Bible Contradiction: Is Your Interpretation Correct?

A friend of mine called me the other day and he was really sad. He had received a letter from his son. The son said he was no longer a Christian.

And to prove his point, he had sent him a spreadsheet of 150 contradictions in the Bible. And he said, well, if the Bible is going to contradict itself this many times, you can't possibly believe it. And the dad sent me the spreadsheet so I could take a look at them.

Now, the very first thing you always do in issues of apparent contradictions is you ask the person, can you show me one? Usually they won't be able to. But in this case, he showed him 150. What was really sad in this particular case is that in every single example, in every one of the 150, they were all an issue of misinterpretation.

The Bible says you should sacrifice your children to bail a false god. Another place says don't sacrifice your children. Well, this is an issue of misinterpretation.

Every single one was seriously misinterpreted. So what I want to encourage you is that if you get in one of these discussions of apparent contradictions, again, ask you what they know of one. And if they have one, it almost always is an issue of misinterpretation.

Read the verses. Read the verses in context. Check your study Bible.

Check your commentary. And you'll find that in all of these cases, it's almost always, I should say, an issue of misinterpretation. Does the Bible have apparent contradictions? Sure.

Are they contradictions? No. In almost every case, it's an issue of misinterpretation.