Pick and Choose Fundamentalism

I call them 24 verse Christians because they seem to base their theology on a couple of dozen or so verses.I wish there was an easy answer to this question. I like to think that I have studied the Bible (the Protestant Canon, Jar) more than most, but I am certain that I pick and choose some verses over others.Probably a lot of reasons, personal biases, upbringing, to a certain extent reading comprehension. Also most people prefer Yes/No answers to Well, maybe answers. I have often found that the Bible is more confusing than an Army Regulation, so sometimes I prefer the simple answer, too.I hope that this answer is heading in the direction you intended, would hate to go off topic so early in a thread.

I never heard that story, but if it isn't true it ought to be.Thank you for your reply.

Did not know if I should reply to you or make it a reply to Message 1.I was once teaching a 6th grade Sunday School class, a wonderful age because they are old enough to really start asking challenging questions. Naturally there were questions on a literal Garden of Eden, a literal flood, etc.The next week, I took the first 100 words of Genesis (I used a Revised Standard Version) and just wrote down how many definitions were in the dictionary for each word. For the exercise I just used the American Heritage Dictionary.Consider just the first three words "In the beginning..." For the word "In" I find 19 total definitions, the word "the" I find 6 definitions, and the word "beginning" has 5 definitions.As I told the class, "You and I could read any verse in the Bible, any chapter in the Bible, or any book in the Bible. We could then write down in our own words what it meant. None of our answers would be the same."The point, I told them, and I hope they kept it, is that you can try and be a "fundamentalist" but in the end you still have to decide what it means to you and what you are going to take away from it. It's the same as if we read J.R.R. Tolkein, Louis Lamour, or Stephen King, everyone will take something different from it.I guess what I am trying to say in my own confused way, everyone is going to have to pick and choose what, if anything, in the Bible is important to them, and there is no rhyme nor reason as to why they choose what they do or why they discard what they do.

I had never heard it called "dominionism", interesting. (As a disclaimer, I wasn't smart enough to go to college so I had to go to Iowa State University.) Every once in a while I will read something from a hard liner that scares me a little. Part of me says that they should be responded to, part of me says they are just a nut-case fringe that will never have power, and most of me is so busy dealing with my own darn problems that I don't have time to react one way or another. Perhaps I should make more time.Certainly food for thought.