Like all holy books, the Bible is a vague template on which each generation and culture and society and individual can project their hopes, fears and desires. It is incoherence masquerading as profundity. You just cherry pick what you want to see in the Rorschach test that is the text. There you'll find, for example, meek and mild Jesus, manly Jesus, hippie revolutionary Jesus, angry judgemental Jesus, longsuffering noble Jesus -- among others. Whatever it is that you're looking for. You might even choose to trot out each version of Jesus for different occasions.
Because the text makes no pretense at being self-consistent and non-contradictory, each theology extracted from the text will conflict with the plain meaning of many things written within, but you just dismiss these as unimportant, not intended for modern times, to be understood metaphorically or symbolically or prophetically or in some contrived "proper context", etc. You develop a hermeneutic (interpretational system) that systematizes the particular way in which you prefer to torture the text into submission to fit with your objectives.
Because the text makes no pretense at being self-consistent and non-contradictory, each theology extracted from the text will conflict with the plain meaning of many things written within, but you just dismiss these as unimportant, not intended for modern times, to be understood metaphorically or symbolically or prophetically or in some contrived "proper context", etc. You develop a hermeneutic (interpretational system) that systematizes the particular way in which you prefer to torture the text into submission to fit with your objectives.
