How do believers decide what to cherry pick from the bible?

[Heddi]

I think this would be more appropriate to post in Religion, but I know the Kewl Kidz Krewe would just come in, question my motives, suggest I'm mocking not asking, and the whole thing would be derailed before the first serious answer came in.

But this is a serious question.

I admit I struggle between thinking believers should believe it all (literalist) or realize that much of the narriative is hyperbole, some is parable, some is loosely based on things that probably happened, and a lot of who shot john making up the rest.

If I were a believer, and during the time that I thought I might have been (as a child), I could more easily fall into the "believe what makes sense and get rid of the inconvenient parts" bit.

As we've been told before, you HAVE to cherry pick if you want to make sure you're not getting cherries that aren't ripe, or ones that are rotten.

But picking cherries is objective. I can look at a cherry and see that it's not ripe and ready for picking. I can look at another cherry and see that it's rotten and too old to pick. And I can look at a cherry and see that it's perfect and ready to go in the basket.

That's objective.

But the bible isn't objective. It's not data. It's stories. It's history. It's myth. It's parable.

That's not hard data.

So how can one objectively decide what is to be taken as truth, what is fiction, what is worth keeping (as an important part of your faith) and what is worth discarding (as being an unimportant part of your faith)?

That's what so many of us ask. And we can never get a response.

I'd at least like someone to be honest and say "I don't know. I just decide based on gut feeling" but we don't even get that nugget of honesty.

So, I guess I have to ask the nonbelievers here because apparently the Religion group frowns upon discussion of religious topics.

[Warpy]

1. The Catholics were some of the best of the bunch

They took the cobbled together Jesus myth and codified that but have proclaimed the rest of the bible, especially the OT, to be allegory and the NT to be mostly parable.

The Protestants, on the other hand, have tried to square the whole business with eternal truths and historical facts and can't do either without ignoring a lot of contradictions and ancient pronouncements of proper behavior that would land them in a loony bin or jail if they tried to put them into action. Add to that the fact that so many of the independent, nondenominational churches feature preachers who are glib and charismatic but completely uneducated and you have a recipe for what we have: whole congregations relying on one man's cherrypicking, relieved of the necessity of doing it for themselves, mired in ignorance and superstition.

The bible, itself, has become a talisman more than a book to be read, handling the thing supposedly protecting people from tornadoes, lightning and teh gay. Their god has been reduced from hanging stars in the sky to fixing Little League games.

I knew people in the rural south who were like this and now it's spread all through the rural midwest. They "know" what they "know" and there is nothing you and I can do about it.

Anyway, this is the reason for the cherrypicking of an old Bronze Age text, it's the only way to cope with it as the final word of gawd, picking out all the stuff that conforms to their own prejudices and personal quirks if they ever open its covers, and allowing an ignorant preacher to do it for them if they can't be arsed.

[AlbertCat]

5. and now it's spread all through the rural midwest.

NOW?

SPREAD??? from the South? Mormonism originated in the 1820s in western New York! The Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock.... which is not in Georgia, y'know.

You don't think it's been there all along?


Stop blaming the South for everything.


Obviously cherry-picking doesn't just happen with religion.

[Warpy]

8. Televangelism has most of its origin in the south

although some southern California preachers and a few midwesterners came in late to the game.

[AlbertCat]

10. Televangelism has most of its origin in the south

Let's see what Wiki has to say?

**********

Although television also began in the 1930s, it did not become widespread until after World War II. Jack Wyrtzen and Percy Crawford switched to TV broadcasting in the Spring of 1949.

Jack Wyrtzen : he helped to reorganize Word of Life Fellowship. ... Word of Life Fellowship, Inc. is an international evangelistic Christian youth ministry headquartered in Schroon Lake, in the Adirondack Mountains region of New York in the United States.

Percy Carwford : In 1949, Crawford began the first coast-to-coast religious program, Youth on the March. ... The series was aired "by most of [ABC's] eleven affiliates".[2] In each episode, Percy Crawford, his wife Ruth, and their five children appeared. The series was broadcast live from Philadelphia's WFIL.

Another television preacher of note was Fulton J. Sheen, who successfully switched to television in 1951 after two decades of popular radio broadcasts and whom Time called "the first 'televangelist'".[8]

Fulton J. Sheen: In 1951 he began a weekly television program on the DuMont Television Network titled Life Is Worth Living. Filmed at the Adelphi Theatre in New York City ..... DuMont Television Network : DuMont opened an experimental television station in New York City, .... DuMont opened experimental W3XWT in Washington DC .... DuMont began experimental coaxial cable hookups between his laboratories in Passaic, New Jersey,

After years of radio broadcasting in 1952 Rex Humbard became the first to have a weekly church service broadcast on television.

