Hey everybody, Pat Steven Anderson here from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona
just to quickly respond to a criticism that Muslims will often hurl at the Bible, namely
that the Bible portrays great men of God or prophets as doing bad things sometimes.
Like for example, you've got David and Bathsheba, or you've got Abraham lies about Sarah and
that whole debacle in Genesis, or one that they love to bring up, and this isn't really
a great man of God or a prophet, is that they bring up the fact that the Bible calls Lot
a righteous man, but then of course you have this horrible story in the cave with his daughters
and so forth where they get him drunk and lie with him or whatever.
But ironically, this is actually one of the things that should show us how far superior
the Bible is to the Qur'an, because that's how real life is, and one of the hallmarks
of just bad literature is just characters that are just cardboard and one-dimensional
and very simple.
What do I mean by that?
Like basically the good guys are just 100% good, and the bad guys are 100% bad.
That's like a superhero cartoon or something.
That's not real life.
In real life, people are complex, and people's character contains contradictions.
And so anyone who knows anything about good literature knows that good literature develops
complex characters, and so the good guys aren't just all 100% good all the time, and the bad
guys aren't all 100% bad all the time.
That's bogus.
That's not real life, and that's a sign of somebody who doesn't know how to write well
if they write that kind of a cheap story.
Now obviously the Bible is more than great literature.
The Bible is the Word of God, but the Bible is also great literature, and even non-believers
will acknowledge the Bible as great literature because it has this complex character development
and all the other things that make up great literature.
Think about how even in the Bible, sometimes the bad guys are sympathetic characters.
The Bible doesn't just have good people doing bad things, but you've got, for example, the
witch at Endor actually being a somewhat likable character where she feels bad for Saul, and
she's trying to get him to eat food, and she seems like a nice person.
Or you've got people like King Ahab, who's a bad guy, but yet there are times when you're
sympathizing with Ahab or where he does some good things or makes some good decisions.
And we can go on and on about the good characters in the Bible who do bad things or the bad
characters in the Bible who do good things, and it should be obvious that if the Creator
of the universe who made this magnificent world that we live in and the magnificent
universe, if he writes a book, it's going to be great in every way.
It's going to be awesome.
It's going to be amazing literature.
And this is one of the reasons why the Qur'an should be rejected out of hand is because
it's poor literature, bad writing.
It's a boring book.
It's not even written well at all.
And so that right there should show you this is not written by a divine being.
This is written by an illiterate Mohammed.
The guy didn't know anything about literature, so he wrote a crappy book.
It's that simple.
Whereas the Bible is inspired by God and God, of course, if he writes a book, it's going
to be awesome.
It's going to be the greatest book of all time, and the Bible is the greatest book of
all time.
And the case can easily be made that the Bible is the greatest book of all time.
Of course, we by faith believe that it's the very word of God.
And so I'm not trying to just say that the Bible is just good literature or a good book,
but I'm saying that the Bible is good literature, and it is a good book, even though we know
that it's more than that, whereas the Qur'an is far less than that on both accounts.
And so it's ironic that Muslims criticize the Bible for showing the faults and contradictions
in the lives of men of God, when in reality, they're actually just pointing out one of
the many ways that the Bible is far superior to the Qur'an, because it actually portrays
characters realistically, not one dimensionally, complex character development, which is part
of all good literature, and it's part of real life.
God bless you.
Have a great day.