This new book may be thought of as an exercise in consistency, or better, in Christian integrity. None of us have any difficulty in finding warm and comforting words from the Bible: Psalm 23, or Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, or the way Jesus welcomed children or fed the hungry and healed the sick. But the Bible has a darker side. Not only Jesus' kind words and deeds, but his anger, his driving men from the Temple with a handmade whip, his pointed remarks about the division his teaching will cause, and his statements on hell ...
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This new book may be thought of as an exercise in consistency, or better, in Christian integrity. None of us have any difficulty in finding warm and comforting words from the Bible: Psalm 23, or Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, or the way Jesus welcomed children or fed the hungry and healed the sick. But the Bible has a darker side. Not only Jesus' kind words and deeds, but his anger, his driving men from the Temple with a handmade whip, his pointed remarks about the division his teaching will cause, and his statements on hell as well as on heaven, for example. In this book Melvin is dealing with this darker side. If the Christian teaching about the Bible being one book, with one overall theme or message, is true, we must not overlook its darker side, the darker side of Jesus' ministry, but also the deeds of the 'God of the Old Testament'. In a day when the Bible is dissected by the critics, or divided by specialists, this Forewordin itself is a welcome emphasis. The Bible is the one Word of God, and its entirety is to be taken seriously and faced honestly. The darker side cannot simply be brushed under the carpet. Apart from anything else, this is simply to push the culture further away from the sunnier side of its teaching. For as was aptly said, 'If you belittle the disease you belittle the physician.' The Lord our God is one Lord. Integrity demands that we form a consistent judgement of both the shadows and the sunshine.
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