GK, I understand what you're saying. I often ask the same question to inerrantists (those who claim God dictated and/or superintended the writing/assembling process of the Bible). It can sometimes cause an uncomfortable situation among my devout Christian friends, but I still dare ask them once in a while, like, "If you really believe that, you must not pick and choose. So tell me why you don't oppose divorcing and remarrying?" (I know some Catholics do, but most of my Protestant friends don't.) I haven't heard a satisfactory answer yet.
I consider religious scriptures to be of a great importance and should be studied vigorously because I believe many of them were written by the people who were inspired by God, but no humans can ever describe God's Will perfectly, I believe it's over our heads. So, if I followed 'the whole thing' without picking & choosing, I'd be following 'the human writer(s)' of the books, and not necessarily God.
Also, to better explain my stance, let me add, just because I deem some parts of the Bible to be allegorical, that doesn't automatically mean that I write them off (though I now realize how I wrote my earlier comment can sound that way). It’s like when we read Aesop’s fable, the North Wind and the Sun for example, we wouldn’t think of arguing over if the wind and the sun could actually talk and would try to compete against each other or not, but we can see that there's something valuable to learn in the story.
I encourage people to pick and choose as we do with anything. When we read any works of notable philosophers and thinkers in history, regardless how great they are, it's still less likely to find a book where every single statement it contains to be 100% agreeable, right?, so we pick and choose the parts that feel right to our hearts and shape our own views and beliefs. That's how we should read anything, imho. Blindly swallowing the content of any book by suppressing one's reasoning and by bypassing one's conscience can be very dangerous.
A lot of evil in this world has come, and continues to come, from people cherry picking which portions of the book they prefer to accept.
I don't quite understand this statement. Are you saying the people who cherry-pick portions of the Bible cause evil? Or you meant to say the people who cherry-pick 'the
wrong portions'...??
If a believer only cherry-pick "love your neighbor as yourself" or "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends", I don't think any evil can come from such believers.
I think evil in this world has come, and continues to come, from
both believers and nonbelievers who are overcome by their selfish desires to materialize their ideals and/or happiness 'at the cost of others'.
Tad
