1. KJV is the only version we should use
The KJV was written back in 1611. The words stand for the King James Version. No not king James the basketball player. It’s not a prophecy about his basketball skills. King James was a king who ordered the Bible to be written in English. One of the key things about the Bible is that it is translated. It didn’t start as English. It is written by authors from the Jewish culture going back as far as 3400 years. The KJV is one of many different translations of the Bible. The reason the KJV is so popular is not that it was inspired by God but because it was the easiest to understand for many years. KJV English has been widely used for over 400 years and there was no need to change how anyone understood it. I personally don’t use the KJV very much because essentially the KJV was written for old white men from Britain back in 1611. Each time the Bible is translated it is put into a language that most people at that time can speak. There is a Korean translation for example. There is a Japanese translation that is probably outlawed. Each version is a different language for different groups of people. I don’t speak the King’s English therefore I don’t care to read the KJV usually. If I do it’s for sentimental value only. A translation (KJV) is not a sign of God’s command. It’s simply a way of understanding the language that describes what was written as accurately as possible. Most translations of the Bible come from Latin/Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic and have nothing to do with English. So unless you are white, British, and from the 1600s then you have no real reason to only read the KJV. As for me, I don’t have a favorite version of the Bible. As long as it says Jesus is king, ill read it.
2. The Bible is fake
This one is a little weird. I heard a while back that some people don’t believe in the Bible is authentic because it’s been tampered with and changed to fit a certain narrative. The Bible was written by 35-40 different authors with about 1000 years between some writers. There is only one problem with calling it fake. If we call the Bible fake then we have to consider almost all other historical documents fake as well. It is impossible to ignore all the stories written in all of history and not take them seriously. We know that colonists brought slaves with them when they came to America. Not because we have some documented proof written by African people left behind and not because the slaves wrote down anything for us to understand. We know there are slaves because of the civil war. We know there were Indian’s slaughtered because of journals and letters left throughout history that deal with what happened. The Bible has been written about and archeology has proven the things in the Bible to be true. Evidence matches what the Bible says for the most part. No slaves that first came on the ships to America wrote about their experience but the children that followed remembered what their parents went through. What their great grandparents went through the grandkids and great-grandkids have etched in their memory. If you call the Bible fake then you have to consider that your own memories of your childhood and that your memory of your own grandmother and great grandmother are fake as well. The Bible is not a history book. It’s a story handed down through generations of an experience with God. I’ve read a book by Booker T. Washington. He wasn’t a slave but he knew his father and grandfather and family that did live through slavery and he spoke about how it affected him and the people around him. We know about the realness of the Bible because of the evidence we have all around us from what the Bible describes. From the history of the Jewish people to the absolute rule of the Romans during Jesus’s time. The Bible is very real and the God that it talks about can not be ignored.
3. Jesus never said he was God. He was just a good man/prophet
If you read the Bible it is easy to misunderstand what the writer is talking about. The Bible is a mix of literal, poetic, and prophetic interpretations. For instance, Jesus is talking to a group of people and he says if your right hand offends you, cut it off. Or both you and your hand will be thrown into the eternal lake of fire. Is Jesus telling us self mutilation is our greatest adulation? Obviously no. It was not meant to be taken literally but to show the seriousness of how bad it is to have things in your life that drag you down and pull you out of the will of God for your life. Sometimes even family might drag you down or a friend or even a tv show. No matter how something feels like a part of you it is better to cut it out of your life than let it drag you down to a lifestyle and place you were never meant to go. But if you don’t know how to read the writer and understand the tone in which the speaker talks you could miss the whole meaning of the message from the Bible. Some people think Jesus was a prophet only because of the way the Bible was written and the fact that people could change Jesus’s wording about himself. However, I don’t believe this because of a few things. First Jesus died because they thought He claimed He was the son of God. Jesus was killed. History is clear on that. It documented in books of Christians and non-Christians alike from around that time period. They didn’t crucify Jesus because he was a good man or a prophet. They hated him because He said He was God’s son, not Joseph’s son. Secondly, Jesus changed water to wine. Healed a lot of people and cursed a fig tree. One of the most human things we have about us is we don’t have control over much in the way the world works. For us as humans up is down. Two plus two equals Four. Spoiled food will never be good. We can’t change the basic principles of our world. But for the first time in history, Jesus comes into the world and he doesn’t answer to the common human issues. He is not just human, he acts like a creator. He changes the property of water to become wine. That process takes a while and involves a lot more than water but with a simple prayer, Jesus changes the chemical makeup of water. No good man or prophet can do that. Jesus cursed a fig tree one day randomly because it didn’t’ have fruit. The next day after the disciples walked by that same fig tree it was shriveled up and useless. No man speaks to any tree and changes it. We must touch or put a new chemical in the mix to change it. But Jesus as a deity and creator changes the world around him with his words. Even if you don’t take Jesus’s words into account, his very presence and actions alone make him more than just a good man. He is a God-man.
4. The Bible has all the answers
People lose faith a lot of times. It happens to the best of us. One of the reasons it happens is because of the idea that the Bible has all the answers. The Bible never says that. But people tend to believe that because it’s popular in churches to put all of our ideas in the Bible as the only source of information for the real Christians. It’s no secret that a Christian experience is directly dependent on the Bible however that's not in the Bible either. Jesus is talking and he says “apart from me you can do nothing.” In other words, Jesus himself says that apart from him we can’t do anything as Christians. Jesus didn’t say anything about the Bible. He said himself. So the object of the Christian faith is Jesus but Christians like to dumb things down. We tend to focus on the book more than the one who the book is talking about. We tend to focus on the feeling of words more than the meaning. We tend to focus on the rule and not the spirit. We tend to focus on the headlines and not the footnote. I’ve seen some people focus so hard on one Bible verse that they end up ignoring Jesus and people altogether. The Bible never claims to be the only answer to life’s issues. If the devil is in the details then Jesus is in the ink, the holy spirit is on the page and God is more. God is much more. It never claims to even be the best moral authority. It for sure does mention God’s authority and his desire for people to follow a better moral astuteness. But the Bible never claims to be the answer to all of life’s issues. The Bible is simply a book that tells us about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and how He interacted with people since the beginning of a certain time. The Bible is not a history book that answers all of our past issues. The Bible is not a catch-all to humanity’s issues. The Bible is not a book with magical words, that if spoken just right will allow us to become superhuman. The Bible is just words on a page that talk about someone who is a lot more than words on a page. The power of being a Christian is not in the book, it’s in who the book talks about. It is literally and physically impossible to harness the essence and presence of God in a book. He is the creator, not a page. He is God, not a devotional. He is Yahweh, not a story. He must be experienced to be more real to us. The Bible is a great place to start every day. It is a horrible place to end with. God is much more when you allow Him to be. That actually sums up what the Bible is saying. God is more. It’s a book full of stories of people finding out that God is more.
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