This is a copy of an anwser I gave to a FaceBook critic. His question was if Christianity is true, why are there so many different beliefs within it and why are there so many interpretations of the Bible? Here is what I wrote, and I think it is important to post here as well:
Reading the Bible, in a way, is like reading the newspaper. When my local paper says the sun will rise at 5:30 and set at 7:30, I don’t immediately think the weather guy doesn’t understand that the earth rotates. When it says someone is a “giant of industry” I don’t understand them to be saying something about the person’s physical stature. In the same way, the Bible contains idioms, metaphors, and other figures of speech. Not everything is literal.
. Christians don’t claim the actual Bibles we hold in our hands in church on Sunday are inspired. We claim the original copies, the autographs, were inspired. We no longer have those, but we are very confident the Greek and Hebrew texts we have today are better than 98% identical to the originals. And, none of the disputed portions are doctrinal in nature.
. Many of the “errors” pointed to by Bible critics are actually scribal errors which come from personal copies being made prior to the printing press. If I wanted a copy of Paul’s letter to Titus, I borrowed someone’s copy and copied it myself including any errors his copy had and unwittingly, perhaps, a few of my own. We have textual critics in the church whose job is to search all the manuscripts (we have over 24,000 handwritten copies of the New Testament alone) and discover the most accurate reading based on a number of factors including the manuscript’s closeness in age to the originals and the number of manuscripts which agree with one another on that passage.
. We are also dealing with translations from the original languages. With translation comes loss of some meaning.
. While the central message that Jesus is God, died for your sins in your place, and faith in Him as your Lord and Savior brings forgiveness and salvation is clear, many other points are open for interpretation. Some of those would be mode of baptism, type of church government, which day of the week to worship, and so on. We can all disagree on those and other points but still be Christians.
. Then there are those who do not accept the Bible as inspired or even valid. There are those who deny the central message and call themselves Christians. They’re not. Just as there are physical characteristics that identify us as humans, there are beliefs which need to be held in order for us to be identified as Christians. At a minimum, those beliefs are what I laid out as the Bible’s central message.
Believers Armed and Dangerous 