One can say that anything attributed to God in the Bible as a whole overrides everything else, otherwise the Christian God would appear contradictory. So statements indicating that Jews should kill their enemies or an eye for an eye or whatever else could be seen to override the love of enemies.
To sort out the contradictions one must think one has a religious authority one trusts: a priest, a church, scriptural analysis, messages from God, divine inspiration…something that allows you to know. Religious people can do this, without contradiction. Outsiders cannot. The religoius people may well have chosen the wrong authority. All religious authorities may be delusional. God may not exist. But it makes sense for a religious person to believe they can sort these things out since they believe in religious authorities. Atheists do not.
Seriously this is ridiculous. There are even religoius experts - priests, believers of all kinds, monks nuns,w ho would hesitate to say what will happen on judgment day.
Well, the Catholic church thinks that you can confess and repent ANYTHING and go directly to heaven if you die right after. Or let’s say, there is a strong tendency in that direction. Jesus already cancelled those sins in advance.
There are other interpretations out there.
The Gnostics come at heaven andhell in a very very different way.
Calvinists have it all prejudged, preordained, we’re just watching the film.
Can a Christian decide that the Bible is an inspiring text, partially revealing God and truth, but also flawed?
Can they pray and arrive at their own conclusions, consider Jesus the Son of God but not all things attributed to him in The Bible or other texts, to be true?
Can we say that is a Christian?
Can we rule out they are not?
Obviously many Christians rule out some other Christians as being real Christians. They do this by saying their beliefs, actions, attitudes, words…are not in accordance with Jesus, the true faith, God, The Bible, the correct interpretations of the Bible, the correct sect or church. The arrive at this conclusion either by appealing to the relgious authority the believe in - the Pope, their sect leader, passages in the Bible, divine inspiration, whatever…
but outsiders?
They cannot say ‘I believe this religious authority is correct, so you guys are not Christians’
It’s the same here. The outsider has no basis to clarify who is going to heaven. they might be able to say to one type of believer 'But your sects interpretation of judgment day and sin and who goes to heaven is this, so this would lead to a murderer going to hell, right?
But they could not sift through the various possible interpretations of who gets to heaven and why and decide which is correct.
They can’t even say whether the texts that were included in the Bible and the ones that were excluded are the right ones.
They have no place to start sorting.