Wut.

I've been reading God's word for awhile now, as you know, and I came into college thinking I knew so much about the Bible. Well, at some point sitting in my Bible class, it occurred to be just how much of the Bible I had never actually read. I've mentioned before how each time you read the Bible, you pick up something new; however, having a class about the Bible takes that to another level. In Bible class, we don't just read the Bible; we also analyze it from other viewpoints. For example, sometimes we'll talk about errors in translation, or other times, we'll look at the different interpretations and theories of various theologians and scholars.

My professor likes to throw in some knowledge of the cultures and the time period as a part of our lessons, so we can understand where the scripture came from. Sometimes what we learn is really really cool, like how each of the plagues in Exodus were taking on an Egyptian god, proving that God is more powerful than any of their perceived Gods. So cool. On the other hand, some of what we learn is really really not cool.

There's a whole bunch of stuff that we've gone over in my Bible class that just straight up bothers me.

You guys know the story of the birth of Moses, right? Basically, all of the baby boys were being killed, so his mother sent baby Moses in a basket down the river where he was found by the queen who kept him and raised him as her own.

Turns out, that was someone else's story first! There's some jerk named Sargon who already had that birth story! Sargon of Akkad was a king in the area before Moses was a thing, so the author of the story of Moses would have already heard about Sargon when the story was written. It was apparently a cultural thing. If you wanted to be taken seriously as a hero and a leader, you had to have qualities that mirrored former leaders; for example, you had to have that birth story. It's possible that even though it is in the Bible, that story may not have actually happened.

Wut.

Several weeks ago, we came across a particular passage in Joshua that made me sick. Of course, I had read stories in the book of Joshua before, but I think we mostly focused on stories like how the Israelites marched around Jericho and the walls came down. However, this particular story was different. Somehow, in my 18 years of living and with my church background, I never once heard about this. It was almost like it was carefully avoided because it is so difficult to address, or maybe because they didn't want me to know about it. This is the kind of passage that is dangerous in that it can totally change your image of God, justify violence, and make you doubt everything. Ladies and Gentlemen, this passage is just plain hard: Joshua 11.

"The Lord said to Joshua, 'Do not be afraid of them, because by this time tomorrow I will hand all of them, slain, over to Israel. You are to hamstring their horses and burn their chariots.'" (Joshua 11:6). And that is exactly what the Iraelites did; they slaughtered everything. That's right, God commanded mass genocide in the Bible. While that is disturbing on its own, that's not the worst of it. According to my professor, there is no other evidence that this event happened in any other history. They go on to face the same groups of people later in history and later in the Bible, as if they didn't actually kill everyone. Just like how we say, "the Pittsburgh Steelers destroyed the other team," but the other team just lost rather than being actually destroyed, it could have just been an exaggeration used to express military victory. That story may not have actually happened.

Wut.

There's a whole bunch of other occurrences like those that I could go on about, but I think you get the idea.

The thing that bothers me most about these passages is the idea that something written in the Bible might not have happened. Something about this makes doubt snowball. I can't help but to wonder if these parts of the Bible might not be true, what other parts of the Bible might not be true?

If Moses wasn't really sent in a basket down a river, how do I know the plagues even happened? How do I know if Jonah was swallowed by a fish? How do I know if God made covenants with Abraham and David? How do I know that Jesus died for my sins?

My first instinct to try to make some sense out of this. Alright, so maybe Moses's birth story is like someone else's... Who cares? Excuse me, my birth story is very similar to several people around me. I was born in a hospital, and I'm sure many of you were, too. Even people with more unlikely birth stories never seem to be alone in them. I guess people back then just liked to kill baby boys way more often than they should have, and since it happened more than once, I don't see why the same thing that happened to Sargon couldn't have also happened to Moses.

I realize that that was a really sad argument, but I don't need that crazy logic to believe. Sometimes, I think that God made this difficult on purpose. Making stuff like this seem unlikely makes any faith that is in him just more valuable. If you can believe in Him even through all the crazy things that try to discredit Him, you must really, truly believe in Him. What good is a faith if there's no reason to question it?

I can't go around doubting the entire Bible. I just can't do that to myself because deep down I know God is real, and I can't waste my efforts trying to run from that.