100 Tough Questions about God and the Bible

Stephen M. Miller

• Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781441263520
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Straightforward answers to questions Christians and skeptics alike ask about God and the Bible

Let's be honest--the Bible can be hard to understand. It's full of weird laws, apparent inconsistencies, and tales of a God who often doesn't do what we expect. You may have asked about some of these things and been brushed off or given trite, unconvincing answers.

But serious questions deserve thoughtful responses, especially when opinions of Bible experts clash. Stephen M. Miller pulls insight from a wide range of Bible experts to report their answers to the tough questions. He does so with a touch of humor and no preaching, allowing you to draw your own conclusions.

Questions include:
· Would a loving God really put a good man like Job through horrible suffering just to test his loyalty?
· If God knows everything, why did he test Abraham's faith by asking him to sacrifice his own son?
· How could there be just one God, yet three?
· Since Jesus told people to turn the other cheek, why aren't more Christians pacifists?

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. What on earth do Christians mean when they say the Bible is “inspired by God”?
• 2. We’re supposed to believe that once upon a time people like Noah lived more than 900 years?
• 3. When Israel’s high priest wanted to hear from God, he used some magical stones called Urim and Thummin, which gave him a yes or no answer. Isn’t that a bit like flipping a coin?
• 4. The Bible says God gets jealous, but how is that not petty of him?
• 5. The Song of Songs in the Bible is so sexually charged that it sounds like it needs “rated for a mature audience.” What’s it doing in the Holy Bible?
• 6. God said King Hezekiah would die of an illness, but a few minutes later said he would let Hezekiah live another fifteen years. How can someone who knows everything change his mind like that?
• 7. How could Mary have been a pregnant virgin 2,000 years before in vitro fertilization?
• 8. Why should anyone believe that a star led the wise men to Bethlehem when stars don’t move like that?
• 9. Since Jesus told people to turn the other cheek, why aren’t more Christians pacifists?
• 10. If Jesus was so great, you’d think Roman or Jewish history writers of his own time would have written about him. Did they?
• 11. Given what we know today from science, why do so many Christians say the universe was created in six days, a few thousand years ago?
• 12. Why do most Christians believe there was a global flood in the time of Noah when most geologists say otherwise?
• 13. To seal the partnership contract between God and Abraham, God told Abraham to circumcise himself. How is cutting on the dotted line anything like signing on the dotted line?
• 14. Inconsistency alert: John 1:18 says, “No one has ever seen God,” but that’s not what other Bible writers say.
• 15. God’s law said that if a jealous husband merely suspected his wife of having an affair, he could force her into a trial by ordeal. That’s what God calls justice?
• 16. If Joshua stopped the sun and moon with his battlefield prayer, as the Bible says he did, that would have halted the 1,070 mph rotation of the earth. So why didn’t everyone get whiplash?
• 17. God made Eve from Adam’s rib? Are you ribbing me?
• 18. Given that snakes don’t say much these days, why do many Christians insist that a snake talked Eve into eating the forbidden fruit?
• 19. Why do many Christians say the wine and bread of Communion actually turn into Jesus’ blood and body?
• 20. Wouldn’t it seem more reasonable to believe that Jesus’ disciples stole his body instead of believing that he rose from the dead and walked away?
• 21. How on earth could the Red Sea have parted so Moses and the Jews could escape from the Egyptian army?
• 22. Fire and brimstone destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah—and Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt? Evidence?
• 23. How could Moses have spent forty years in the desolate badlands on the border between what is now Israel and Egypt, with 2 to 3 million refugees? That’s a bit like Chicago in Death Valley.
• 24. How could killing a goat get rid of a person’s sin?
• 25. When bachelor Paul told women to be quiet in church and always do what their husbands say, was he really speaking for God—and to women throughout all time?
• 26. Why do Christians say hell is a fiery place of eternal torture? Bible scholars say hell is just an English word invented to translate Hinnom (Hebrew) or Gehenna (Greek), the name of a valley on Jerusalem’s south side.
• 27. Why would a loving God condemn anyone—even humanity’s worst offenders—to never-ending torment in fire?
• 28. Shouldn’t we be a tad skeptical when we read that Abraham and Sarah had their first son, Isaac, when he was 100 and she was 90?
• 29. If God knows everything, why did he test Abraham’s faith by asking him to sacrifice his own son?
• 30. Why do rich people think they’re going to heaven, given what Jesus and James said about the rich?
• 31. Why did Jesus seem to paint God as a genie waiting in heaven to grant our every wish: “Have faith that you have already received whatever you pray for, and it will be yours”?
