If you’ve ever had someone quote a bible verse at you for the sake of trying to show you how silly, wrong, or hypocritical that verse or the bible is, then this article is for you.

The large majority of the times this happens, the scoffer has usually fallen prey to the easily-made mistake (one we’ve all been guilty of at one time or another) of taking a verse out of context.

Taking a verse out of context means trying to understand it without having any understanding of it’s surrounding context—which is made up of the surrounding verses, which make up the chapter/passage as a whole, which is surrounded by more chapters which make up the book, which is tied to the other books in the bible. Thus, you cannot completely understand a particular part until you understand the whole because meaning is derived not only from the passage itself, but also from all the passages surrounding it. This is illustrated nicely in the picture below.

Now, as someone who has a duty and desire to defend the faith, your first instinct will be to jump at the chance to try and help this person understand all this and clear up any misconceptions they have. But…this is actually NOT the first thing you should do. In fact, it can make your situation much worse than if you had said nothing at all. To understand how and why, check out this article: The Neuroscience Of Apologetics Part 1.