Challenging Bible Verses

All through the bible there are a number of mandates, stories and sayings that are cannot be easily explained. At first glance they appear sexist, racist and classist. They seem to be at odds with the political correctness of a postmodern society. When questioned, it can be tough trying to explain these verses to someone. Verses that do not fit the Christian narrative, that everyone is equal in the eyes of God.
Have you ever wondered why the owner of an ox that has gored previously and then kills someone’s servant pays only 30 pieces of silver to the servant’s master and is not put to death? In contrast, the owner of the ox in Exodus 21:29 that kills someone that is not a servant is to be put to death.
Or why God says in Genesis 2:24, Mark 10:7 and Ephesians 5:31 that a man will leave his parents and become one with his wife? Why is the man to leave his parents and not the woman to leave hers?

Thirty Pieces Of Silver
In exodus 21:32 if an ox gores a servant, a sum of 30 pieces of silver is paid to the master by the owner of the ox. There is a distinction being made in these verses between the value placed on the death of a free person and a servant. If we look at Zechariah 11, we see that Zechariah (a shepherd) was paid 30 pieces of silver for his work. It was an amount that disgusted God. In fact, it was the value that Judah and Israel had placed on God, the great shepherd. The 30 pieces of silver were thrown into the treasury of the Temple of the Lord by Zechariah as a sign that God had rejected the payment.
After Judas had betrayed Jesus in Matthew 27:5, Judas flung the 30 pieces of silver he had been paid to betray Jesus into the Temple sanctuary. He then went and hanged himself. The high priests took the silver and bought the Potter’s field for foreigners to be buried. Hundreds of years earlier, Jeremiah prophesied that the 30 pieces of silver would be the value that the Israelis would place on Jesus.
Exodus 21 is simply a picture of the suffering servant, Jesus. The Israelis were given a mandate that would, thousands of years later, mirror the treatment of Jesus. It was a teaching lesson for them. Not a classist mandate.

A Man Will Leave His Father and Mother
In order to understand Genesis 2:24, you have to go back to the teaching of Christ and the church. Christ is the head of the body, the church. The husband is a picture of Christ, the wife a picture of the church. When a couple marries they become one flesh before God. In the same way, Christians being members of the one body become one flesh with Christ, whose body we are members of. This body includes his flesh and his bones. When God created Eve he did so from the bone of Adam. On the surface, these concepts are relatively straightforward to understand. The church and Christ are inseparable.
So why is the man to leave his parents? That is exactly what Christ did! He left his heavenly home, and his Father, and came to earth as a man. Christ loved the church so much that he even gave his life for her. That is why men are exhorted to love their wives. It is a sacrificial initiating love. Just as a man cannot hate his own body, then he is also mandated to love the extension of his body, namely his wife.