So I was thinking of this lesson being taught in my youth group months back, and the lesson being taught on was: Do you have to believe everything the bible says to be a christian, or are there certain things in the bible you can believe as not true? I feel this is a very relevant issue. I personally think you have to believe everything it says as absolute truth. So what are all of your opinions on the matter?

The New International Version actually cuts several verses out. How can this be true and the Bible still be an infallible piece of work?

Here's the truth: there is no perfect translation of the Bible. Why not? Because, while the Bible may have been protected by God while it was being written, and it could very well have been perfect, it was ultimately translated by imperfect people. There are bound to be mistakes, some of them VERY obvious.

You can be a Christian and still not believe that the Bible is totally infallible. However, one has something else they can trust.

Even if you do find an imperfection of your Bible, God will remain perfect. This is something Christians need to understand: if you have a question, you can just ask God. He will tell you any way that he can, sometimes in a very surprising way. I've had questions answered that the Bible wasn't able to give me a solution for.

Bottom line, no the Bible isn't perfect. It can't be - it was written by imperfect man! But it's not a disaster.

I even write notes in my Bible sometimes when there's a conflict between two translations or there's something that people have pointed out doesn't make sense or even if something doesn't make sense to me. I encourage you to do that. You'll teach yourself a lot.

Crawldragon : I kinda thought this thread is about the Bible being absolute truth, and not about Infallibility. But since we are at it, I want to address this comment.

To be honest, I have never heard or notice anything about this before: "The New International Version actually cuts several verses out" I believe these are the verses you are talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bible_verses_not_included_in_modern_translations

I went and checked this out and I realized what this is about. If you noticed, NIV is not the only one that "omitted" these verses, ESV, NASB, RSV, NCV, and LB also omitted some of these verses (Some are noted as footnotes.) If you look further, the versions that do have these verses, are KJV and NKJV (King James Version). Those who understand how the KJV came to being, the manuscripts that were used to translate, were using "later manuscripts" or the Latin Vurgate (which Bible translators did not have access to the earlier manuscripts) where these verses were added by copiers to emphasize a specific verse, and it has been spread as a tradition for English Bible reading. The reason that these other versions do not have those verses (or put them as footnotes) is because they are not listed in the earlier Greek manuscripts. So, if we see it this way, it's not really an "omission" from the manuscript, but an "addition" from the later transcripts. That is why there is such a study called TEXTUAL CRITICISM, which I addressed in this thread: https://www.vizzed.com/vizzedboard/thread.php?id=12193&ppp=20&page=0#192909

This does not change the infallibility of the Bible. Even though humans are imperfect, that does not mean that they do everything with flaws.

You mentioned about the "wicked Bible," which is not a mistranslation, but a misprint. And as you can see from the post, the printers are punished very badly and they are ordered to burn them. They do not even consider it to be a Bible anymore. So when we see that people may make mistakes, God still finds a way to keep His Words pure.

Different translations are not a problem either, it's a difference of word-to-word vs paraphrasing (Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_equivalence) It does not change the Word itself, but our understanding of it.

It is important to hold to the Infallibility of the Word of God, because the Bible is the inspired Word of God and is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16) You lose this understand, you are standing on shifting sand, rather than a solid rock. The word gives us confidence in what we believe, and if God wants himself to be known, he will provide through his word.

All in all, the Bible is an infallible work, and Christians need to understand it.