The thing about the Bible is that it consists of stories, similes, metaphors, and symbols – thereby indicating that it is subject to interpretation depending upon the intelligence, the perception, the background, and the teaching that a given person has been exposed to. This thus signifies that the word of God can be corrupted, misinterpreted, or become fundamentally misused when those that we believe are the religious experts of such, simply fail in the correct or best interpretation of scriptural passages along with lacking the insight to properly convey the overall message of the Bible correctly.
One of the core beliefs, especially what we get from what is commonly called the “Old Testament” is that the Jews were God’s chosen people. What we have to remember, though, is that in the telling of any good story, there need to be at least two sides to the story, so, the Jews often symbolized those who were faithful to God’s word, knowledgeable to that same Word, and dedicated thereby to fulfilling that Word. Those then that were “hard-headed” such as the Egyptian Pharoah, the Philistines, and Canaanites, were those that did not believe in the living God of that Bible, but had their own beliefs that conflicted with that God. This thus meant that as in any good story, the true believers, the Jews, were essentially right, and those who were not true believers were wrong, and thereby suffered and paid the price for their obstinacy and error.
Yet, as in many a thing, whenever somebody or some agency believes that they and they alone are the enlightened one, or the chosen one, we find that rather than humbly appreciating this, far too often they appreciate it more from a prideful manner, and where pride is, destruction of the soul invariably follows, so that we end up with a construct in which many of those of the Jewish faith, believed that by simply having the label of being Jewish, meant that they were God’s chosen people, no matter their behavior; whereas the truth of the matter is that for anyone or anybody to be God’s chosen people, is a matter of demonstrating their faithfulness to the good commandments of God, above all else. That is to say, those who in their heart choose God and behave in a manner to their fellow humankind that reflects this in a loving and uplifting way, are God’s chosen people, Jewish or not.
Remember this well, each of us is the creation of God, and all are created the very same way, of which, the society and the family that we grow up in, are going to be invariably different because people have different backgrounds and different priorities, thereby signifying that there are differences amongst us, and therefore the common ground for all of us to get back together in harmony is to not become fixated on the supposed “letter of the law” but rather to see the bigger picture that justice and fairness must come forth from a heart that recognizes the inherent dignity that we all have, thereupon signifying that we are meant to get along, for we are all, in the scheme of things, God’s chosen people, when we are attuned to our inerrant God.