If everything in the Bible is absolute truth, then who was Mrs. Cain?

A great article in the Huffington Post on why Christians should not try to take the Bible as literal truth.

My two cents:
There are a number of things that have always bothered me about mainstream Christiani­ty, principle among which are


1) it starts with the assumption that we are all inherently bad (original sin);


2) it places priority on things that other people said about Jesus (bodily resurrecti­on, died for our sins, etc.) over the things that Jesus himself taught (the values of forgiveness, compassion, humility, service, mercy, etc.); and


3) the whole idea that salvation is reserved solely for those who believe in and profess faith in Jesus Christ (John 3:16, etc).


Each of these issues is perpetuate­d, I think, by an insistence on a "literal" reading of the Bible. I also think that literalism places far too much pressure on the Bible, asking more of the book than what the authors could ever have intended. Jesus (and King David, and Solomon, and other Biblical figures and authors) had a great wealth of wisdom to teach us, but so much of it is tragically lost on fundamenta­list Christians who try to force the Bible into their concepts of absolute truth.