Surf the internet and you will find plenty of odd statements made by some who call themselves Christians. E. Calvin Beisner: "The New Testament teaches that salvation is strictly by grace through faith without baptism." Forrest Church: "There is no hell." The Bible is clearly at odds with both of these statements - see my blog posts "Is Baptism Required For Salvation?" and "Would A Loving God Send Anyone To Hell?" My point here is not to refute these statements again but to discuss the larger problem they represent: those who claim to be Christians but choose to twist or ignore parts of the Bible. There are many reasons they do this: faulty logic, they think certain parts are irrelevant, this chapter or that verse doesn't make sense to them - the list goes on and on. The scary thing is that many of them are teaching others and therefore compounding the problem.
Every Christian at a minimum believes that (a) a perfect God exists (b) this same God created the universe & everything in it and (c) he sent his perfect son to be the sacrifice for our sins. (If they don't believe these statements, they wouldn't claim to be a Christian.) We can see from this that faulty logic is the culprit when Christians choose to twist or ignore parts of the Bible. They believe in a perfect God and his perfect son, yet they think this same perfect God would supply them an instruction manual (the Bible) which is imperfect. How can God be perfect and God's word be imperfect? It's not possible. Granted, there are parts of the Bible that are difficult to understand and therefore require a lot of study. Peter says this about Paul's letters: "There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures." (2 Peter 3:16, ESV) If at first glance parts of the Bible don't make sense or seem irrelevant, that doesn't mean there's something wrong with the Bible - it just indicates a lack of understanding by the reader. Lack of understanding indicates a need for further study rather than twisting or ignoring parts of God's word. We would do well to heed Peter's warning in this regard, because to do otherwise will invite our own destruction.
