“Is the Bible Sexist, Racist, Homophobic and Genocidal?”

I recently asked our “Third Thursday” high-school apologetics fellowship to help me by writing a summary of Chapter 9: “Is the Bible Sexist, Racist, Homophobic and Genocidal?” from the book Questioning the Bible: 11 Major Challenges to The Bible’s Authority by Jonathan Morrow.

Our students were asked to read a book chapter and write about the fact, truth, idea, or principle they learned from the chapter which had the most impact on their understanding and why it affected them.

One of our students, who wished to remain anonymous, took up the challenge and submitted the post below:

Is the Bible Sexist, Racist, Homophobic and Genocidal? – Anonymous

One thing that stood out to me in this chapter is that Jonathan Morrow, the author, shows some passages from the Bible that people may get the idea that the Bible supports these topics before he goes deeper into the subject to show the real truth. The most important section to this chapter to me was the subject of slavery.

For most of my life I was taught that slavery was due to skin color, yet in this section he shows that almost all of the cases of slavery were due to economical or social status. The first case of slavery due to skin color was during European exploration. Therefore, the time period of when the Bible was written, would not have slavery because of racism. At the end of the chapter he talks about how the Bible also accounts for historical events and how things have changed physically and morally since the Bible was written. There were different circumstances back then than there are now and you have to keep that in mind while reading the word. God also likes to speak through metaphors or parables a lot so you really have to keep in mind the context of the passage and the historical circumstances at the time the passage was written before you jump to conclusions. Some of the situations that people now would think are terrible were actually safer situations for the people in them.

It is hard to know that some people compare terrible people to the person who created the world.

The Bible tells one cohesive story. It is God’s love letter to a lost world.