> What’s the big deal? People effectively throw out the portions of the Bible they don’t like all the time. It’s like a scriptural smorgasboard.
I have to agree. I just got bashed on another thread for suggesting that not everybody believes the same thing the most literal of Christians do. Yet within the Bible there are:
- dietary requirements to avoid pork and other products (you can eat it if you are a guest somewhere and it’s placed in front of you — but you can’t go out and kill it and eat it yourself.)
- requirements that a woman with her period be “put apart” for a week, after which she has to take two turtles or two doves to church for an offering.
- assertions that the Earth is flat and does not move.
- an assertion that pi = 3.0.
I could give other examples. But the point is that you’re right — very few people who proclaim themselves Biblical literalists actually are.
I am a Christian (whether defined by belief or actions) but someday I want to go to space and see for myself the spherical Earth. And I hope they use something a little closer to 3.141593 in their calculations to get me there. And if I happen to go up with a woman who’s having her period, it really won’t bother me any.
Regarding the circle of the earth see Job 26 and Isaiah 40. I think you are listening more to opponents of Christianity than Christians if you’ve been bamboozled into thinking that a literal reading of the Bible contradicts a spherical earth. Second, as a Christian, you should know if you haven’t already heard it that we are free in Christ. The dietary and other laws no longer are requirements (many are very good advice however).
Job 26:7 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing.
Isaiah 40:22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
Romans 7:6 But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.
Regarding Biblical dietary restrictions and others statutes found in the Old Testament — Christians are not bound to Old Testament authority, only the New Testament. Those Old Testament rules do not apply to you. Any Christian that has grown in knowledge and progressed from “milk” to “meat” should know that.