[SillyEvee]

Is picking and choosing necessarily a bad thing? I mean, it CAN be a bad thing, that's for sure. But I think it mostly depends on your criteria for choosing. If you say "I'm going to interpret as literal all the passages which promote love and kindness because I think that's what Jesus's true message was and I'm going to take metaphorically or allegorically the passages which talk of war, because clearly Jesus was just telling us that we have to struggle to bring peace" then that seems pretty reasonable to me.
Personally, I'm in favour of an all-or-nothing belief. It's either the literal truth, inspired by G-d, or it's a bunch of stories to teach morality. Or maybe it's a bunch of stories inspiried by G-d to teach morality. (?) That seems like the most sensible approach to me. But if someone presents me with reasonable criteria for picking which parts of the Bible are literal, then I can probably respect that.