Rex Hubbard : Humbard's $4 million Cathedral of Tomorrow church in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, a suburb of nearby Akron, was built in 1958 specifically to accommodate television equipment, crew, and chorus as well as seating for 5,400 people.

I'm still trying to find the South.... maybe in LATER generations like Billy Graham...

Stop blaming the South for everything!

[Arugula Latte]

2. Yeah, that's the million dollar question.

So many of them (including Those Who Know All in the Religion Forum) think it's insulting when we point to stories like the Noah flood and the like to point out the ridiculousness of the Bible, but yet they think it is possible and true that a carpenter born of a virgin raped by a sky god died, came back to life and will return to Earth some fine day. I think it all boils down to: they believe what they want to believe is true.

[bvf]

3. Good question, but first:

"That's what so many of us ask. And we can never get a response."

You would be attacked in the Religion group for that statement alone ("What right have you to use the first person plural??&quot

That being said, I suspect the answer to your question is, whatever floats their boat. They must thank delusion every day for having access to such a self-contradictory mish-mash of "moral" guidance that just about any behavior is justifiable.

Does this sound harsh?

[AlbertCat]

4. Different zeitgeists....personal peeves

I'd guess that most of what people ignore in the Bible (and other ancient religious texts) are the things that are no longer generally accepted by society.... like slavery or murdering someone because they wore two different fabrics at the same time. Why are these things unacceptable now? Usually because of science and other non-religious things or contrary teachings from OTHER religions that the writers knew nothing about when the ancient texts were written down.

The controversial cherry picking comes from the same place, just not things completely thrown out because they represent past thinking.... like women should shut up and sit down, Or gays are evil incarnate.

If a truly religious person wanted to make sense out of their chosen writings, ideally they should understand the aesthetics of the time and place in which the things were written. What literary tricks and styles were considered OK and even essential back then in that ancient culture. How does the written version jive with real traditions at the time? What is going on politically? Who likes whom? Who hates whom?

But mostly I just see people pulling stuff from wherever to justify/ legitimize their pet peeves.

[Curmudgeoness]

6. I don't think most people realize that they are cherrypicking.

I can explain why so many ignore all the Hebrew laws of the OT, and that is because Jesus is alleged to have said that those laws were no longer needed (unless they were, like the 10 Commandments) since he was to be the new sacrificial lamb. So that means that most Christians don't put much stock in the OT anymore.

I am just guess here, based on my own experiences when I was going to church...we believe what we are taught to believe. There was Sunday School when we were children, then there was the Youth Groups and Bible Camps in my teens, and of course the weekly sermons. Different religions stress different things as important, as I learned when I started to look into all the different churches in my area trying to find a better fit. I would be willing to bet that most of the people in the churches did not read the Bible (although a few churches actually had a list of daily devotions that the members should be reading). The ones that did read the Bible were reading the sections that gave them strength or hope or solace, or read the sections that were suggested. And if something didn't make sense to them, all you have to do it a google search to find a great explanation about why you are misreading something.

So it seems that people all choose which church we go to based on what they want to believe, and they find reinforcement for those beliefs. (Just my opinion)

[Mr.Bill]

7. I think most of them

are not intelligent enough to interpret and cherry pick the bible. That's what they pay clergy to do.


That may sound a bit snarky, but I am totally serious.

[trotsky]

9. We don't get a response because they don't want to admit the only response there is.

"I pick what I like."

Which is exactly why we end up with every kind of behavior justified by one's holy text. Want to feed the poor? It's in there. Want to kill an infidel? It's in there too.

And each believer is equally justified in picking the cherries they do. It is the inescapable conclusion, and since it's not one they are comfortable with, they attack the person asking the question.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

[mr blur]

11. Whatever they need to justify whatever their current position happens to be,

is what they quote.

[Warren Stupidity]

12. Apparently the same way they "cherry pick" from other works of fiction.

Find some bit, take that, and interpret it any way you like.

[whatthehey]

13. simple really

Even though there is humor here, at heart it is exactly true. I have yet to come across many people who take the Beatitudes as metaphor but talking snakes as fact because of some detailed contextual exegesis. They can dress it up with whatever babble they want, but this really is the process 99.9% of non-literalists follow in practice.

[trotsky]

14. +1 n/t

[Goblinmonger]

15. That is awesome.

It's been saved and will be used in the future.

Thank you.