This Need Not Apply

There is a promise in the Christian Bible that forces discomfort for many Bible believers. The verse 

reads "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6) I know that the verse is not true, you know this too, for without a mpment's hesitation you can think of at least one situation when the parents did a good job and kid went way off the deep end. I have heard several explanations for why this promise is in the Scripture, all of them trying to excuse good parents from bad results. The problem is that this is a clearly-worded promise. The idea is good, that parenting is important, but the exceptions to the rule have caused much heartbreak as good parents blame themselves for their child's wrong choices. I have heard preachers suggest that hidden sin in the lives of the parents caused the failure, or that the statement is the description of a general rule. I have even heard that the book of Proverbs is not really a part of the canon of Scripture after the realization of several of these statements in Proverbs that really aren't consistently true. 

Today I heard another explanation- not any statement in Proverbs can be taken as true without comparing it to other statements in Scripture and personal experience. I like this- "thou shalt not kill" unless it is politically expedient (Judges 18:27-29), socially necessary, (Judges 20:48) a response to being insulted (2 Kings 2:23-24), or religiously motivated (Numbers 25:1-9). I could literally take any clear statement in the Bible and twist it using other ideas and events in the Bible to whatever purpose I have. The craziest version of this is those Christians who insist that the Bible holds that American capitalism is more Biblical than socialism or communism. What drives our economy but the desire to have what others have and working hard to earn it? Well that goes against the command to not covet. So much for being a Christian nation built on the Ten Commandments. 

The interesting thing is how these moral understandings of the Bible have changed over the centuries. Genocide by Christians was supported by scripture and then condemned by Christians using the same book. Slavery was also supported among Christians by verses from the Bible and the later condemned by it. Racism has been supported for the Church by bible verses and also now condemned by most Churches using other Bible verses. These same Bible believers tell me that only if I use the Bible will I have an unchanged moral standard, but that if I believe in evolution my moral values will change over time. To me it seems that today's Christianity is just as much a product of evolution as anything else. 

When I hear Christians condemn gay marriage I now know that the way they read the Bible will change. Those commandments need not apply.