You have come to put your trust in Jesus as your Saviour and Lord. You know your sins have been forgiven, and you want to follow Jesus in every part of your life. You are all excited about this, and as you begin to tell your friends what the Lord has done in your life, you meet with mockery, ridicule, scepticism, etc., because according to your friends you are following some stories cooked up by religious fanatics. For example, they tell you that science has shown that all that you are and see are just a random collection of molecules. Some of them tell you that Jesus never died, let alone rose from the dead, and the disciples took Him away from the cross and hid Him somewhere till He recovered. They say they can point out so many errors in the Bible that it is only old people who still believe in it. Some say that all religions are essentially the same, telling people to be good, even though they call God by different names and describe different paths to reach Him. Questions like these rattle you, because they hit at the core of your beliefs and you don't have any valid answers. Some older believers just tell you to stop thinking about such things and only believe!

But you need answers, and there are answers. God has created us in His image, and His ways must make sense for us. Our faith in God must be based on facts, and not on blind assumptions. God who has created us as thinking creatures knows that we need real answers. So here is an attempt to address these basic, core issues. Once you are convinced about these fundamental truths, you know you are on the right path even if there are a million things which you don't understand, because you know you have the major issues clear.

It is not a sin if we don't know everything. Only God is omniscient, knowing all. As creatures with many limitations, we will never have all the answers, otherwise we will be God. But once we have the knowledge of the core matters, and as we experience more of reality as time goes on, they will give us the stability to face new questions. One major mistake people make when they try to 'deconstruct' their faith is to expect to find all the answers, and they conclude they cannot trust in God if something seems to be wrong according to their understanding.

Question: Can we really trust the Bible?>

For Christians, the Bible is the word of God, which God has given as a gift to us. We take the Bible as the final authority when it comes to ideas about God, and how He wants us to live. It is a special book that covers all the history from the beginning and also prophecy about what God has prepared for the future. Many other religions also have 'holy books' and so, many people cannot think anything different about the Bible. But a careful examination will show that the God who is revealed in the Bible is very different from all the gods of different religions. We can say, in a general sense, that religious books describe man's ideas about God and his seeking to be right with Him. But in the Bible, we see God revealing Himself to us, and telling us what He is like, what He wants of us, where we have failed and the way He has prepared for us to get back to Him.

In this Bible we see Jesus, who is God who took a human form, describing to us that there is no way people can get back to God except through Him. It is only Jesus who has taken our place by taking the punishment for our sins upon Him, who can forgive our sins and give us access to get back to God. "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me'" (John.14:6). It is obvious why other religious people find this statement very offensive. One of their reactions to this is to attack the Bible, and say that we cannot trust it because "it is full of errors."

There are two sides to this matter. The Bible has no errors in what it sets out to do, that is, to describe to us the nature of God and His ways, what went wrong with our relationship with Him, and the way He has provided for us to return to Him. That is the amazing thing about a collection of 66 books, given as two groups, the Old and the New Testaments. There were more than 40 men who were involved in writing these books over a period of 1500 years. Many of them had never met each other, and they were also separated over distance and time. What astounds us is the fact that they altogether narrate the same story, the story of God's love for man, how He created us to be like Him so that He could have fellowship with us, how we disobeyed Him, and how He sacrificed Himself to get us back to Him. What are the odds that this just happened by chance? This alone should be sufficient for us to start putting our trust in the Bible.

Another unusual thing about the Bible is the number of prophecies that foretold events even hundreds of years ahead in the future, and they have taken place. For example, just after the creation of man, when Adam and Eve sinned, God immediately announced the coming of the Saviour, which took place thousands of years later when Jesus came. When it comes to Jesus, hundreds of years before He was born, there were prophecies about the place He would be born in, the family in which He would be born, how He would die and come back to life three days later.

The truths in the Bible are life-transforming. Even hard-core criminals and hopeless sinners experience supernatural transformation when they meet with Jesus through the Bible. Thousands of Christians experience God 'speaking' to them in different situations, through the words of the Bible, guiding, encouraging, correcting or instructing them in their practical life. This is truly remarkable, earning the Bible its name of being a living word.

