Many years ago, as part of my freshman orientation during the first week of college in inner-city Philadelphia, someone from the school took out a map and showed us all the "rough neighborhoods" surrounding the campus so we would know the places we should avoid if we wanted to stay out of trouble. These were the spots, they said, that smart people never traveled through.
Many Christians don't really want to talk about the fact that the Bible has some pretty rough neighborhoods, too; scores of verses and passages that are confusing, shocking and downright dangerous as we seek to understand and comfortably fit them within a tidy belief system.
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