Why do christian conservatives always quote the Old Testament and rarely the gospel?

Question

After pointing out how the Old Testament supports slavery, keeping women down, waging holy wars, killing infidels, stoning adulterers and women who are married and are not virgins, stoning disobedient children, cursing those who do not kill, and keeping your enemy's virgins for yourself, they tell me that the Old Testament is no longer valid.

Then why is it they are always quoting the Old Testament in church and almost never the words of Jesus? The few times they quote Jesus, they quote the faith crap instead of the parts where he tells his followers to give to the poor, invite them to your banquets even if they cannot pay you back, fight evil with good, turn the other cheek, love your enemies, and that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.

By the way, the Old Testament is not the only part of the bible with backward teachings. The words of Paul were used to support slavery in the South and to keep women down.

Answer 1

If they truly took the words of Christ to heart they would not be a "christian conservative". They would have more liberal leanings.

Like homosexuality, Christ never mentions it in the New Testament, however it is mentioned as being forbidden in the Old Testament. When you use the argument that the NT and Christs teaching negate the OT, they say no it doesnt. They just use the Bible to fit their beliefs and justify the way they think.

Answer 2

Your assumption is incorrect. Unlike liberals who only pay lip service to the bible, most conservative quote both the old and new testament and actually try to live it. Secondly, you are not looking at the spiritual meaning behind many of his parables and sayings. It is you liberals who are obsessed with how much money other people have. Isn't envy a deadly sin? Seconly, the obsession with wealth is what makes it difficult. If you are only focused on obtaining wealth, you will have a hard time getting into heaven. Most self made conservative successes are far more generous than liberal ones. Conservatives do good things with their own money, liberals try to do good things with other peoples money.

Answer 3

You simply find a quote to support whatever position you hold, or whatever point you want to make. The Bible can be used to justify almost anything.

Answer 4

It is called cherry picking or selective quoting. The Old Testiment seems to fit their needs more.

Old Testiment= eye for an eye
New Testiment= turn the other cheek, forgive your enemies.

Answer 5

Some Christian Conservatives aren't quoting at all. We are just using common sense.

Answer 6

I don't believe Jesus was liberal or conservative. He was an anarchist who didn't believe in any of the '-isms' of his day. I say this as a Christian who is a member of the largest single Christian denomination. God forgive me.

Answer 7

Convenience.

I hope that there is a judgement day. I hope that all of these people who so regularly discriminate, hate and kill in the name of the little fish on the back of their car fall on their knees before almighty god and weep as they are told that they have gotten it completely wrong.

Then I hope they are forgiven.

Answer 8

Unfortunately, many people not just conservatives, pick and choose what they want to believe in the Bible, and then interpret it any way they want to in order to support their positions and/or beliefs.

Answer 9

I've come to realize that people quote what they want to quote :)

So they tend to embrace the texts that support what they believe. It's not fair, I know, but this goes all ways.

Answer 10

They still use the ten commandments that Jesus mentioned but other than that I dont think they adhere to it as much as they do the NT.