Freedom From Bad Bible Series
What Is The Freedom From Bad Bible Series?
The Freedom From Bad Bible Series uses Biblical scholarship to undo the harm done to innocent people in the name of the Bible.
This is not typical Bible study and it does not promote or deny faith in any part of the Bible. Instead, it intends to refute claims about the Bible that are often accepted without challenge as biblical, by both believers and non-believers alike.
Bad Bible
The foundational idea in the series is the term, “Bad Bible.” Bad Bible is not a judgment about the Bible itself. Instead, Bad Bible refers to the use of the Bible as a weapon of power against innocent people.
Bad Bible operates within a vision of human life that sees life on Earth as a test of obedience to God’s rules, which are clearly defined in the Bible. With this focus, human life becomes an obedience test for sinners.
The ultimate Bad Bible goal of human life is heavenly salvation. Therefore, “getting into Heaven” is the carrot at the end of the stick. If you obey the rules, if you do what you are commanded to do and don’t do what you are commanded not to do, and if you ask forgiveness for your sins, you will probably be admitted to Heaven.
When The Bible Becomes A Rulebook
With this Bad Bible vision of human life, the Bible becomes the only rulebook for life on Earth. What you must do and what you must not do is clearly defined in its pages. The Bible is therefore the only infallible guide to life and practice.
With this vision of “life as an obedience test,” and the Bible as the ultimate source of God’s rules, Bad Bible focuses heavily on matters of authority. Who has authority? Who must obey authority? The Bible will tell you.
Authority is defined by roles determined by sex, age, and social status. This is why Bad Bible is so defined by limitations, restrictions, and exclusions based on sex, age, and social status, as it separates the ones who will be saved from the ones who will not, based on whether or not they are obedient to the rules laid out in the Bible.
The Results Of Bad Bible
What are the results of this Bad Bible concern with following rules and obedience to authority? Fear, doubt, anxiety, guilt, and shame become constant companions for people who are continually told that they are not worthy of salvation, but can be saved it they are sufficiently obedient to the Bible.
The Origin Of Bad Bible
How did the Bible become Bad Bible? This kind of use of the Bible tends to be a distinctly Protestant phenomenon. As part of the Protestant Reformation, ultimate authority for determining God’s will for human life was displaced from the Roman Catholic hierarchy to the Bible itself.
The claim that the Bible is without error and the only infallible guide in faith and practice is a relatively new phenomenon in Christian history. It began in the late nineteenth century in the United States and became the foundation of fundamentalism and evangelicalism in the twentieth century. Bad Bible emerged from this belief in an error-free Bible as the ultimate authority over Christian life.
The Freedom From Bad Bible Challenge
The Freedom From Bad Bible approach to the Bible uses Biblical scholarship to challenge the Bad Bible use of the Bible by demonstrating how often Bad Bible distorts the Bible itself, by creating rules from out-of-context Bible verses and ignoring “Whole Stories” and the social, political, historical, geographical, and economic contexts of the ancient writings in the Bible.
What About Belief?
The Freedom From Bad Bible Series does not intend to persuade you one way or another about belief in God, Jesus, or the Bible. Instead, the goal of the series is to set you free from much of the fear, doubt, anxiety, guilt, and shame you have experienced from Bad Bible and the Bad Bible Bullies who are so eager to deprive you of your freedom make your own life choices.
For Your Freedom,
Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson
Creator Of The Freedom From Bad Bible Series
Tags: bad bible, bad bible verses, Bible, bible verses, biblical scholarship, freedom from bad bible series
