Words from Jim Palmer

Some words from a dude named Jim Palmer whom I don't know but who makes a lot of sense...

People love to say, “My authority is the Bible.”

Hate to break it to you: it’s not.

Your authority is what your pastor, your denomination, your favorite author, and that one sermon series told you the Bible means. Let’s not pretend you cracked open ancient texts in Hebrew and Greek and emerged with pure, bias-free divine download.

You inherited an interpretation. Then you called it “truth.”

Big difference.

Because here’s the uncomfortable reality nobody wants to admit: there is no single, clean, uncontested thing called “Biblical Christianity.” Never has been.

Christians have disagreed—loudly and often—about pretty much everything. Who Jesus was, what he meant, how salvation works, what the cross did, who’s in, who’s out… it’s been a theological food fight for 2,000 years.

And yet somehow, every group ends up convinced they’re the ones who finally got it right.

Convenient.

What you see in the Bible isn’t just “what’s there.” It’s what you’ve been trained to see.

Your conclusions are filtered through a whole cocktail of influences:

Your assumptions about what the Bible is—divine dictation or human wrestling match.

Whether you read it like a history book or a poem.

Which verses you were told matter most—and which ones to politely ignore.

What you think the authors were doing in the first place.

The theological box you’re trying to keep everything inside of.

How much Greek and Hebrew you actually understand (or pretend to).

All the books, sermons, and hot takes you’ve already absorbed.

Whether you trust logic, experience, or your gut.

How much contradiction you’re willing to live with without losing sleep.

How open you are to changing your mind (or how allergic you are to it).

Whether your current beliefs are comforting enough to protect at all costs.

How much time you’re willing to spend actually digging versus just repeating.

How tightly you cling to your tribe’s version of the truth.

And the big one—your entire life experience shaping what you think God is like.

But sure… “the Bible says.”

Here’s the plot twist:

People don’t read the Bible.

They read themselves into the Bible.

And then defend it like God personally endorsed their interpretation.

Now, when people leave religion, they often swing hard the other way and start trashing the Bible like it’s the villain in the story.

But let’s be honest—that’s a bit lazy too.

It’s not the Bible’s fault you were handed a rigid, literalist, fear-based framework and told, “This is the only way to see it.” That’s not the only way people have ever read these texts—it’s just the loudest one in certain circles.

Outside the fundamentalist bubble, people have been reading the Bible as poetry, protest literature, myth, metaphor, wisdom, and spiritual reflection for a long, long time.

So maybe the problem isn’t the book.

Maybe it’s the certainty.

Maybe it’s the arrogance of thinking your version is ‘the’ version.

Maybe it’s outsourcing your thinking to “experts” and calling it faith.

So here’s a radical idea:

Ask questions.

Think critically.

Hold your conclusions loosely.

And for the love of honesty, stop pretending your interpretation dropped straight from heaven untouched by human hands.

Because it didn’t.

And deep down—you know it.