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Originally Posted by SillyEvee
Is picking and choosing necessarily a bad thing? I mean, it CAN be a bad thing, that's for sure. But I think it mostly depends on your criteria for choosing. If you say "I'm going to interpret as literal all the passages which promote love and kindness because I think that's what Jesus's true message was and I'm going to take metaphorically or allegorically the passages which talk of war, because clearly Jesus was just telling us that we have to struggle to bring peace" then that seems pretty reasonable to me.
Personally, I'm in favour of an all-or-nothing belief. It's either the literal truth, inspired by G-d, or it's a bunch of stories to teach morality. Or maybe it's a bunch of stories inspiried by G-d to teach morality. (?) That seems like the most sensible approach to me. But if someone presents me with reasonable criteria for picking which parts of the Bible are literal, then I can probably respect that.
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The problem lies with when you attempt to present the beliefs to others as it dictates in the bible as you should (the bible says to preach but I'll go with "presents" which does not necessarily require one to preach simply so I cover all aspects of how you tell someone the beliefs). Hopefully the believer in the belief could realize it sooner but if not, then perhaps the person being told the beliefs spots the issue: if you decide to pick and choose using whatever criteria it is that you make, there is a very big issue of whether or not you keep what is written in the bible the same. If you believe it metaphorically, then there is an issue with whether or not you are practicing exactly what the bible says and not distorting it. With the literal approach, you may miss or not apply a metaphor that the bible may have. With doing both literal and metaphorical, you're mixing inconsitencies and it will lead to a problem. If you go only literal or only metaphorical, you may indeed get an issue, however, they will all be along the same lines.
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It's either the literal truth, inspired by G-d, or it's a bunch of stories to teach morality. Or maybe it's a bunch of stories inspiried by G-d to teach morality
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The main issue here is define morality from god. God is meant to be all-perfect, powerful, etc..., so how can a perfect, amazing, all-knowing being teach their morals to someone who is flawed, not all-knowing and far from amazing? Morality is very subjective, and comprehending that from god will require that the receiver of the moral teachings is also as intelligent, as perfect, etc... to ensure that no information is left out.
But the main issue is to define morality. Regardless of what your definition ends up being, it will have some amount of subjectivity. If it's coming from god, then one could say that his opinion is perfect, it's 100% purity with no evil or anything in there. But, then you have to consider that god is also the father of all evil. You'd be getting your morals from the father of both all light and all darkness.
That all aside, for us mortals, morality is subjective.
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But if someone presents me with reasonable criteria for picking which parts of the Bible are literal, then I can probably respect that.
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This begs the question, do you respect the criteria for the parts that are metaphorical or non-literal?
Also, how do you know that the criteria you find reasonable is indeed reasonable to the maker of the criteria? What if the maker of the criteria believes that their criteria are perfect, that they are the way to go, then you come along and say they're "reasonable", they're "dandy"? Ignore whatever reaction the maker of the criteria would give, I'm not concerned about them one bit, however, what is more concerning and what is more objective is are you going to use the criteria as the maker of them outlined? I know this seems like a rather silly question but hear me out: if you find them only reasonable, then that begs the question, are they reasonable or good enough (or whatever term you wish to use) to use 100%? Granted, if you don't think that the criteria are perfect, then the question I'm going after is, are you actually going to use the criteria for the entire bible? Naturally, it seems fitting to say that you are, but why use it in certain areas of the bible where you just don't agree with the criteria (hypothetically-speaking, supposing that there is such an area of the bible where this would occur)?