Can We Have the Bible Our Own Way?

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

2 Timothy 3:16 ESV

We live in a society that wants to tailor everything to our desires.

We like to define our experience of reality and “have it our way.”

We like to customize everything from our sandwiches to our cars.

Unfortunately, even though having things a certain way is by no means wrong, it is easy to fall into a trap of applying this type of philosophy to our Biblical studies.

Wouldn’t it be easy if we could only choose to follow the parts of the Bible that we really want to? What if we got really angry at someone and wanted to remain mad at them?

If we could customize our own version of the Bible, we could just ignore Ephesians 4:26.

I think that there are many people who would love to have a Bible like that.

After all, we customize everything else, so why should anything remain sacred? Why can’t we remove those inconvenient parts?

Unfortunately for the people who might want this, that is not the way it is. Paul told Timothy that all of the Bible is good for teaching and is in fact written by the inspiration of God. He did not say that only the parts of the Bible that you want to be true are true.

God is the Absolute Truth rather than some relative being who changes based on the whims of whoever might want to define him.

Everything He has written through the Bible is all just as valid today as it was when it was first recorded.

Even though we are surrounded by a culture that wants to adjust truth to some relative concept, I pray that we can remember that the Bible is the way that God wants it to be. It does not need to be edited by us.

Guest devotion by Zak Schmoll. Zak just graduated from the University of Vermont with a double major in Accounting and Statistics. On July 23, 2012, he went on a mission to write about one chapter of the Bible every day from start to finish. You can follow his progress at http://achapterperday.wordpress.com/. Learn how you can also write for us.