• 32. Some well-respected archaeologists say Jericho was a ghost town by the time Joshua got there. What evidence is there to support the Bible story?
• 33. Why did Joshua order a man and his entire family stoned to death and burned only because the man took a few valuables from Jericho—a city the Jews had just destroyed, killing everyone? The man’s family hadn’t done anything.
• 34. Daniel’s prophecies about the Greek empire track nicely with what happened. Isn’t that a clue that someone wrote it after the fact—as history instead of prophecy?
• 35. Was God okay with polygamy? Some of God’s favorite people—such as Jacob, David, and Solomon—had a harem of wives.
• 36. The only rule God gave Adam and Eve was to not eat fruit from the tree of knowledge about good and evil. What does God have against people knowing the difference between right and wrong?
• 37. The Bible says “sons of God” had sex with human women, who gave birth to giants. Doesn’t that sound a little like Greek mythology?
• 38. Would a loving God really put a good man like Job through horrible suffering just to test his loyalty?
• 39. Psalm 44:23 says, “Wake up, O Lord! Why do you sleep? Get up!” (NLT). Does God catch Zzz’s?
• 40. “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God—those whom he has called according to his plan.” How would you explain that idea to a Holocaust survivor? Or to just about anyone at a funeral?
• 41. The Bible says, “Prayer offered in faith will heal the sick.” If that’s true, why aren’t doctors out of business?
• 42. Jonah’s prophecy that Nineveh would fall in forty days didn’t come true. Why doesn’t that make him a fraud?
• 43. God ordered Joshua and the invading Jews to kill everyone who lived in what is now Israel—men, women, children, and even the animals. Why would God do such a thing?
• 44. Why does the Bible praise a man who sacrificed his own daughter?
• 45. People in the early church were “baptized for the dead.” Isn’t that a bit late?
• 46. Speaking of his return, Jesus said, “This generation will not disappear until all these things take place.” That was fifty generations ago. Why do Christians still talk so much about the second coming of Jesus?
• 47. Why does the Bible say homosexuality is a sin? Don’t science and our own observation suggest that some people are naturally homosexual?
• 48. To feed Moses and the Jewish refugees, God sent enough white-flake manna and fresh quail to feed them all. We’re supposed to swallow that?
• 49. Why does the New Testament describe Samson as a hero of the faith? Almost everything he did seems driven by revenge or lust.
• 50. God’s prescribed diet for the Jews included crickets, locusts, and grasshoppers, but no lobster, shrimp, or soft-shell crab. What does that say about God’s opinion of Jews?
• 51. What was fair and righteous about Noah putting a curse on his grandson, Canaan, for something the boy’s father did?
• 52. God says it’s a sin for Jews to charge interest to each other, but they can charge interest to anyone else. Why the discrimination?
• 53. First the sea parted so Moses and the Jews could cross it. Then the Jordan River stopped so Joshua and the Jews could cross it. Sounds like a rerun. Did someone get their stories crossed?
• 54. Who’s going to believe Jonah spent three days in the belly of a whale or some other sea critter?
• 55. So, the father of God’s chosen people—the Jews—is Jacob, a jerk who cheated both his brother and his father, and then had to run for his life all the way to Turkey?
• 56. Why did God handpick Saul to become Israel’s first king only to trash him after Saul broke a nitpicking religious rule—an offense that seemed to warrant no more than a slap on the wrist?
• 57. After God withdrew his Spirit from King Saul, “an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.” If God is good, what’s he doing siccing an evil spirit on someone?
• 58. Why should anyone believe there’s an evil spirit called the devil? He’s a no-show in the entire Jewish Bible, which Christians call the Old Testament.
• 59. Why did God strike a man dead for nothing more than trying to protect Israel’s most sacred relic—the ark of the covenant, a chest that held the Ten Commandments?
• 60. Jesus said we shouldn’t judge one another, so why do Christians do it so much?
• 61. The Bible says if you raise a child right, the kid will grow up nice and religious. I know some pastors’ kids who didn’t turn out quite like that.
• 62. Why would Peter condemn Ananias and Sapphira to death for exaggerating their donation? Why not thank them instead?
• 63. Why would a thinking person believe the story that the reason we have so many languages is because God punished people for building the Tower of Babel?
• 64. Why did God introduce himself to Moses by speaking from a burning bush, of all things?
• 65. Why do preachers tell people they have to tithe 10 percent of their income, when tithing is one of many Jewish laws that Christians throughout the centuries have said is obsolete?
• 66. Elijah went to heaven in a chariot of fire? Doesn’t it sound suspicious that the only witness was his successor, Elisha?
• 67. Why did the prophet Elisha invoke God’s name to put a curse on boys for calling him “Baldy,” and is that why bears killed them?
