It's biblical to ask questions about the Bible

The Bible can feel confusing. On one side, it says that all people are made in the image of God. For example:

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. - Galatians 3:26-28

And yet statistically the Bible doesn’t represent people equally. A simple fact should make that point clear:

Of the 1,426 names appearing in the Hebrew Bible, 111 are women’s names, which is 9% of the total (C.L. Meyers, 1998).

So how do we deal with the Bible when it articulates an ideal (all people imaging God equally) but when it cannot come through on that ideal itself (only 1 in 11 actual people mentioned in the Old Testament being women)? This is a real question.

I (Bill) am not going to answer that question for you today. I’m still working through it myself. What I can say is that what gives me hope is that the Bible, by being clear in its ideal, decanters itself. To say it differently, it’s biblical to rethink the Bible. It’s biblical to question the Bible. It’s biblical to ask hard questions about the Bible… and about the church! Why don’t we treat all people as being fully made in God’s image? What are the forces that lead us away from that ideal? And how can we follow Jesus towards that ideal and not away from it?