Contradictions?

One thing I really fear about going to college, is having to defend my faith to people who might mock or disrespect it. I am seventeen years old, and graduating in about two and a half months, then hopefully starting college in the fall. But one thing that I really haven't considered until recently, is that undoubtedly I will have to answer questions about, defend, or perhaps preach, my beliefs. Sometimes this wouldn't be so bad. But I have no idea how I would defend myself against the great list of "contradictions of the Bible."

Yesterday during church, we watched a video of a student who was unable to defend his faith when it was put up against the contradictions. So today, I thought I would read a few of these contradictions to see if I would be able to defend it. And as it turned out, no - most likely not, without prior thought and contemplation. But that's what I spent these last few hours doing. Really thinking about the contradictions and how to defend my faith against them. I did come up with a few things that I hope will be useful to me in the future.

Firstly, the Bible was written over hundreds and hundreds of years. Just time alone would be a contributing factor to any number of contradictions. (If you read the Constitution of the United States, which was written back in 1787, and you look at American policies and the beliefs of political figures of today in 2011, don't those resemble quite a contradiction?) Time changes many things. Different things going on at different times, God's anger building in certain points, and declining in others.

Secondly, I believe that when you have faith in something, you just have faith in it. When you believe in something, you just believe it. There are, possibly, a hundred reasons not to believe in, or have faith in God, The Trinity, or Christianity. But it's the millions of reasons why you should believe in them. that make it something you follow completely. However, you should not follow it blindly, just saying, "God is real, because... I think He just is. It's what I believe." That is not enough to defend yourself, or to even come close to converting someone. If something is thrown in your face, you have to know what to reply.


- One contradiction I read was between Psalm 145:9 and Jeremiah 13:14.
Psalm 145:9 says:
"The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made."
Then Jeremiah 13:14 says:
"I will smash them on against the other, fathers and sons alike, declares the Lord. I will allow no pity or mercy or compassion to keep me from destroying them."
When I first read that, I thought, "Oh my. That is a big contradiction. What would that possibly mean?", etc. Then I realized that the Bible has, what? 31,173 verses? That is room for a lot of contradictions if you just choose a few which seem to disagree! So I read chapters 12 and 13 of Jeremiah to really see what God meant when he was angry in 13:14. I found a few things.

First of all, God gave the people of Jerusalem many chances to repent, but they chose not to. He was being merciful to them until he said 'enough is enough.' In Jeremiah 12:15, it says: "... I will uproot them from their lands and I will uproot the house of Judah from among them. But after I uproot them, I will again have compassion and will bring each of them back to his own inheritance and his own country." That is love and mercy! It shows that still even after he uproots them from their land and homes because they were wicked, God still says, "I love them and will have compassion on them, so I will give them their own inheritance and another place to live." But then in the 13th chapter, the people of Jerusalem still aren't getting it. They are still rejecting Him and not doing as they should. So God shows Jeremiah an analogy of the similarity a ruined linen belt has to what He will do to the people who won't listen to Him. He says (Jeremiah 13:11,) "For as a belt is bound around a man's waist, so I bound the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to me,' declares the Lord, 'to be my people for my renown and praise and honor. But they have not listened.' " They messed it up for themselves. That is why He cursed them so in the 14th verse.

Of course, there are hundreds - no, thousands - of supposed "contradictions" in the Bible. However, I believe that every contradiction has a remedy and an explanation. But the people who come up with these contradictions don't do any digging. They take the words at face-value. You are the one who has to be armed with the knowledge of the remedy to the contradictory statements.