• 68. Why would God order the death penalty for kids who hit their parents or who do nothing more than speak disrespectfully to them?
• 69. Did God really clobber Egypt with ten plagues? The poisoned Nile River turning red, swarms of bugs, epidemics, three days of darkness—it all sounds over the top.
• 70. God killed 70,000 Jews because King David took a census? What’s wrong with counting warm bodies, and why would God punish innocent folks for something their king did?
• 71. The Bible says if parents don’t beat their children, they don’t love them: “Those who spare the rod of discipline hate their children.” Really?
• 72. Why do Christians say the prophet Isaiah predicted the virgin birth of Jesus 700 years ahead of time? Bible experts say that Isaiah was talking about a child born during his own time—and that “virgin” is a translation mistake.
• 73. Jacob had an all-night wrestling match with an angel? That’s got to be a metaphor, right?
• 74. If God’s so compassionate and wise, why did he condone slavery?
• 75. Who should we believe about grounds for divorce? Moses, Jesus, or Paul? They each gave different advice.
• 76. The Old Testament penalty for raping a virgin: the rapist had to marry his victim. How is that not twisted?
• 77. Why did Ezra order Jewish men who married non-Jews to divorce their wives and send them and their kids away? Not kind.
• 78. Jesus said, “If your eye—even your good eye—causes you to lust, gouge it out and throw it away.” Wouldn’t that leave just about everyone with a couple of extra holes in their head?
• 79. Jesus said, “Be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Isn’t that just a little too much to expect from anything short of a celestial being?
• 80. King David wrote, “I have never seen the godly abandoned or their children begging for bread.” Was that wishful thinking, a promise from God, or a clue that David needed to get out of the palace a little more often?
• 81. Where did religious people get the idea they would live forever? The Bible says, “The dead cannot sing praises to the Lord, for they have gone into the silence of the grave.”
• 82. Inconsistency alert: Jews sang a song blessing anyone who would smash their enemies’ babies against the rocks. How does that track with Jesus’ “love your enemies”?
• 83. Where do Christians get the idea that an evil antichrist is coming to rule the world? When the Bible writer mentions an antichrist, he’s talking about people in his own day who don’t buy into the Jesus story.
• 84. Paul agreed with a poet who said, “The people of Crete are all liars, cruel animals, and lazy gluttons.” That probably didn’t endear him to the people of Crete, right?
• 85. Jesus said that everyone who follows him must hate their family. Why would anyone follow him?
• 86. How could Daniel have possibly survived the night in a lion’s den and three of his buddies survive getting tossed into a furnace?
• 87. Doesn’t it seem a bit out of character for a holy God to tell a prophet to marry a hooker?
• 88. Don’t use God’s name in vain—it’s one of God’s Ten Commandments. Isn’t that a bit vain—as though it’s more important than helping the poor, which didn’t make the cut?
• 89. Inconsistency alert: Jesus said we should ask God not to lead us into temptation. But the Bible also says, “Do not say, ‘God is tempting me.’ . . . He never tempts anyone.” Who’s right?
• 90. Why do so many Christians get upset about drinking alcoholic beverages when the first reported miracle of Jesus was to turn enough water into wine to get over 1,000 people too drunk to drive a donkey cart?
• 91. The Bible says there’s just one God. But Jesus said he’s God’s divine Son and there is a divine Holy Spirit, too. How could there be just one God, yet three?
• 92. Paul and other Christians in the early church spoke in “heavenly languages.” Why do most churches not allow it in their worship services, when it is clearly taught in the Bible?
• 93. Paul said, “Women will be saved through childbearing.” Not saved by Jesus? What about women who can’t have children? Or those who took Paul’s advice not to get married?
• 94. Who should we believe? God, who said in the Old Testament, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” or Jesus, who said in the New, “turn the other cheek”?
• 95. God ordered murderers executed. So when Cain killed Abel, and when David had Bathsheba’s husband killed, why did God let them go?
• 96. Why do so many Christians try to impose their beliefs about abortion on those who don’t agree with them? The Bible says absolutely nothing about abortion.
• 97. Why do Christians think Jesus is unique when ancient religions are full of stories about supposed gods or leaders being born of a virgin or under a special star, performing miracles, and even rising from the dead?
• 98. Why do Christians insist that Jesus is predicted in the Jewish Bible, when Jews don’t seem to see him there?
• 99. Even if there is a heaven and hell, why do Christians obsess over it? Hasn’t God already decided who goes where?
• 100. Why do Christians work so hard trying to figure out all those visions in Revelation when someone as smart as Daniel couldn’t even understand his own end-time visions?
• About the Author
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