These are not things most people expect from their religious leaders today. Jeremiah throws the word “whore” around a lot. Paul uses “cuss words” and is a sarcastic jerk at times. You don’t have to like the uncomfortable moments in the Bible, but you do have to address them.
We are disturbed by the fact that those who call themselves the most “biblically based” in their faith are the ones most prone to sanitizing the Bible, the ones most likely to try to re-write the Bible in their own image. So, of course, they skip those passages or explain them away. Holladay is addressing how some “good Christians” are offended by what is IN the Bible that their frail sensibilities do not like confronting things that are IN the Word of God they claim to hold so dear. To them, the blunt language OF JEREMIAH may seem unattractive at best, a stumbling block at worst. “… does such imagery perhaps prove so offensive that it is unable to speak of the things of faith?Many people go to the Bible for a higher vision than the world affords, for lofty vistas that draw them out of the shabbiness of day-to-day living. Here is the quote in full, with the previously missing word highlighted:
The above quote is from renowned Biblical scholar William L Holladay and we cut an important word out. We ask what Bible are those people reading? Some people feel certain words, images, metaphors, ideas are too offensive for them to speak of faith and religion that people turn to the Bible for a way out of the nastiness of life that they are looking for words which transcend the day to day muck that confines us.
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