we believe and how we live, God must have told us what to believe and how to live. Otherwise, how could He expect us to know? How could He hold us accountable for something He didn’t tell us?

This creates a challenge for us. If we see things in the Bible that are hard to understand, or appear to be mistakes, or apparent discrepancies that are difficult to reconcile, at first glance, we might be tempted to conclude that the Bible has mistakes in it, and that if it is wrong about provable details, how could we trust it when it speaks of spiritual realities?

But let’s think about that for a moment. What kind of a God would give us a communication with errors in it? What might we conclude if He did?

1. God is not wise enough to create a Bible without errors?
2. God is not powerful enough to create a Bible without errors?
3. God doesn’t care enough to create a Bible without errors?

The reality is, if God is all-good and all-loving, if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere present simultaneously, He could and would give us revelation about Himself that could be utterly trusted regarding our relationship with Him and our eternal destiny.

So when we see things in the Bible we do not understand (it’s full of such things), when we see things that seem to be errors or contradictions, (there are plenty of them), how do we respond?

We respond by trusting Him. We’ve already seen in this series that there is no hope turning away from God. If we reject God, we’ve only done half the job. The other half is that we must explain reality without Him, which cannot be done! So, we turn to God, not away from Him.

When we turn to Him, we learn there are no apparent errors, there are no apparent discrepancies that have not been credibly addressed by sufficient scholarship that we do not have to question the trustworthiness of the Bible. When we turn to God, we learn that, while God and His truth are not easy to understand in all its depth, there is nevertheless a credibility to the Bible that leads us to give ourselves over to its truth.

Now, having said that, if we were to read in the Bible that the moon is made of green cheese, we would have proof that the Bible is wrong. We’ve been to the moon. We’ve brought back dust and rocks. We know there is no green cheese.

So, in looking at the trustworthiness of the Bible, while we start with a belief on the philosophical level that truth can be known and that God did communicate truth to us in the Bible and it can therefore be trusted on that level, nevertheless, it must stand up when we look at the details, at the specifics, on the practical level.

In part two next week, we will look beyond the philosophical level to the practical level to make sure our philosophical assumption holds up. I look forward to seeing you then.

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