Cherry-Picking Scripture? Understanding Context in Religious Dialogue

Several members of a music community I’m involved in are atheists, and we sometimes strike up spirited online conversations about the existence of God and the validity of religion. 

One of those musicians and atheists, named Ari, disputed any ideas about the validity of religious belief. Ari would verbally barrage me with questions, observations, theories, and criticisms, often packed into the same paragraph. 

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After I had supported the Baha’i view of religion with quoted passages from several sources, Ari accused me (and all religious folk) of cherry-picking verses to show that the God of the Old Testament (the Jewish Tanakh) was the same loving God revealed through Christ Jesus. 

This was absurd, he said. The God of the Tanakh was a God of wrath and bloodlust, who repeatedly ordered His Chosen People to wipe out anyone who had the misfortune of living on land they wanted. Reconciling this with the Christian New Testament, he insisted, could only be attempted through cherry-picking.

To cherry-pick is to choose a select verse or verses of scripture to support one point while completely ignoring any conflicting or clarifying verses. An example of cherry-picking is saying that because Jesus said, ”I have come not to bring peace, but a sword,” that makes it acceptable (or even laudable) for Christians to take up arms against people they believe are their enemies. 

Cherry-picking is used to give a single verse the weight of doctrine. 

The point I made to Ari was that this particular example of cherry-picking requires the cherry-picker to completely overlook the fact that Christ made love of one’s neighbor, including perceived enemies, the foundational teaching of his ministry. 

“That’s what I’m talking about!” said Ari. 

He saw no way to reconcile these ideas or grant one ascendancy over the other. I begged to differ and pointed out that Christ, no less than any other divine teacher, had established the relative importance of certain teachings in a number of verifiable ways:

1. By stating its primacy outright. For example, from Matthew 22:38-39: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart … This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

2. By stating its significance relative to other teachings. Mark 12:31 says: “There is no other commandment greater than these.”

3. By repeating it in different ways and under different circumstances. In Matthew 7:12, “Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

4. By its context within the situation in which the principle is stated. From Christ’s final instructions, before he goes to the cross, in John 15:12, 14: “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. …You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.” 

5. By example or illustration, as in various parables. The Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37, which answers the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

6. By employing metaphors to emphasize or clarify his meaning. Matthew 7:9-10 says, “Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent?”

I asked Ari to take the scriptures in context with other scriptures, time, place, culture, age, and therefore, accuracy. I also asked him to consider the purpose of the passage. By purpose, I mean what sort of document it is — prescriptive, legal, historical, prophetic, or philosophical commentary. 

I suggested we look at the Jewish Tanakh. These books are divided up into three distinct parts: the Law (Torah/Pentateuch), the Prophets (Nevi’im), and the Writings (Ketuvim), which are commentaries by early Jewish ecclesiastics. They are not of equal purpose or of equal weight. The idea that the books of whichever Bible one holds to are inerrant, infallible, and of equal weight is a doctrine in some, but not all, Christian denominations.

I had issues with the Tanakh myself until I undertook to study it without the dogmatic lens of inerrancy and infallibility imposed on it by some Christian theology. Viewed as a succession of historical documents, the role and the admonishments of prophets like Ezekiel and Isaiah provide context. 

Every person wants to believe that their actions are approved by God, but if you take the view that the Hebrews shed blood because God told them to, then the inclusion of the minor prophets’ criticism of this behavior makes no sense. It makes sense in context with the reality of a people who, like any other people, believe their every action to be sanctioned by their God. A crucial piece of the Old Testament puzzle, lost, not in translation, but in comprehension, is the number of times prophets like Ezekiel called out the “House of Israel” for its insistence that God — the same God that had made it a cardinal teaching to treat the stranger as one of our own — had ordered it to shed the blood of other peoples.

In one strongly-worded passage, Ezekiel 22:18 and 25-29, the prophet says:

Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross to Me; they are all bronze, tin, iron, and lead, in the midst of a furnace. … The conspiracy of her prophets in her midst is like a roaring lion … they have devoured people; they have taken treasure and precious things; they have made many widows… Her priests have violated My law and profaned My holy things… Her princes in her midst are like wolves … to destroy people, and to get dishonest gain. Her prophets plastered them with untempered mortar, seeing false visions, and divining lies for them, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord God,’ when the Lord had not spoken. The people of the land have used oppressions, committed robbery, and mistreated the poor and needy; and they wrongfully oppress the stranger.

I agreed with Ari that the God of the Bible sometimes seems a God of wrath, but I think it’s worth noting what He is wrathful about. Ezekiel, in various places, reveals that injustices done to fellow human beings are high on God’s “Thou Shalt Nots.” Ezekiel repeatedly cites the mistreatment of the needy, the orphan, the widow, the refugee, and the stranger as being the reason for God’s anger. 

Contrast Ezekiel’s words with those of Christ in John 15, in which, knowing he will soon be crucified, he tells his disciples how to maintain their connection to God:

I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.

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Christ’s if/then statement is clear: the disciples’ ability to produce spiritual fruit depends upon their connection to the Vine. There is one way to do that: “Keep my commandments …” And the only commandment he gives them: “… that you love one another as I have loved you.”

Completing the contextual message is Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, who wrote: “O Son of Spirit! The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee. …” 

Baha’u’llah also wrote:

O Son of Man! If thine eyes be turned towards mercy, forsake the things that profit thee, and cleave unto that which will profit mankind. And if thine eyes be turned towards justice, choose thou for thy neighbor that which thou choosest for thyself. Humility exalteth man to the heaven of glory and power, whilst pride abaseth him to the depths of wretchedness and degradation.

I proposed to Ari that what we see in all three of these passages is not a God of wrath and vengeance but a God of love and justice.