Do Christians Like the Whole Bible?

All of the Bible is the truth and all of it is good.  It comes as a package.  You don't accept the Bible and then not accept all of it.  You accept all of it or none of it.  It is like the truth in that way.  There is one truth.  It is the truth whether you like it or not.  Just because you don't like it doesn't mean that you get to choose your own truth.

The Bible is not a buffet restaurant intended for choosing what you like and discarding the rest.   None of it reads that way.  An illustration closer to how scripture reads would be the instructions for putting together an intricate model.  Each individual piece fits in one and only one place.  Every piece is necessary to the whole and each place where each piece goes is also an important feature.  That isn't an exact analogy, but much, much closer than the buffet table that God's Word has become.

Our church is very, very different than most of the evangelical churches in our area and even different than the fundamentalists ones.  All the of the differences between us and them relate to ways that churches have capitulated on Bible doctrine and practice.  Our church still believes and practices where the church has caved and mostly for "cultural reasons."  Today you will read, hear, or see that a church is conservative doctrinally and liberal culturally.  Now very often if not most often, if the doctrine is right, the cultural issues don't matter to them.

Scripture teaches the church is different than the world.  Where a church very often if not most often suffers today is not in its doctrine, but where it contrasts with the world.  The light of the church shines through its practice and especially where the world varies from it.  This is especially and mostly seen in cultural issues.  By that I mean such as dress, music, entertainment, recreation, literature, food and drink, art, marriage, education, manners, and roles, among some others.  All of these relate to morality and righteous behavior.

Here's what has happened and at one time, most professing Christians knew it was happening.  In the 18th and 19th centuries, the differences in culture between the church and the world were little, because of the influence of the church on the culture.  This was a way that the light of Christianity shown on the United States.  The world, however, began to change away from the Christian culture at a more rapid pace.  The churches stood against that.

As the world changed and the differences between the church and the world became more drastic, churches began to modify to accommodate the world.  Those that did were more popular.  Other churches preached against the world, but then also against those other churches.  Finally the churches that weren't moving with the world became the minority.  They were not only castigated by the world but also by a majority of the churches.  Those churches have dwindled until there are very, very few that stand where they once did.

True doctrines have slid with the wrong practices, including warped aesthetics and inordinate affections.  Now unity might be expected over minimal doctrine and on almost nothing in the culture.  You can hardly tell the difference in most churches between the church and the world.  To conform to that, the gospel is then changed to something that excludes resulting behavior.  Even if a church hasn't slid on most of the doctrine, it won't separate from a church that has moved.  Churches have become a hodge-podge of belief and behavior. You can't rely on the church anymore for stability for truth, goodness, and beauty.  It's stopped giving guidance and instead reflected what is happening around it.

God hasn't changed though.  He still wants all of His Word practiced, every bit of it. Christians now don't like the whole Bible and they don't even have to like all of it.  They just have to believe the parts that are "essential," which excludes almost everything in the way of practice.

Scripture still has authority as much as it ever has, but churches don't respect the authority of scripture.  They follow it in the areas they think they'll be benefited.  They know the Bible has lost its authority with them, but they still advocate for it in those areas they think they can say are plain enough.  It's not convincing, so churches have stopped attempting to convince people with the truth and now are doing it with social and "spiritual" aspects that they hope will transmit to others the possibility of something divine.

If you are going to preach the Bible, you have to preach all of it, believe all of it, practice all of it, and apply all of it, using its principles.  It is as authoritative, as true, and as good as it ever has been. The Bible applies to every area of life, including the cultural issues.  Christians applied them in the past and we have historical literature on how they did.  Those practices still matter to God.

Churches that have given up on cultural issues are in trouble with God.  Really, they have invented a whole new god who will accept their own personal dislike of a lot of scripture that they don't want to practice. Their god is good with that.

To go along with the perversion of the culture, churches have to go along with new definitions of love, marriage, and sin, among many other words or concepts.  They do that.  One is a redefinition of grace.  If you do believe and practice the whole Bible, because you do believe it is all God's Word and you like the whole Bible, you'll be called a legalist by other professing Christians, churches, and church leaders.  This is to smear you or taint you with something that makes you look like you are less than Christian.  However, they are the ones who have moved off of the biblical truth about grace.

Almost all of those who throw around the word legalist see grace as a garbage can. It is a fake or placebo grace that doesn't change you in a scriptural way.  It allows you live like the world, but be given credit like you are living a holy life.

True grace cleans you up and empowers you to live according to all of scripture.  The fake gracers reduce scripture down to what they think they can keep in their own strength.  They are depending on themselves, so it isn't even the grace of God.  The idea of grace is to minimize or reduce the teachings of scripture, and then let "grace" take care of the rest.  You don't have to live it, but grace will do that for you.  It's not grace.  It's a form of left winged legalism.

People who want to live like they want will gladly accept a new, perverted form of grace. They'll believe they have the grace of God, like Charismatics believe they are speaking in actual tongues or that they are seeing actual miracles.  They don't.  God's grace changes someone to live a holy life, not to conform to the world.

God is a good God, so everything in the Bible is good.  Most professing Christians don't think so anymore.  They are discontent with God and His Word and have reinvented their Christianity to fit the lifestyle that they want to live.