A few weeks ago, a Christian humor website called Ship of Fools solicited readers’ suggestions of the “worst” verses in the Bible – the most oppressive, distressing, or difficult to wrestle with. Recently the Telegraph, a UK newspaper, published a list of the “Top 10 Worst Bible Passages,” based on responses at Ship of Fools. When the Episcopal Church shared this article via Facebook, a few folks got upset. Here’s a great blog post about the whole kerfuffle.
I tend to agree with this blogger – for the Episcopal Church to share this article publicly amounted to raising it for discussion, not endorsing it (in any event, the only position here to endorse would be that some verses and stories in the Bible are pretty grisly or otherwise hard to take – not many would disagree with that!). And it’s true that many folks feel alienated from Christianity because of “texts of terror” like these; it’s good to send the message that people of faith wrestle with the sticky bits, too. What do you think?
(By the way, when I read about the call for least favorite verses, I immediately thought of the end of Psalm 137 – #4 on the Telegraph list.)