I think I know why right-wing christians are so screwed up.

[Smith_3]

They are simply too damn stupid to actually read the whole bible. They start and make it til about the book of Numbers. Then they think "damn this shit is boring" and flip to the last chapter and read Revelations. Thus there knowledge is limited to the most impractical and backwards stuff that is in there.

[hobbit709]

1. "Belief gets in the way of thinking"

[Taverner]

2. LOL too true

Or they expect this man to interpret the tea leaves for them

[OwnedByFerrets]

3. They skip over that boring stuff about peace and helping

your neighbor. The KILL KILL KILL is more fun.

[Bob Dobbs]

4. xianity is a lie.

Roman remake of liberation theology into state slave theology.

[Warpy]

5. Actually, they don't read it at all

and if the more ambitious start to, they get bogged down in the "begats."

What they do when they're children (sometimes adults) is go through their Sunday school workbooks to assign chapter and verse to catch phrases taken out of context. I've watched them do it.

They don't read their bibles because the preacher reads catch phrases out of context to them on Sunday.

They don't bother with any of the teachings because as long as they believe in the myth, they're saved. They can lie, cheat and steal--even kill--and their ticket will stay punched.

Their awe of the book, itself, while remaining ignorant of its contents is a very basic idolatry.

[noonwitch]

8. That's not necessarily true

I was an evangelical in my high school years, and I grew up in a community with a lot of evangelicals (Grand Rapids, MI). When I participated in IVCF in college, we did intensive Bible study. So did a lot of the churches I checked out. Even in Young Life, we had Bible Study (called Campaigners) for those who were more serious than the larger group who attended the weekly club meetings.

Most fundamentalist and evangelical churches offer Bible study, more than in the liberal church I grew up attending. That's partly why Young Life appealed to me-we didn't read the Bible at my UCC church after we were too old to go to Sunday School. To this day, I enjoy Bible studies with evangelicals (although not really with fundamentalists), even if I disagree with them about some interpretations. But they are very devoted to the Bible and sometimes have some interesting insights into scriptures.

I do have a very shallow coworker who claims to be a fundamentalist/pentecostal, and attends an AOG church because, as she puts it, "the music is awesome". She doesn't know much about the Bible, and is always shocked that I can quote it pretty well.

[Rocknrule]

6. They think the whole Bible boils down to

"Thou shalt not be a queer"

[bunkerbuster1]

7. I'd like to believe that, but I've met plenty who have an encyclopedic knowledge of the whole thing.

There is a whole big industry centered on the notion that Jesus was a muscular bad-ass who would've been ok with warrin' in His name.

You can always find a verse here or there to make it sound like He wasn't mostly about finding solutions from within, and looking after those who were struggling to find their way in the world.