Readers React: Why some reactions to Bible depictions are less than positive and loving

To the editor: I studied the Bible with renowned biblical scholar David Noel Freedman. The Bible is mankind’s most important achievement. Curiously, Greg Laurie does not make that case and instead asks rhetorically why people find it offensive.

Here is the answer to his question:

People find it offensive when the Bible is used to justify hate and unconscionable acts that contravene every lesson it teaches us. Jeff Sessions cites Scripture to justify baby jails, the same passage that was used to support slavery. Whole faith communities righteously worship God on Sundays and practice naked bigotry the other six days, which they base on isolated verses cut off from the text.

President Trump, whose entire administration is an offense against Christianity, can rely on an unwavering base of evangelicals. Nationally, young people are responding to this hypocrisy by leaving the fundamentalist churches, according to surveys. So when billboards go up prominently displaying an uplifted Bible, the association is with the uses it has been put to, not the inspiration and wisdom therein.

John Stevenson, Ramona

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To the editor: Laurie stated, “In fact, 80% of Americans, including 71% of college graduates, believe the Bible is the inspired word of God.” The highly respected Pew Research Center’s survey report on religion in America, released April 25, 2018, found that only 56% of Americans answered yes to the question, “Do you believe in God as described in the Bible?” It found that only 45% of college graduates answered yes to that question. Like Trump, he may need a fact-checker.

Gayle Steinmeier, Hawthorne

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To the editor: What’s wrong with the Bible is that it’s the holy book of both Christians and Jews, who constitute two of the most despised groups in America today by people on the left.

The left, often misconstrued as a political movement, actually has much more in common with a very puritanical religion, in that it tolerates no dissent and views any deviation from its agenda as heresy.

Had the billboard in question depicted Greg Laurie holding a Koran instead of a Bible, there would have been no problem.

Patrick M. Dempsey, Granada Hills

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To the editor: Most people, I have learned, are like coffee-table dogs, focused on what’s ahead, oblivious to what’s behind. As the dog’s head sniffs and licks your hand, the tail sweeps the coffee-table clear of drinks, ashtrays and knicknacks.

Holy texts can console the wounded heart. Their texts speak of wisdom, love, brotherhood, peace and an infinitely wise and loving deity. But the very same people, and their innumerable faith-filled predecessors, have joyously -- clutching their holy texts and in their god’s name -- murdered millions, and tortured, tormented and enslaved anyone they could lay their hands on.

Today, these billions of believers continue their battle against both brotherhood and our hard-won ability to reason our way out of extinction. And yet Laurie cannot imagine that many view his book of love as a dark well of ignorance and hatred.

Chuck Almdale, North Hills

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To the editor: Why would I grovel before a god who deliberately creates diseased and deformed children as punishment for our “original sin”?

How about an eye for an eye, or the rules on how to beat slaves within an inch of their lives, or how it is best to let your daughter’s rapist marry her?

Sounds like the Bible makes the secular case for moral relativism. Those who cannot accept this cause problems for the ones who are happy to remain childlike in The Garden, living a life without the irrational guilt and fear of original sin.

Arthur D. Wahl, Port Hueneme

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To the editor: Laurie laments complaints lodged against a Bible shown in his ads promoting the annual evangelical crusade. I agree that such knee-jerk opposition is out of line. Whatever a religious adherent’s holy text --- Bible, Torah, Koran, Vedas --- let him tout it in a paid ad.

But I can understand why ads promoting an evangelical spectacle irked some Californians. They’ve seen Donald Trump shamelessly pander to evangelical masses to win their overwhelming support, thereby securing his election and enabling him to implement an agenda largely antithetical to California’s interests.

When evangelicals finally wise up to how Trump has cynically manipulated them, perhaps their holy text will gain respect.

Glenda Martel, Los Angeles

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