Jesus also told the woman to "go forth and sin no more" as part of being forgiven, which is a significantly important detail that often gets overlooked when paraphrasing this story.
The entire story of Christ is based on redemption from sin - if one tries to eliminate that because having extrajudicial demands on one's conduct is not fashionable in the modern day, what's left is, objectively speaking, not Christianity anymore, not even qualifying as a moral framework, and leaves you with nothing more than a nice story about a nice guy.
Let us not forget that Jesus was described as fashioning a whip (which is not something you do on a momentary whim in the bronze age, that takes time and effort, and in this case, likely stewing the whole time) and deploying it against scalpers in the temple. What the "judge not" passage calls for is recognizing that you aren't the ultimate authority worthy of meting out punishment at the end of the day (which also jibes with significant portions of the Israeli covenant and its lethal punishments being deprecated), but it does not demand that people remain tolerant or silent in the face of sin.
I agree with everything you said. I’ll also admit, it’s hard for me to see much difference between today’s “religious right” and the temple market that Jesus personally wrecked.
Agreed.. but I think that intent factors into it a lot more than people tend to give credit for. If one of the key takeaways of Christianity is "don't sin", then right behind it is "you (and everyone else) will screw up, try to be better anyways". And that applies just as well to things like lying and cheating as it does to scrupulosity and being judgmental.
Your typical fundamentalist might be nominally Christian by declaration, but they give short shrift to so many things they deem not important that it amounts to shallow virtue signaling. The moral guidelines are all-or-nothing. You either accept it all or you might as well save yourself the time because there's no such thing as partial credit. Sin is sin.
The entire story of Christ is based on redemption from sin - if one tries to eliminate that because having extrajudicial demands on one's conduct is not fashionable in the modern day, what's left is, objectively speaking, not Christianity anymore, not even qualifying as a moral framework, and leaves you with nothing more than a nice story about a nice guy.
Let us not forget that Jesus was described as fashioning a whip (which is not something you do on a momentary whim in the bronze age, that takes time and effort, and in this case, likely stewing the whole time) and deploying it against scalpers in the temple. What the "judge not" passage calls for is recognizing that you aren't the ultimate authority worthy of meting out punishment at the end of the day (which also jibes with significant portions of the Israeli covenant and its lethal punishments being deprecated), but it does not demand that people remain tolerant or silent in the face of sin.