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The crap selective Biblical literalism has fostered

zyzygy said:
She is not a good advert for her religion. I have known many JW and they could discuss without insulting.
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On the other hand, there are other 'Christians' that are much more explicitly foul mouthed.
 
RAMOSS said:
On the other hand, there are other 'Christians' that are much more explicitly foul mouthed.
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True, but she does herself and her religion no good when she resorts to insults.
 
zyzygy said:
True, but she does herself and her religion no good when she resorts to insults.
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All it means is that she's human. The inability to back up the claims except for a cut/paste from the jw web site hurts more.
 
devildavid said:
You are talking out of both sides of your mouth. First you point out the vast numbers of JW's as some sort of evidence in their favor. Then you quote scripture to point out how few are taking the right road. Maybe any number over the magic 144,000 is too many.
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The "have your cake and eat it too" you observed in her remarks illustrates the selective literalism that inspired this thread's OP. The specific passage she cited is one cited by many a Christian individual/group whose views are (comparatively speaking) are infrequently accepted. It is a passage that serves well the ends of they who, lacking strong and cogent cases, cite to assuage their (or their followers') doubts about the validity of whatever dogmatic/doctrinal BS they're spewing and whatever condescension they see fit to accompany it.

For instance, notice the tacitly judgmental tone and tenor of her remarks preceding the Bible passage she cited. That passage falls in Matthew chapter seven, which is Jesus' monologue about how to be a morally/ethically good Jew, and by implication Christian:[SUP]1[/SUP]
  • Admonitions against judging (Mat 7:1-5)
  • A clear paraphrasing of Proverbs 23:9, which is an admonition given as a tactical solution for abetting one's avoidance of the happenstance depicted in Proverbs 9:7 (Matt 7:6)
  • Jesus' delivering the Golden Rule, which, though not unique to Christianity is itself an all encompassing tactic whereby one can not only avoid committing the behaviors discussed in Matt 7:1-11, but also, among other things, the unacceptable consequences noted in Proverbs 9:7. (Matt 7:12)
Matt chapter 7 is one of the parts of the Bible for which no theism is necessary for one to find value in its message. Read the chapter. Do you really think heeding Jesus' behavioral guidance there found is a bad idea, be one theist or not? I don't. Then try counting the Christians, particularly the fundamentalist/evangelical ones who consistently comport themselves in accordance with Jesus' exhortations to probity (Matt 7:1-12) and metaphorical explicative rationale for them (Matt 7:13-21). (The rhetorical structure of Jesus' monologue in Matt 7 is "do this, don't do that, and the reason why is thus and such.") In proportion to the number of self-declared Christians who'd have us think they hew closely to Jesus' dicta, the number you find thus count will be small.

Ultimately, from Matt 7:12 is direction that is both very simple to understand and very literal in application and meaning. So when one observes a Christian doing/saying "X," one need only ask oneself whether that Christian would have one or another do/say "X" to him/her were the shoe on the other foot. There are but two answers:
  • Yes --> Thus one may freely serve back to the Christian what they "sowed."
  • No --> The Christian in question is a selective Biblical literalist, aka, a judgmental hypocrite who's using the Bible to "sanctify"/sanction the condignity of his/her own conceits.


Note:
  1. It's essential to keep in mind that Jesus was a Jew and the people to whom he spoke were Jews, and all of them considered themselves as Jews. Jesus' contemporaries viewed his teachings as indicative of how to be better Jews, not as indicative of how to be something non-Jewish, that something being what we today call Christianity, which is nonetheless a faith borne from and not wholly different from Judaism.
 
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