For those that belive in the Bible but not in its entirety - when a little selective reading and appilcation is permitted is this hypocrisy at the very least?
by 
dumdum
ANSWERS: 10
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It doesn't seem so to me. It seems entirely possible to believe in the divinity and salvation of Jesus Christ without that belief retroactively validating the entire Old Testament. Thus the Gospels would be seen as the word of the Son of God and to be taken very seriously, the rest of the New Testament to be the words of men inspired directly by Him, but the Old Testament merely a historical document used to enlighten the words of the New.
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I don't think it's hypocrisy. The Bible was written by men, and as such, is subject to the slants, desires and knowledge of the writers, no matter how inadvertant they may be. God doesn't want a blind follower. He gave us a brain that does more than run bodily functions for a reason :)
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Both previous answers are very good. I would only add that the Bible (both Old & New Testaments) are subject to interpretation. Many very sincere, intelligent, knowledgable persons have spent much of their lives studying these texts, and have arrived at different conclusions/interpretations of what God 'wants' or expects of mankind ('witness' the multitude of Christian sects). For a 'reference', please look up & read: "6 Blind Men of Hindustan", particularily the last para. = 'very enlightening' !
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I've never met anybody, including people who claim to be fundamentalists, that read the Bible literally. Everyone interprets it; they just sometimes don't recognize that they're doing it. For example, the provisions laying out the rules for how to sell your daughter into slavery -- everyone ignores those. Another good one is the commandment that gets translated as "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery" when what it actually says in the original is "Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Wife." Note the original says nothing about coveting your neighbor's husband -- probably because culturally, at the time, a woman coveting her neighbor's husband would have been stoned to death. Bottom line is that I believe that the Bible is divinely inspired, but it answers the questions asked by nomadic desert tribesmen thousands of years ago. There are general principles that are applicable to the issues of today, but we (not surprisingly) have a different set of questions.
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Of course it's not hypocrisy and if God were real he would understand this...Unless he spoke directly to all involved in the writing of the bible then it might be considered so but since this is not the case a lot it is up for interpretation, many of which were stories passed on from one person to another altered and changed in each telling, in essence being recalled upon as second hand knowledge taken in as fact without putting any thought or any investigating into it's primary source...Is the word "Faith" not the deciding factor when deciding how you will go about living your beliefs, what you find to be true from within yourself? Hypocrisy? of course not...Don't let them tell you otherwise...
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I don't believe in the Bible, but I will answer with my opinion anyway. The Bible was written by men. It is not hypocritical to read and apply selectively, you have to go with what you feel to be the true word of God. It is something you must decipher for yourself - do you believe certain statements to be metaphor, do you believe certain statements to be created purely by man, or do you believe certain statements to be true and straight forward. What is hypocritical is manipulating the Bible to suit your own agenda whilst preaching the bible to be true word for word.
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I believe that all of these answers are excellent; it's very refreshing to see that (some) people are still thinking (rather deeply) for themseves.
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No. I pick and choose what clothes to wear. They seem to be appropriate to the situation. Or not.
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NO
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Well, it's either the true word of god or it isn't. Which is it? We can't have "it's the true word of god, but..I chose to interpret it this way or that way." To my knowledge there is not a single passage in the bible that says you can interpret it any way you like. It says it IS the true word of god..period. Since we know as fact snakes don't talk and bushes don't burn and talk and a lot of other silliness we must conclude it in fact is NOT the true word of god and those who chose to interpret it any other way are merely self fulfilling it to suit their own agendas. It either IS the TRUE word of god or it is NOT the true word of god. You can't have it is, but it isn't. That doesn't wash.
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