Extreme cherry-picking from the Bible

[muriel_volestrangler]

A woman accused of murdering her three-year-old son beat him with a bamboo cane and said she was allowed to do so because the Bible told her to chastise him.

Christina Robinson, 30, also immersed her son in scalding hot water causing severe burns and shook him so violently that it resulted in brain damage, a court heard.

A jury was told the abuse took place while Robinson’s husband, Gabriel Adu-Appau, was away undergoing basic training in the RAF. While he was away she was also having an affair with a man she met on the internet and trying to conceive using a sperm donor.
...
Wright said: “The defendant now admits that she hit him with a weapon but says that she was allowed to do so because the Bible tells her that she should chastise her child.”
...
Wright pointed to Robinson’s assertion “that beating a child with a cane so that she drew blood was consistent with her being an adherent of the teachings of the Bible. The rules of the Bible are something of a movable feast for her.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/27/woman-accused-murdering-son-3-durham-bible-allowed-caning

It's not meant to be a list of excuses for your worst impulses.

[Marcus IM]

1. It's not meant to be, but it sure gets used that way a lot.

[msongs]

2. IMO it is meant to be. bibles were written to keep the peasants and non believers in line nt

[DBoon]

3. If children are not raised to expect physical punishment

Then how can you expected them, as adults, to obey their kings?

[Wonder Why]

4. Whether it be the Bible, the Koran, Mein Kampf or the works of Marx, this has been going on forever.

You can justify anything, good or bad, from reading anything.

[edhopper]

5. Where does Marx talk about

hitting children in Das Kapital?

What's more, Marx and even Hitler are seen as just men who wrote about their ideas.
The Bible is looked on as the absolute word of God that can't be denied. Big difference.

[Wonder Why]

7. The point was made by the OP about cherry-picking. You can cherry-pick anything you want

about any writing and use it to justify what you wish.

In fact, not one of the books I mentioned were written in English and, not only can they be cherry-picked, but they can be misinterpreted by the translators. Much less so for modern books by Hitler and Marx but especially by ancient books translated over and over again over 1000+ years from a time when few could read and write.

Anyone that cherry-picks the Bible is doubly stupid because they don't even know what the original texts would really have said, given that somehow humans knew exactly their God's original words. The narrower the selection, the worse the odds are that the meaning or the words are correct. The King James "Version" (that word is used in every copy I have seen) wasn't written until 1600 and was only approved by the English Church, not universally by all Christians. It was translated by less than 50 men with their own individual prejudices and overseen by the King and his church with theirs.

[edhopper]

8. All true

Too bad people take it as the unimpechable word of their god.

[keithbvadu2]

6. She must not have read the parts about adultery.