Yes That's the Book for Me
I have a complex relationship with the Bible. As a child I sang, “Jesus loves me this I know”. And how did I know? “For the Bible tells me so.” 2 Timothy 3:16 says that all Scripture is inspired by God (literally God-breathed). I took this to mean that God is the source of the Bible’s contents. Since God cannot lie and cannot be wrong, the Bible must therefore be without error in all that it teaches. This belief is known as the doctrine of inerrancy. There is more to it than just that, but I don’t want to get too deep into the weeds here. For a more detailed definition of inerrancy, I suggest reading the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy . Suffice to say, this belief was a cornerstone of my faith. For me, the Bible was the final authority for faith and practice. More than that, I interpreted it literally whenever possible and believed what I read in its pages. If it said that a particular person was at a particular place at a particular time, that was the truth. It was God’s Word. It w...