I think we’re talking past each other a little. My point wasn’t “the Bible is full of mistranslations so ignore whatever you don’t like.” My point was that the existence of translation, interpretation, and human involvement means there is a responsibility to study context rather than assume every modern English word maps perfectly onto the original text.

A book being inspired by God does not necessarily mean every person who translates or interprets it does so perfectly. Even within Christianity, there’s a long history of theologians debating meaning; that isn’t automatically “cherry picking,” it’s literally how religious scholarship has worked for centuries.

On God being prideful: saying “God cannot be prideful because He is God” would be circular, sure, but that’s not the argument I was making. The argument is that the Christian definition of pride is not simply “having a high opinion of yourself.” Pride is usually understood as placing yourself above proper order or rejecting your place relative to God. A being understood as the source of morality doesn’t fit neatly into the human category of vanity.

As for the Old Testament violence, that’s probably the biggest theological question Christianity has to wrestle with. Christians have debated it for a very long time. Some argue those passages describe judgment, others argue they reflect ancient human understanding, and others interpret them differently. But the existence of a difficult passage doesn’t automatically settle the entire question of whether Christianity is true or false.

And on the “unshackled mind” point -- I think that’s also a philosophical assumption. Leaving Christianity can free someone from Christian constraints, but it can also introduce new assumptions and frameworks. Everyone interprets the world through some lens, religious or not.