Texas’s selections of readings that students must read are specific selections of verses and interpretations biased toward a particular view of theology and morality. It chooses mistranslations. Texas is requiring historically misleading passages and interpretations to preach to students–an outrageous rejection of the founders’ belief in church and state separation.
These passages and interpretations don’t help one understand history or literacy, but mislead in favor of a particular historically false theological interpretation that doesn’t aid in understanding the Bible’s historical or literature value.
The writer of the Book of Revelations was advocating for things that went starkly against what Jesus himself is purported to have said.
One of the reasons Revelations was included in the Bible was because it could be used to argue for the Trinity.
Revelations was written to specific Christians who felt that they were being persecuted by the Roman Empire, and it was promising that the good Christians would triumph and God would punish the persecutors.
The Bible doesn’t clearly support liberal or conservative ideology. It is written in different times by different authors, it contradicts itself, it doesn’t line up with any modern ideology, and doesn’t clearly give direction on most, if any, modern political issues.
The Bible isn’t one book. It is a bunch of books put together. If we really want to understand it, we should try to understand what each author was saying.
Generations of Christians went by before the idea of the Trinity was created. In much of the Bible, Jesus is treated as separate from God, but in some places, Jesus is more identified with God. The Trinity is an attempt to unify the different perspectives as one, but is not clearly spelled out in the Bible. The Biblical authors were writing from different perspectives and had different takes on Jesus.
Luke doesn’t see Jesus’s death as a sacrifice so God will forgive humans for their sins, but rather a key example of how sinful humans are–they killed God’s prophet! If you want to be forgiven, you have to turn back to God, but don’t need a sacrifice, according to Luke.