A local church in my town has a statement about the Bible on their website: The only infallible, inerrant and authoritative Word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is given to us for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. This seems to be a direct reference to 2 Timothy 3:16-17 which I’ll get to in a moment, but first I want to share that I’m pretty grossed out by the word “rebuke.” The word calls to my mind a bunch of hypocritical Christians who have a generally low view of scripture in the life of faith, take themselves way to seriously and love running around telling other people about sin. Take the log out of your eye and maybe the stick out of your, you know, bounce house.

2 Timothy 3:16-17

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

The NSRVUE uses the word reproof instead of rebuke, and although that may sound a little softer and a little more constructive, Merriam-Webster lists them as synonyms. If you believe that there are definitive moral teachings in the Bible that should guide your behavior, then I think you should address your own trespasses in a spirit of self-reflection. I’m not automatically opposed to all forms of rebuking, as there are clearly things to which God says a resounding, “no.” Greed. Hate. Murder. Mistreating foreigners. My problem is that too many Christians read this verse as a license to masquerade as blue-nosed Puritans who mistake their personal agenda for God’s moral imperatives.

Unfortunately, eager glee for rebuke is ripe for abuse. There is a lot of subjectivity involved in biblical interpretation, but when it comes from a church or leader and is wrapped up in a narrow concept of God’s inspiration, it often results in personal biases being presented as moral directives. Church leaders can use this dynamic to exert control in a way that diminishes love and may even lead to outright manipulation. Maybe I’m just sensitive to it because I grew up in a Christian cult, but usually these reproofs seem selective to me. People who believe in reproof and correction have their own agenda to support and often cherry-pick the verses they quote to support that agenda. They may not even be doing it deliberately, and maybe that makes it even more dangerous. They are unconsciously supporting common cultural biases under the guise of scriptural principles. Why is the rebuking so often tied to gender roles, sexuality and limiting social justice while supporting narrow, unscholarly views of biblical interpretation?

What Does It Mean That Scripture Is Inspired by God?

The verse in 2 Timothy is often used as a proof-text – that’s a way of referring to verses that are commonly yanked out without much context in order to support a particular theological argument – to support the idea that the Bible is infallible and inerrant, much like the church I referenced above. It’s an improvement for our modern ears that the NSRVUE uses the word, “inspired,” instead of “God-breathed.” God-breathed is literally inspiration, yet because of over 100 years of American fundamentalism polluting the discourse, some people hear God-breathed as meaning God-dictated. I think God-breathed is lovely and poetic yet often misunderstood so I prefer the word inspired unless I think the person I’m talking understands the difference, in which case God-breathed is beautiful.

What does it mean to be inspired by God? Certainly, the author of this verse could not have been referring to the New Testament. How do I know this? Because there was no New Testament when 2 Timothy was written. The biblical canon had yet to be compiled. So, it’s demonstrably wrong to apply this verse to anything other than the Hebrew Scriptures. While we’re at it, Paul likely didn’t write 2 Timothy. The language and themes are different (or at least puzzlingly unique) than Paul’s other writing and some of the references seem anachronistic to Paul’s time. Whoever wrote 2 Timothy, it’s also possible that this particular verse had more to do with early Christian debates over how much of Hebrew Scripture and the law applied to new believers. All of that is for another day.

Authorship of 2 Timothy aside, the Bible is not one book, it is a library of diverse writings authored by different people over many centuries. Each book reflects the author’s unique perspectives, purposes, cultural context and circumstances. Even if you look at the writings generally agreed to be from Paul, Paul contradicts himself in places. This isn’t a flaw, this is a feature that invites deeper engagement with any number of issues we might face in life. You cannot simply pull a verse out as proof of anything. Paul was writing letters and wasn’t thinking he was writing scripture. He was addressing specific situations in different communities. Rather than seeing his inconsistencies as a problem, we can see them as a way to model wisdom in our own times. He wasn’t laying down rules, he was helping solve problems in his day in the churches to whom he wrote. We have different churches and different problems today. Life goes on.

I once saw an antique plaque in a shop that read something like, “no one should leave the house without first buckling their shoes.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t own a single shoe with buckles. I guess I used to have an old pair of Birkenstocks with a strap in the back. But I am forced to leave my house every time without buckling my shoes because I have no buckles. Am I deliberately defying the purpose of this plaque? Or am I fine if I tie up my shoelaces? Is it some old superstition I don’t understand? Maybe the saying is more about being prepared for what life brings you and has nothing to do with shoes, or leaving the house, or buckles or anything else that literal. We must use some wisdom to interpret that saying in a modern context.

This is even more true of the Bible because of the diverse and conflicting things we find inside. Take for instance that Jesus tells us not to judge lest we be judged, yet here we have another verse encouraging rebuke and correction. We must wrestle with the text and that wrestling is the hallmark of a mature faith. We are supposed to look at the Bible as a whole, not just a collection of soundbites. We must grapple with cultural, linguistic and historical changes to see what our faith has to say about our own time and issues. Pulling a verse out to prove anything is immature and kind of silly. It takes humility and a willingness to grow to see how the Bible can speak to us today instead of taking everything word for word.

Then what even is inspiration? Pete Enns, in his book Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, offers what he calls an incarnational model of inspiration and revelation. There is an interaction and interplay with the divine and the human experience. This is a unique part of the Christian faith. God is a part of creation in many faiths, but in Christianity, God is revealed through Jesus in a very concrete and human form. God is with us in Jesus. The Bible paints a picture of that, but it necessarily must use the limited human language and knowledge of a particular context and culture, otherwise it couldn’t be written down at all in any period of time. We do not have access to anything else, we must use our language and culture to try and translate this inspiration. These contexts change. The exact words in the Bible are not dictated by God, that cannot be the point of inspiration. Whatever being inspired or God-breathed means, it doesn’t mean infallible and inerrant, because the Bible is very clearly not those things. So we need to change our limited meaning of what inspiration means to include this diversity.

Nothing in the Bible is beyond critique. Inspiration should invite critique. For example, what does it mean to “love your neighbor,” today, right now, in your community? How are you going to apply the principles of justice, mercy and humility in a modern context? Today love looks like protecting families seeking asylum, providing life-saving gender-affirmative care, standing for racial justice, fighting for health care and social safety nets, working on climate and demanding peace.

These are not straightforward problems. Faith means you wrestle. Scripture is not here to provide rules but to invite us to a deeper capacity for discernment and wisdom. We continue to learn new insights from science, philosophy, and theology. We should apply those insights and if they seem to contradict the Bible, well, one two, buckle my shoe, what is the spirit of the passage in a modern context? The overwhelming majority of Christians are not young-earth creationists thanks to the understanding of evolution in a 13.8 billion year old universe. We should do likewise with our improved understanding of sexuality, ethics, human rights, literary interpretation, the psychological impact of shame and guilt, reclaiming universal atonement, and any number of advancements in human experience.

Inspiration and authority has nothing to do with inerrancy. It cannot because the Bible is utterly errant, so it must mean something else. Its authority comes from its ability to challenge us, to provide a voice God’s Holy Spirit, to change lives. It has nothing to do with adhering to ancient rules and ideas and everything to do about living faithfully to God right now.