July 30, 2012Dear Sir,Please allow me to respond to “Spiritual Christian” in the letter entitled “Bigotry needs to end”. You begin your letter by stating a common retort used by many as de facto evidence that the Bible should not be trusted: “For centuries, the Holy Bible has been misused to encourage many bloody and merciless atrocities against mankind including massacres, crusades, inquisitions, slavery, apartheid, and the persecution of Jews.” Why should this be shocking when you yourself quote Shakespeare “Even the devil can cite scripture for his purpose”? The Bible itself shows Satan tempting Christ in the wilderness by quoting scripture (Matthew 4:1-11) and Jesus and the apostles all warn throughout the New Testament of many coming and twisting the scripture out of context for their own use. However, if we were to use that form of logic then we can equally claim that: “For centuries, the Holy Bible has been used properly and correctly to condemn and fight against many bloody and merciless atrocities against mankind including massacres, crusades, inquisitions, slavery, Apartheid, and the persecution of the Jews.” Thus shouldn’t the Bible be read and obeyed by all for the betterment of mankind … using your train of thought?For example, William Wilberforce is credited in abolishing slavery in the British Empire. He was a devout Christian whose main inspiration was the Holy Bible, which gave him the moral conviction to fight slavery. Ironically, Wilberforce stated: “The time is fast approaching when Christianity will be almost as openly disavowed in the language as in fact it is already supposed to have disappeared from the conduct of men: when infidelity will be held to be the necessary appendage of a man of fashion, and to believe will be deemed the indication of a feeble mind and a contracted understanding.” Was Wilberforce wrong for believing in the Holy Bible? You then state at the end that isn’t it better to love other diverse members of the family “with the truly Christian response of acceptance, support and love”?Yet you have just effectively told us that the very thing that shows us the correct way to love and act as a Christian is altered and unusable. In effect you have emasculated the Christian by saying you need to be a good Christian by not being a Christian since Christ is not really who He says He is because the Bible is not trustworthy. So who is Christ? Do you know? By what standard? Is your standard correct? If the Bible is wrong then how can you not be wrong? You’ve essentially said that God cannot preserve His record to us. Jesus prayed “sanctify them with your truth; your word is truth!” and the apostle Paul writes, “All scripture is inspired (God-breathed).” So how can God say that and yet be so careless as not being able to preserve it? Or are you now saying that in effect there is no God? Then why have the name “Christian” in your pseudonym at all?As a Christian, with my other fellow brothers and sisters, we obey Jesus and the apostles in agreeing that the Bible is God’s record and direction to us. It tells us the origin of man, his fall, the results of his fall (the effects of sin), what sin is and what God is really like. It also shows us our redemption through His Son Jesus who died on a Cross to pay the just wrath of God against all sin, so that whosoever would call out and believe in Him would be saved from the current and coming wrath of God. Unfortunately, because of the increase bigotry against Christians due to the tolerance of homosexuality, which has now caused intolerance to those of faith I cannot sign my name but also use a pseudonym describing how we are truly viewed by this world.SCUM OF THE EARTH(1 Cor. 4:13)City of Hamilton