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Q.
Why are certain stories included in the Bible?
Why are those stories included? The Jewish and Christian leaders who
determined the canon of scripture were careful not to censor its words. They
believed that each book they considered to be canonical was the true word of
God and should not be tampered with. They insisted on leaving in the good,
the bad, and the ugly.
In addition to the accounts of brutality against individuals and the atroci-
ties perpetrated against entire clans, the Bible also records the thoughts of vio-
lence and cruelty that men harbored against others, particularly those in what
are called the “imprecatory” psalms. Those psalms openly express the psalm-
ist’s desire to exact vengeance on his enemies as well as the enemies of God.
Along with the vicious accounts, these psalms provide us with a stark
contrast to the teachings of Jesus about loving our enemies—and with the
hope that even the most evil people can be transformed by God’s power.
Kathy Escobar
A.
I have absolutely no idea why God includes such bizarre, pain-
ful, extremely contradictory stories in the Bible. The Bible is a raw,
unedited version of humanity and divinity mixed together. These
horrifi c stories remind us of what we as people are capable of. They offer a
constant reminder that real life is ugly, dark, self-absorbed, and dangerous,
and that left on our own many of us will do things we had no idea we were
actually capable of doing.
At the same time, we cannot dismiss that there are passages in the Old
Testament that point toward God actually directing people to do what we’d
call fairly horrifi c things, like wipe out entire villages of people. I don’t have
a simple way to make sense of those scriptures. They hurt. They confuse me
if I focus in on them for too long and forget to turn my attention to the bigger
story—God’s incredible heart and his passionate pursuit of people.
Regardless of the weird, unexplainable ways that God’s stories are
recorded in the scriptures, the Holy Spirit is alive and well, working through
fl awed, messed up, confused people.
I cannot dismiss that those passages are there, nor can I dismiss that amid
the rubble and pain and destruction of life this side of heaven, there is also so
much beauty and redemption. I have come to believe that the weird, unex-
plainable paradoxes in the Bible are a refl ection of the weird, unexplainable
paradoxes in us as people.
We are both good and bad, light and darkness, sinner and saint. And so
are some of these stories in the Bible.