The Gospel as taught by Jesus is clear. Your response to God and your relationship with Him defined by the Gospels is clear. All the stories are to reinforce your belief in them and faith in their application to your life.
What you're talking about is literal legalism. Jesus had negative opinions of that approach by the Sanhedrin. I think it wise to not repeat those mistakes.
The Gospel is about beliefs and things to do in your personal life to seek and find the kingdom of God, how you must think, how you must act and how you must feel in your heart.
That is the God inspired nature of the New Testament. Who, for instance, was named as a replacement for Judas has only historical meaning and does not advance the Gospel. If you think it does, I'd be interested in why your think it does.
God gave us all a brain. I would assume He thinks we ought to use it.
What you're talking about is literal legalism.I fail to see how my staunch belief in the inerrancy and the living nature of the word of God could be termed, "legalistic."
Who, for instance, was named as a replacement for Judas has only historical meaning and does not advance the Gospel. If you think it does, I'd be interested in why your think it does.
First of all, it sounds as if you believe "advancing the Gospel" is the believer's sole purpose in life. It's not. Regardless, the mere suggestion that one could have any sort of a litmus test to determine that a passage of Scripture is "superfluous" is absolutely disgusting.
Secondly, your personal pronouncement that anything found in God's word "does not advance the Gospel"—much worse, that it has "only historical meaning"—is terribly presumptuous. In doing so, you deny the divine authorship of the Bible, making it out to be nothing more than another simple, shallow, dead book written by just another bunch of simple human authors. If God the Holy Spirit wishes to use the account of choosing Matthias to advance His gospel, He can and will do it.
God gave us all a brain. I would assume He thinks we ought to use it.
Yes, but not to the extent of denying God His rightful place. The Bible contains a number of examples of people using their brains to do just that.
But, again, given how you previously denied the inerrancy of the Bible, there's really no point in my discussing its finer points with you. It seems we might as well be talking about the usefulness of the Koran.