The purpose of this book is to show how fundamentalist attempts to harmonize and suppress contradictions between the four Gospels are misguided because they fail to see that most "contradictions" actually represent purposeful editorial changes of one Gospel by the writer of another. The successive evangelists were trying to make new and different points. There is nothing more pious than understanding the text.

Harmonization cheats readers of the Bible by preventing them from discerning the richness and variety of Gospel teachings. Harmonizers see themselves as champions of Scripture, but they are, ironically, suppressing a proper understanding of the very texts that they profess to honor and adore. To recognize the plurality of Gospel teachings allows readers to strip off the threadbare straitjacket that has long been imposed on the text by theologians, which then allows people to read the Gospels each on their own terms.

This book forces readers to ask: Do you love the Bible or your theology of the Bible?