Criticising the Bible

I don’t mind people criticizing the Bible. But when they do, let there be some research to it – not just statements thrown out there without looking up what the Bible really teaches.

Why my sudden disconcert? Well, I’m reading this book by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly called Finding Flow (1997) and on p. 59 is this statement: “The Bible’s suggestion that man was made to enjoy the bounty of creation without having to work for it does not seem to jibe with the facts. Without the goal and the challenges usually provided by a job, only a rare self-discipline can keep the mind focused enough to insure a meaningful life.”

The statement is flawed in at least two ways.

First, the Bible does not teach that man was created to be idle and merely enjoy the bounty without work.

“The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” Genesis 2:15. Here is Adam, in the sinless, unfallen, perfect, bountiful, Garden of Eden. Does God tell him to sit back so that the angels can pluck fruit from the trees and feed him? No. God tells Adam to do gardening. He is to “work [the garden] and take care of it.”

Nor does the Bible teach idleness in Heaven. Talking about the New Heaven and New Earth, the Bible says: “They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.”

The idea that “man was made to enjoy the bounty of creation without having to work”, and Csikszentmihaly suggestion that the Bible is thus clearly false, is based upon his bad (or lack of reading) of the Bible.

Second, these periods in the Bible of bountiful abundance are both in times of sinlessness; when man will actually have the kind of self-discipline Csikszentmihaly speaks about.

Such (bad) scholarship on Csikszentmihaly's part suddenly makes me wonder how much of his book is based on assumptions rather than proper research.

Criticize if you must, but don’t do so on hearsay. You can get away with amateurism on the Internet, in blogs and so on, but in supposed well researched books?!

Read the texts. Read the contexts. And then enter the discourse.