After facing removal, the Bible will remain in Utah’s Davis School District. Tuesday the district’s board of education unanimously voted to keep the Bible in school libraries. The Bible will not be taught in schools, but will still be available for students to read.
Local TV station KSL notes that the district reviewed the Bible and then voted earlier to remove it from elementary and junior high school students. The complaint that started the controversy was from a parent who was angered by a state law that made it easier to remove books that contained what many consider to be obscene material. This complainant pointed out that the Bible contains passages depicting violence and sexual themes, and should therefore be removed along with books that parents found objectionable. And the district concurred.
That sparked outrage among parents and state lawmakers alike. Fox 13 reported that, during a June hearing, State Senator Curt Bramble highlighted explicit content in a book that was approved to remain in the schools after the Bible had been banned. He commented, “Adults can tell the difference between a religious text from the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, even though they depict historic or evidence of various acts, relative to pornography, that which is sexually explicit. I mean, come on, folks!”
Rep. Kera Birkeland queried, “How do we write and change this law to where books where a woman naked over a man with a gun to his head is allowed in the libraries of your junior high, and the Bible is not?”
Related: Illinois Becomes First State to Outlaw Book Bans in Public Schools and Libraries
And before someone out there comments, there is nothing wrong with having the Bible available in schools, along with the Torah, the Koran, The Book of Mormon, or the sayings of the Buddha. Students will be better served wrestling with the content in those books as opposed to one advocating oral sex.
Yes, the Bible does contain a number of passages and stories that would earn it an R or NC-17 rating in the theaters. But the Bible does not promote bad or wicked behavior. Rather it provides warnings against them and often illustrates the results. And it does not do so in a lewd or prurient way.
One of the issues with which believers and non-believers struggle is the habit of taking passages and lines out of context in order to reach a desired result. Left-leaning theologians have asserted that the sin of Sodom was not that the inhabitants were gay, but that they did not show proper hospitality to the angels who visited Lot’s house. Even without the homosexual aspects, the fact is that the people of Sodom demanded Lot turn over his visitors so that they could rape them. “Inhospitable” barely covers the issue. The people of Sodom were so overcome with their desires that they were content to throw off all vestiges of decent behavior in favor of lust. And they were attendees at a rather large barbecue in their honor.
Or let us consider King David. In Sunday School we are taught about David’s battle with Goliath. When we get older, we learn about his indiscretion with Bathsheba, how he pretty much resorted to murder to cover his tracks, and the death of his first son because of it. What I have never heard covered in a sermon or a Bible study is how toward the end of David’s life, his family was wracked with rape and rebellion. Or how at one point, David is forced to flee Jerusalem as his son Absalom’s armies advanced. David may have been the apple of God’s eye, but God never let him off the hook for his actions. The Old Testament prophets repeatedly warned people about their problems with idolatry and a lack of compassion and desire for justice. Their departure from wisdom and God’s commandments had disastrous results.
Which could be at the heart of the objection to having the Bible in schools. We are in an era in which one is not only free to do what one wishes without having to consider the consequences to others or even oneself, but in some cases, indulgent, self-centered behavior is not just permitted but even encouraged. There are those who are working feverishly to see that it becomes the law of the land. And we should not be surprised. This mindset has been going on since the genesis (pun intended) of the world. I know a book where you can look it up.
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