Is the Bible Bigoted or Biased?

You’re Not Alone

How should we view the Bible in terms of it’s standards? When we look at specific passages, it’s easy to think the Bible is bigoted or biased towards one particular group or another. And if what we have previously stated is true, that the Bible is the Word of God, then does this mean that God Himself is bigoted and biased? This is a question that is growing in popularity in our current culture and society, and while I do believe that the scriptures reflect the mind of God, I do not believe that the scriptures are biased. When we overview God’s Word as a whole, I believe we will truly see that the standards God has in place are not due to some sort of favoritism, but something much deeper. To see why God has these standards, let’s view some of those problematic passages that make us view God at times through the lens of bigotry. 

To List a Few…

One of the biggest ‘examples’ of this so-called bigotry is right at the beginning of the Bible when God chooses the nation of Israel to be His people in Deuteronomy 7:6 “6 For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His personal possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.” “I thought we were all God’s children, why would God choose a specific nation to be ‘His people’? Does this show favoritism from God to a specific race and in turn make God a racist?!” What about some more popular issues these days with what God has to say about women? 1 Timothy 2:12-13 says, “12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. 13 For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve.” “This one is clear as day! Surely God is showing some sort of sexism by allowing men to speak in the church and not women, what other reason could there be than favoritism of the sexes?!” What about the most sensitive of all issues that atheists love to point out every time they talk about the character of God; the issue of slavery? Leviticus 25:44 says, “44 As for your male and female slaves whom you may have—you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you.” “There’s no question, God endorses slavery here, therefore I can’t follow the Bible! I couldn’t possibly go along with a God that promotes slavery when He could’ve ended it from the very beginning!” 

How is This Justified?

Right about now, if you are a Bible-believing Christian, you may be thinking to yourself, ‘I’ve always had these exact thoughts, but I never knew how to answer these questions.’ So how does the Christ follower view these accusations? Do we accept that God is bigoted and just leave it at that? By no means. I could very well argue that the nation of Israel was chosen because that was the nation that Christ would eventually be born into and that all who accept Christ become a part of God’s family, regardless of nationality. I could also argue that the claim that God is sexist is debunked right in verse 13 or 1 Timothy 2 because we see that men should lead the church not out of any favoritism from God, but because Adam was made before Eve. I could even go as far as to say that the slavery we see in the Old Testament is treated like employment, and nothing like the slavery we’ve seen in the 18th century or previous, due to God’s command to care for these people, treat them as human beings and even giving them the option to stop being slaves after 6 years in Exodus 21. But I’m not going to argue from that premise either. “Why should God even have standards at all for people if all they do is make Him look bad?” 

While I could write a whole research paper on each of these topics separately, I want to hit on the underlying aspect that many people don’t talk about nearly enough when it comes to this issue. That is, the aspect of God’s holiness. Leviticus 19:2 says, “2 “Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” This word ‘holy’ is one that God uses to describe Himself but also is what He uses to describe His people. This word in its original Hebrew terms means to be ‘sacred’ or ‘consecrated’. God’s holiness, therefore, stands to set Him apart from all other beings, and we are to follow this same example. God doesn’t make random rules to frustrate people or cause them to question His purposes and motives, He does so because He is sacred and set apart from the rest of the world. If we looked at every one of the 613 laws we see in the first five books of the Bible alone, I’m sure we could question just about every single one of them on why they were standards at some point. The same could even be said about the rules that God puts into play in the New Testament as well. 

Holy, Holy, Holy

When all is said and done, however, the Bible is not contradictory and we could search the scriptures to see how this is so. God is not loving in one half of the Bible and then non-loving in the other. He doesn’t show mercy or justice to just one nation in the Bible and then just partiality towards the rest. What many people call biased and bigotry is sadly mistaken for God’s holiness. God is not sexist, He exactly wants men and women to be set apart from the rest of the world. God is not racist, He precisely wanted the nation that would birth Christ to be sacred. God is not bigoted, He simply wants His people to be set apart. The next time you come across a command or standard that God puts forth in His word, search the scriptures and ask yourself, ‘Is God doing this to show some type of favoritism? Or is He simply doing this because He’s holy?’. I think you may be surprised at what you find.

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Sources

[1] “Access Your Bible from Anywhere.” BibleGateway.Com: A Searchable Online Bible in over 150 Versions and 50 Languages., www.biblegateway.com/. Accessed 2023.