Ok, so from what I have gleaned so far, you are asserting that there is a clear and convincing moral code for Christianity.
I agree.
You think it is in the Bible.
And I agree.
You seem to think that you know what it is.
Perhaps I will agree with your assessment, but perhaps I won't.
It worries me when you start talking about not picking and choosing in the Bible. We must, because the Bible conflicts. Deuteronomy tells us how to divorce our wives. Jesus tells us that divorce NEVER was the will of God.
God tells us in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that pork and shellfish render us impure. Jesus tells us that nothing a man puts in his mouth renders us impure, only that which comes out of it. But then Paul goes on about meat sacrificed to idols.
So, which is it?
Is it what God said to Moses?
Or what Jesus said to his disciples?
Or what Paul said in his epistles.
Three conflicting things.
Somebody's got to decide which.
When I read this, it is perfectly obvious what the answer is.
(1) The Mosaic Code applied to Jews, and only Jews, and Judaism passes by the blood. I am unfortunately not blessed with any Jewish ancestry of which I am aware, therefore I am not prohibited from eating shellfish and pork whether Jesus was God or not. Even if Jesus was not God but Yahweh is, Yahweh prohibited those things to Jews, and only Jews. The only thing God prohibited to ME, a descendent of Japheth (and therefore blessed) is the Noahide laws: not to kill man, and not to eat blood. Other laws, such as not to commit adultery, seem to creep into the Noahide "Canon" in other OT Scripture. So, I can eat pork, but not pork blood.
(2) Jesus says that nothing that goes into a man's mouth makes him impure. I could eat feces and not be spiritually impure, just sick in the head. Of course, as a Gentile, nothing I ate other than blood would have rendered me impure. But Jesus said NOTHING, and He was God. Therefore, I can eat blood pudding and blood sausage, or African blood soup and not sin. This WOULD BE a sin under the Noahide laws, but Jesus said that the blood prohibition was not from God, by saying NOTHING makes me impure by eating it.
Since Jesus was God, that ends the discussion.
(3) But ah! Paul, the Jewish lawyer and ex-Pharisee, says to refrain from eating blood and meat sacrificed to idols. He has his reasons, no doubt. No doubt some of them are his own traditions and prejudices seeping through. But no doubt, too, he is getting at something. And what he's getting at can't be the food part: Jesus was God and HE said nothing we eat can make us impure. Paul says to abstain from blood and idol-offered meat, but Paul clearly cannot overrule God. So, Paul must mean something else. Perhaps the practice of eating blood coupled with the practice of idol-offered meat. The problem was not the food, it was the temptation to idolatry that being in the presence of such rites, and the full knowledge that everyone then had about such rites, that Paul was aiming at. Indeed, in the ancient world, meat was usually obtained by sacrifice to SOMETHING.
In our day, meat is obtained from slaughterhouses, and neither it nor blood has any idolatrous connotations. Not only that, but biologically, the blood is no more "the life" than is the cells of the meat. So, the religious concerns Paul was aiming at have disappeared, and we can go with God's very simple message, spoken from his own lips: NO FOOD IS IMPURE.
Indeed, the more consistently one follows what GOD said IN PERSON, when he was here in the flesh, the more that all of the strange conflicts of the Bible disappear or are cleared up. They COULD mean a lot of things, but they DO mean what Jesus said. Because HE was God, and Paul and Moses weren't.
Simple. Sane. Clear. God doesn't play "Hide the football", and doesn't require literacy of his followers.
But it still worries me when you speak of not picking and choosing in the Bible. Are 1 and 2 Maccabbees in the Bible?
No, the Bible does not conflict. We read in one of two ways - to glean the truth of a matter or to fit it into our notions. If we're gleaning for the truth of what's there, there is no conflict. If we try to fit our ideas on it, then conflict appears to exist. If you add to it things that are in conflict, then conflict will exist because of what you've added.
Jesus tells us that divorce NEVER was the will of God.
This isn't a conflict. It is true. God initially forbade divorce; but, as the scripture states, grudgingly consented to it due to the hardness of man's heart. It was not God's will. But it isn't conflict to say he did it. It wasn't Pilot's will to crucify Christ; but, he did it. If you're fishing for appearances, you can find them. If you use some sense, they fall apart quickly.
God tells us in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that pork and shellfish render us impure. Jesus tells us that nothing a man puts in his mouth renders us impure, only that which comes out of it. But then Paul goes on about meat sacrificed to idols. So, which is it?
You're comparing apples and oranges. Impurity as regards kosher preperation and what was/was not allowed was a matter of physical shortcomings - ie what comes out of them. The animals were "unclean" or 'given to disease'. Paul is discussing spiritual uncleanliness when speaking on things given to idols.
Meat sacrificed to idols in and of itself is not impure; but, the demonic things that attach themselves to the meat is spiritually impure. By partaking of the meat, you drag along with it the unclean spirits. Thusly, abstention from them was a matter of wisdom to keep from all the ills that could arise from partaking. Staying out of heathen rituals was already a given and was seperately addressed. You weren't far off; but, as long as you heed the warning, the reasoning is unimportant. It only becomes important when you don't, then we have not far to go to help get ya out of trouble. Hopefully anyway. If you've ever dealt with opression and possession, it isn't necessarily that simple.
Indeed, the more consistently one follows what GOD said IN PERSON, when he was here in the flesh, the more that all of the strange conflicts of the Bible disappear or are cleared up.
This is simply a matter of contextualizing. Though overgeneral, it is essentially correct. But, it is not a given that people constrain themselves to contextualizing when they have adopted things that deconstruct the context and prefer their philosophies rather than the scriptures. Case in point, According to scripture, God was admonishing people in the OT about going to the market to by and eat bread that does not give life while noting that his words are the bread that does give life. If God's word was the bread of life back then and he was feeding it to people by speaking to them, how then is it required to eat something physical to partake of the "bread of life" in the new covenant. It isn't; but, that truth is missed because someone didn't know what they were reading.
As I noted before, the message is the matter of import, not the philosophy you supplant it with. Rewriting the covenant may be valid to you and give you a club or a religion; but, it doesn't give you eternal life. And it most assuredly doesn't give you authority. And I am using the word "you" ambiguously.. it is not intended to point you out specifically. The people it is for know precisely who they are and are likely a bit uncomfortable.