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Some people really want the Bible to say anything other than what it actually says.
Explanation
There are two directions of theological failure and both have the same root cause: people distrust God and think they can do better than Him.
On the one side you have the theological liberals. In the New Testament, these showed up as the Sadducees. A liberal does not trust God to give us his revelation intact and believes that what God wants must be filtered through the lens of what we want. A good God would, of course, want us to have what we want. He would give us peace and love and happiness and every nice thing we imagine ourselves deserving. And, therefore, God must approve of everything we want, no matter what it is, so long as it doesn’t harm others and as long as our definition of harm is anything to which a person might willingly consent.
The outcome of theological liberalism is a belief in nothing, not even really in God. Following the logic to its conclusion, God is more of a guiding principle to allow us to be happy until that unfortunate ending of death takes us. If only we could find a means to avoid death, then we could achieve happiness on earth forever.
The problem with this view is that it must ignore the horrors of the world and imagine that paradise can be created by somehow embracing these sappy, uninspiring ideas. The natural result of theological liberalism is a colorless world like the one found in The Giver by Lois Lowry. Everyone has what they need and want and can live happy fulfilling lives, but the happiness is a numb one because this liberal world inevitably lacks savor. The liberal world is like the planet Vulcan, bare rock and cold logic, prosperity and boredom.
On the other side we have the theological legalists. These people are not satisfied with the bare minimum presented by the Bible. No. Surely God wanted us to be even more holy than He says. Did not the Lord say that not only are we not to commit adultery, but we should not even imagine committing adultery? Maybe we should end sex altogether. Maybe we should put men and women into such plain clothing, they couldn’t possibly feel attracted or imagine sex at all. Maybe if we don’t teach children about sex and make it painful to date, they won’t get into relationships until they are older and ready. Maybe… there are a thousand million ways to add rules to the Bible, but all of them add to the Bible.
These show up in the Bible as the Pharisees. They have a rule for everything and take pride in the fact that they follow every rule perfectly. They forget that they have done the forbidden thing of adding more requirements to the Law than the Law itself requires. They have done this not out of admiration for God’s Law, but because God’s Law is clearly imperfect and needs additional padding to make it perfect.
This perfectionist impulse creates a universe as dead as the other. Rather than a universe of dead rock and cold logic, they create a prison for joy. Joy itself is a risk because you might take it too far and cease to be sober-minded. So the legalist takes all the fun away and replaces it with rules and rituals. These themselves provide the illusion of rich culture, but their rigidity makes life itself brittle and dull. The legalist puts everyone, most especially themselves, into a cage of rules that is stifling. The bars of this cage are barbed to ensure total obedience. Like an iron maiden, keeping you from any mistake, not even allowing proper sleep, where you are safe from committing any sin. But you are also in danger of committing no virtue.
Both impulses lead to a world devoid of joy. One loses joy because the world ceases to have any flavor when any and all vices can be partaken to excess. One loses joy because the world of flavor is dangerous and so any partaking must be avoided. Neither are like the world Jesus and the Apostles describe in the New Testament or the world that the kings, priests, and prophets describe in the Old Testament.
In the Bible’s version of the world, every man must, for himself, make choices. Through common grace, men will do both good and evil in the world. Through special grace, some men will do true good and some evil as well. This world is full of virtues to exercise, deeds of valor, honor and dishonor, filth, and sin. There’s a time to feast and a time for famine. A time for joy and a time to mourn. A time to live and a time to die.
Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. There are rules to follow and freedoms to partake, virtues to do and sins to avoid, there are people to serve and people to be served by.
In the true Christian world that Christ created for us, we work at holiness according to good commands, but we do not add rules for sake of safety. We also do not break the good commands simply because there is joy. The world is well-ordered, but not all things must be done in an exact order. There are mistakes to be made and grace to be had in the process.
The Bible describes a rich world in which not every decision is defined in terms of virtue or vice, but it also a world where some actions are definitely sins and others are definitely not.
Anyone who wishes the Bible would say more or say less, you are damned. God does not permit scripture to be added to or subtracted from. Both are deep grievances to God and his Word. Fortunately, for those who still have a relationship with God, despite their misdeeds in handling the Word, there is grace for them.
However, for the many others who add to or subtract from the word for their own purposes and have no relationship with God. On the last day, Jesus will say to you, “I never knew you. Depart from these lands and go into the place where the worm that gnaws never dies and the fire is never quenched.”