101 Biblical Scandals

Sunday, 17th August 2008

WARNING: This blog entry contains what some legalists would consider severely disturbing and highly objectionable content. Please read at your own peril.

Better yet, you may want to totally not read it, because it may cause you to stumble and end up singing along with R.E.M. "Losing My Religion"...

I have been prompted to start a series on scandalous events that are recorded in the Scriptures.

These include the following:

1. How Abraham asked Sarah to lie that she was his sister on two separate occasions so that he would not be killed by the Pharaoh (Gen 12) and King Abimelech of Gerar (Gen 20). By doing so, he was effectively allowing them to go to bed with her.

2. How Lot's 2 daughters made their dad drunk, so that they could have children through an incestuous relationship with him (Gen 19)

3. How Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute to deceive her father-in-law Judah, and ended up in bed with him and then getting pregnant through that unholy union (Gen 38)

4. How Rahab the harlot harboured illegal immigrants while lying to the authorities that she did not do so. This resulted in her own fellow citizens being killed and her nation being destroyed, while she herself was spared despite her act of high treason (Josh 2, Josh 6)

5. How King David, after getting Bathsheba pregnant, arranged for her husband Uriah to be killed in the thick of battle (2 Sam 11).

Was even thinking of following Joshua Lye's example (in writing a book) and entitling it "101 Biblical Scandals: Passages found in the Holy Scriptures that your Pastor dares not preach about".

I am sure it is going to cause a major lot of ripples in Christendom :-)

Had I been living during biblical times, I would have been stoned for blasphemy. Had I been living in the midteen centuries, I would have been captured, tortured and burnt on a stake for being the devil's advocate...

And CybeRanger, if you are reading this, I was wondering if this would cause you to retract the accolodes of Best Christian Blog of the Year 2007 and Best Christian Blog of the Week 4 Feb 2007 awards :-)

Anyway, if you have managed to read up to this stage of this blog entry without being stumbled yet, congratulations for keeping an open mind and being prepared to have a paradigm shift in your theology!

Just think about it for a moment. The Holy Spirit actually saw fit to inspire Moses, Joshua, Nathan, etc to record these events in the Bible. When Paul said in 2 Tim 3:16 that *all* scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, he meant *all*, and that *all* would include the above passages, no?

What if I were to tell you that there is a perfectly logical and consistent explanation for every single one of these recorded events, and like a single string that threads beautifuly through the entire tapestry? And that the answer is a five-letter word beginning with J and ending with S?

I will be giving you readers a serialisation of its contents over the next few weeks and months, so stay tuned. Feel free also to bring up other passages in scripture that currently do not seem to make sense to you, and we can discuss those too. Please also do not just take my word for it, but be like the Bereans who examined the scriptures to confirm that whatever Paul said to them was indeed based on the Word of God.