The list of injustices and evils justified by misinterpreted scriptures is significant: witch hunts, Apartheid, the Crusades, Jim Crow in the U.S., the KKK, Misogyny, LGBTQ+ hate, and Anti-Semitism. What do we do with things in the Bible that appear to support things that are clearly evil? Are we committed to the absolute goodness of God? When His goodness is violated, what do we do? When there is a contradiction between what the Bible appears to say and what Jesus has revealed about the nature of the Father, what will we do? Samuel writes “The LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” This cannot be ignored; we have a choice to make. Did God really say that? The God who does not delight in the death of the wicked? The God who does not will that any should perish? The God who knit those image bearers together in their mothers’ wombs? Did Samuel say this? Yes, but is it possible that Samuel was wrong about what he thought he heard? Who says Samuel was an infallible prophet? Would the God shown in the life of Jesus do this? Remember, the Father and the Son unchangeably possess the same nature and character. If while reading the Bible, we encounter a spot where God is not good and only good, that passage must be reexamined. If we must choose between the book and the person, it should be a no brainer. Our understanding of the Bible must ever and always be understood in line with God as revealed in Christ.
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