Peter is using the metaphor to explain his previous sentence about a person knowing the way of righteousness and then turning away.
Which person? Because it certainly appears to me that we all have a somewhat different idea of what "righteousness" is.
The Bible says that the man abuses himself with men.
The Bible says to kick out sexual deviants from the fellowship.
The thing is, two thousand years ago, on the other side of the world, this may have been considered unrighteous behavior. But we are not living in those days, or in that place, or in that culture. So unless you can show some real good reason why we should be mimicking the biases and the righteousness presumptions of some two century old and long dead Jews, instead of determining what is righteous for ourselves, in this time and place and culture, then I don't see why I should take any of this seriously.
You should be looking at your own self.
That's exactly my point. We SHOULD be looking at ourselves, and asking ourselves what it means to be righteous. Not some religious zealot from two thousand years ago.
Your thinking is against the teachings of the Bible, so either you have it right or the Bible has it right.
I am not a Jew, so the teachings of most of the Bible don't apply to me. I'm more interested the parts that illuminate the Christ ideal.
Also, God didn't write the Bible, and I am not going to make a false idol of it by pretending that He did. I don't need to pretend I own God's ideas in a book so I can then presume myself to be more righteous and knowledgeable about God than everyone else. And I'm certainly not going to allow you to use this foolish pretense to pass judgment on me, either.