Jesus Himself regarded the Old Testament, which the only part of the Bible available at that time, as the word of God, quoting from it and demonstrating its authority many times. The early church recognised the books of the New Testament also as inspired by God, rejecting many other books making false claims.

On the other hand, we must admit that there are a few 'errors' of an inconsequential nature that have crept into the text of the Bible, and we must deal with them honestly. Unfortunately some Christians go on to say that there are absolutely no errors in the Bible, which is very misleading, especially to people who have just become believers. When they come across some errors, some of them then get confused and some even give up their faith. So we need to have a proper understanding of this subject in order to learn from the Bible.

The Bible tells us that the human authors were inspired by God to write down these books. "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." (2Timothy.3:16,17). The early church recognised this as the 'word of God' given to us as a gift from God in order to equip us for the Christian life.

The word used in the original text in Greek for 'inspired' as given above means 'God-breathed'. Some people seem to have taken this to an extreme, saying that the original manuscripts (or autographs) were exactly as God wanted, word for word. This would be as good as saying that God 'dictated' the exact words to the authors who wrote down what they heard. Then every word in the Bible would be from God, without any error or inaccuracy. But the autographs are not available now for any of the books, and what we have are only copies of copies. It is known that people who copied these books knew the importance of what they were doing, and took every practical precaution to avoid errors. But many of the errors that we see now that can be attributed to copying mistakes, such as by using similar looking letters. Typical examples could be one account describing one man whom Jesus delivered from a legion of demons, while another author describes the same incident as involving two men, and one account of seeing one angel at the tomb of Jesus after the resurrection, while another book mentions two angels. We can immediately see that examples such as these have no real significance when it comes to the main story.

There are several errors that are obviously due to the process of copying. There is another kind of 'errors' about which we must not be worried. I refer to numbers such as the number of people who were killed in battle, which are obviously rounded off or notional. Again it does not really make any significant impact on the message of the Bible. Another category of 'errors' only appear to be errors for our present day, because we emphasise the need for accuracy and precision in statements. But when four people were writing down the life and teachings of Jesus, in the four gospels, we must remember that each of them was trying to achieve a certain type of readers, and also each one remembered the events and words of Jesus in their own way. As a result, when we read some part of a narration, we may find that each author's details differ. But once we understand these differences in their approach, we can place each narration as a part of the details of what happened. Then there is no contradiction. An example is about who all went to the tomb of Jesus on Sunday morning. These are inconsequential to the big picture, and therefore cannot be treated as errors.

We can see that the Bible has not been written in the form of a textbook, but as a collection of different subjects and writings. When we read through the Bible, we observe different writing styles, vocabulary and grammar among the books, which would not have been there if everything was directly from God. There are personal differences among the human authors that stand out. So what has transpired is a cooperation between God and the authors in this process. Once God gives some freedom for the authors in the process of writing His word, we can expect that human limitations will come in. That is why we are able to notice different styles from different authors. Different authors have sometimes different emphases in their writing, some paying attention to details and other focusing on getting the main message across.

Yet another point to be kept in mind that the Bible addresses different subjects in different places and uses different literary styles for them. Most of the Bible consists of historical narration which can be understood with a plain meaning. But then there are poetical sections such as the Psalms and Proverbs where we must keep the different style in mind and interpret accordingly. Then we have prophetic sections which use a special style and the Book of Revelation that has a very special style that needs careful interpretation. Once we understand this situation, and read the Bible accordingly, we can avoid a lot of misunderstanding.

Once we recognise this, and we take care to look at the different parts of the Bible accordingly, it becomes alive for us, connecting us to God Himself. Those who respect the Bible as the word of God experience its help in various ways and at different times. They find is as spiritual food that helps them to grow closer to God and experience His transforming power. Those who only refer to it as another religious book find it confusing.