Leviticus bans gay sex (18:22) — three verses later it bans eating shellfish and wearing mixed fabrics. The Quran's rules on inheritance get followed; its rules on slavery get 'contextualized'. Everyone is a cafeteria believer; they just argue about the menu. So who decides which verses are eternal law and which were 'for that time'? Pick a side.
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Add your commentCafeteria believer and proud. I take the love-your-neighbor, leave the stone-your-neighbor. If that makes my faith inconsistent, fine — I'd rather be inconsistent than cruel with a clear conscience.
Christians have an answer you keep ignoring: the New Testament explicitly drops the food and fabric laws (Acts 10, the sheet of unclean animals) but reaffirms the sexual ethics. It's not random, there's a stated hermeneutic. You don't have to like it, but it exists.
The shrimp argument is overused but it's never actually been answered. You can't quote Leviticus to condemn one thing and order a lobster roll on the way home. Either the whole code binds you or you've already admitted you're picking.
Sure — but who's the judge? In secular law there are courts and precedent. In religion the 'judge' is whoever your particular sect crowned, and the next sect over reads the exact same verse and rules the opposite way.
Spent 20 years in church. The real rule was never the Bible, it was 'whatever the senior pastor is comfortable with this decade'. Tattoos were sin, then they weren't. Divorce was unforgivable, then half the elders had one.
Convenient that the 'reaffirmed' rules are always the ones about other people's bedrooms and the 'fulfilled/abolished' ones are the ones that would inconvenience the person reading.
Counterpoint: every legal system distinguishes timeless principle from time-bound application. 'Don't murder' is forever; 'build a parapet on your roof' was about flat ancient roofs. Calling that 'cherry-picking' is just refusing to read carefully.
The honest believers I respect say 'I follow my tradition's interpretation and I know other sincere people read it differently.' The ones I can't stand say 'I just follow the Bible' as if no interpreting is happening. Interpreting is ALWAYS happening.
The mixed-fabric verse and the gay verse are in the same breath, same author, same authority. You don't get to scientifically sort one into 'ceremonial' and one into 'moral' from the text alone. That sorting was done LATER, by men, for reasons.
Slavery is the one nobody answers. The text regulates it, never abolishes it. It took secular abolitionists and a war, not a clarifying verse. If the book needed humans to outgrow it on slavery, maybe humans are the actual moral authority here.
Reform Jew here. We just say it out loud: the law evolves, we interpret, we argue, we update. The dishonest move isn't picking — everyone picks — it's picking while insisting you don't pick.
As a Muslim this hits home. We follow the inheritance math precisely but every scholar 'contextualizes' the verses on concubines and slaves. If context can retire those, context can retire others, and we don't get to pretend otherwise.
And both sides quoted scripture in that war. The slaveholders had MORE verses on their side. That should end the 'the Bible is our moral compass' conversation permanently.
That's the cleanest answer in the thread. The hypocrisy isn't the selection, it's the denial of the selection.
Whoever holds the pulpit decides the menu. Full stop. 'God's eternal law' has shifted on slavery, usury, divorce, and women preaching within living memory, every time conveniently tracking what the surrounding culture already decided.
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