Some Bible-believing Christians play fast and loose with their sacred text.

When it suits their purposes, they treat it like the literally perfect word of
God. Then, when it suits their other purposes, they conveniently ignore the
parts of the Bible that areinconvenient.

Here are 11 kinds of verses Bible-believers ignore so that they can keep
spouting the others when they want to. To list all of the verses in these
categories would take a book almost the size of the Bible; one the size of the
Bible minus the Jefferson Bible, to be precise. Ill limit myself to a couple
tantalizing tidbits of each kind, and the curious reader who wants more can
go to the Skeptics Annotated Bible or simply dig out the old family tome and
start reading at Genesis, Chapter I.

1. Weird insults and curses. The Monty Python crew may have coined some of
the best insults of the last 100 years: Your mother was a hamster and your
father smelt of elderberries. But for centuries the reigning master was
Shakespeare: It is certain that when he makes water his urine is congealed
ice. Had John Cleese or William Shakespeare lived in the Iron Age, though,
some of the Bible writers might have given him a run for his money.
Christians may scoot past these passages, but one hell-bound humorist used
them to create a biblical curse generator.

She lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and
whose emission was like that of horses. Ezekiel 23:20 NIV
You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and
rape her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a
vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit. Your ox will be
slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be
forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to
your enemies, and no one will rescue them. . . . The Lord will afflict your
knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the
soles of your feet to the top of your head. Deuteronomy 28:30-31,35
2. Awkwardly useless commandments. The Bible is chock-a-block with dos
and donts. Some of them are simply statements of universal ethical
principles, like do to others what you would have them do to you, or dont lie,
or dont covet your neighbors possessions. But from a moral standpoint most
of them are simply useless or even embarrassingespecially if you think God
could have used the space to say dont have sex with anyone who doesnt

want you to, or wash your hands after you go to the bathroom.

Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material. Leviticus 19:19

Ye shall not round the corners of your heads. Leviticus 19:27
3. Silly food rules. The early Hebrews probably didnt have an obesity
epidemic like the one that has spread around the globe today. Even so, one
might think that if an unchanging and eternal God were going to give out
food rules he might have considered the earnest Middle-American believers
who would be coming along in 2014. A little divine focus on amping up leafy
green vegetables and avoiding sweets might have gone a long way. Instead,
the Bible strictly forbids eating rabbit, shellfish, pork, weasels, scavengers,
reptiles, and owls. As is, Christians simply ignore the eating advisories in the
Old Testament, even though they claim that edicts like the Ten
Commandments and the anti-queer clobber verses still apply.

All that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move
in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an
abomination unto you. Leviticus 9:10
Thou shalt not boil a kid in its mothers milk. Exodus 23:19
4. Holy hangups about genitals. God, or the Bible writers, is hung up about
sexual anatomy in a way many modern Christians, fortunately, are not. In
The Year of Living Biblically, the author, A.J. Jacobs, attempts to
obey Mosaic laws about menstruation. When his wife finds out what those
laws actually are, she gives him the middle finger by sitting on every chair in
the house.

When a woman has a discharge, if her discharge in her body is blood, she
shall continue in her menstrual impurity for seven days; and whoever touches
her shall be unclean until evening. Everything also on which she lies during
her menstrual impurity shall be unclean, and everything on which she sits
shall be unclean. Leviticus 15: 19-20
When men fight with one another, and the wife of the one draws near to
rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him, and puts out
her hand and seizes him by the private parts, then you shall cut off her
hand. Deuteronomy 25:11-12
5. Gods temper tantrums. Modern Christians may talk about God as a loving

father, or even a Jesus buddy, the kind youd want to play golf with, but in
reality Bible-God goes out of his way to be intimidating. Worse, he appears to
lose control of his temper at times, lashing out like an oversized thwarted
three-year-old; and his earthly representativesincluding Jesusdo the
same.

Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came
out of the town and jeered at him. Get out of here, baldy! they said. Get
out of here, baldy! He turned around, looked at them and called down a
curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the
woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. 2 Kings 2:23-25 NIV
Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was
hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it
except leaves. Then he said to it, May you never bear fruit
again! Immediately the tree withered. Matthew 21:18-22 NIV
6. Times when the Bible God is worse than Satan. In the Bible, Satan is
described as a roaring lion who prowls the earth, seeking whom he may
devour. But if you actually read the stories, Satan doesnt do much other than
to tempt people into disobeying the dictates of Yahweh, who acts like a
heavenly dictator with borderline personality disorder. God, by contrast,
professes his undying love, kindness and mercy, but then commands his
minions to commit brutal atrocities when he isnt up for it himself. Some of
the stories are so bad even Hollywood, with its passion for glorious biblical
sex and violence, wont touch them, especially the plentiful Bible stories
about sexual slavery and human sacrifice.

Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman
who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man
intimately, spare for yourselves. Numbers 31:17-18
He [Josiah] executed the priests of the pagan shrines on their own altars, and
he burned human bones on the altars to desecrate them. He did this in
obedience to all the laws written in the scroll that Hilkiah the priest had found
in the LORDs Temple. Never before had there been a king like Josiah, who
turned to the LORD with all his heart and soul and strength, obeying all the
laws of Moses. And there has never been a king like him since. 2 Kings 23:2025 NLT
7. Instructions for slave masters. The reality is that the Bible says much more
in support of slavery than against it. Even the New Testament Jesus never

says owning people is wrong. Instead, the Bible gives explicit instructions to
masters and slaves. Awkward.

You may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live
among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners,
including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your
property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You
may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must
never be treated this way. Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them
sincerely as you would serve Christ. Ephesians 6:5 NLT
8. Bizzare death penalties. Years ago, I wrote an article titled, If the Bible
Were Law Would You Qualify For the Death Penalty? It identified 35 different
offenses that earn a person capital punishment in the Bible. Hint: You
probably qualify. And so does the dog who belongs to your kinky neighbor.
If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of
his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened
him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold
on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his
place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn
and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he
die. Deuteronomy 21:18-21
If a man has sex with an animal, he must be put to death, and the animal
must be killed. Leviticus 20:15 NLT
9. Denigration of handicapped people. The yuck factor is probably wired into
humanity at the level of instinct, a way to avoid contamination and
pathogens. Shit smells bad to us, as does decaying flesh. Our revulsion at
illness and injury fuels a whole Hollywood horror industry. The Bible writers
had the same instincts, but unlike modern health professionals, who have the
benefit of germ theory, they had no idea what was contagious and what
wasnt, and they blurred the ideas of physical purity with spiritual purity.
Modern Christians largely escape their denigration of physical handicaps.

No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be
admitted to the assembly of the LORD. Deuteronomy 23:1 NRSV
Whosoever hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his

God. For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a
blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, Or
a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, Or crookback, or a dwarf, or
that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones
broken He shall not go in unto the vail, nor come nigh unto the altar,
because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries. Leviticus
21:17-23 KJV
10. Moral edicts that demand too much. If much of the Bible gets ignored
because it is morally irrelevant, immoral, outdated, or factually wrong,
another portion gets ignored because it sets the bar too high, like putting
divorce on par withomghomosexuality. If you want to send a conservative
Bible-believer into a froth, try suggesting Jesus was a socialist. Then, when he
goes all Jehovah on you, quote from the book of Ephesians.

Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and
anyone who has food should do the same. Luke 3:11 NIV
Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of
place. Ephesians 5:4 NIV
11. Passages that are a waste of brain space and paper. Some years ago I
worked on a website called Wisdom Commons, a library of timeless quotes
and stories from many traditions. I had the idea that I would go through the
Bible and pull out bits that were relevant, so I started reading.

What I found was that most of the Bible was neither horrible nor inspiring. It
was simply dull and irrelevant: long genealogies written by men obsessed
with racial purity; archaic stories about ancient squabbles over real estate
and women; arcane rituals aimed at pleasing a volatile deity; folk medicine
practices involving mandrakes and doves blood; superstition that equated
cleanliness with spiritual purity and misfortune with divine disfavor; outdated
insider politics.

On top of that, it was badly written, with some stories garbled and others
repeated, though rarely in complete agreement about the facts. The Bibles
supposed author seemed like a psychological mess, and I found myself
irritated. With a finite number of pages to set the course of human
history, this was the best He could do?

Thank God Bible-believing Christians dont take the Good Book as seriously as
they claim to.