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Five, Six, Pick Up Sticks

Friday 05 March 2021

Today’s reading with Fr. Mike included Numbers 15, and if I’m writing about it, you can probably guess why: more brutality. Verses 32 through 36 read

When the Israelites were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the sabbath day. Those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses, Aaron, and to the whole congregation. They put him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him outside the camp.” The whole congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

Fr. Mike knew that this was a troubling passage. I could hear it in his prayer after the final reading:

Father in heaven, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your scripture today. We thank you also for the great wisdom you give to us in helping us understand your word. Lord God, for all the times we are perplexed and troubled — not just perplexed but deeply troubled, even troubled in our heart by you, by your teaching, by what you reveal about yourself, we ask that you give us not only a, not only take away a spirit of skepticism or spirit of cynicism, but you give us a spirit of openness, a spirit of truth and of honesty. A spirit of trust that when we don’t understand, we ask. And when we still don’t understand, we continue to ask. Lord God, give us a spirit of trust. Give us a spirit that is open to whatever it is you will for us this day and every day.

What’s wrong with a spirit of skepticism? Shouldn’t we be skeptical about a great many things? Just look at the news — Qanon, claims of a stolen election, anti-vaxers. There’s plenty we should be skeptical of. Being skeptical just results from being a critical thinker, so I feel like Fr. Mike is asking his god to turn off our critical thinking faculties for this passage.

To his credit, Fr. Mike does try to explain things this time. In the past, he’s just glossed right over it, but he deals with the troubling passage this time:

Remember: the heart of these laws is that God has said, “No, you are my people.” He has set his love upon them. This is so important. These laws, the consequences of sin, the consequences of going against the Lord are so great that they shock us, right? Capital punishment as a violation of the sabbath. For picking up sticks, it says here in Numbers chapter 15.

Then he reviews the passage before continuing,

We can look at that, we can hear that and think, “That is, um, I don’t want to say crazy, but that is something we wouldn’t expect […] out of God’s law. Clearly it’s not something we would expect from the god that is mercy and love. How do we understand this?”

That’s exactly my point: it’s something we wouldn’t expect out of a God that is described as loving and merciful. How do we deal with that contradiction? There are a few options:

  1. Suggest that this is evidence that this god is not loving and merciful.
  2. Suggest that this god’s sense of love and mercy is conditional at best, barbaric at worst.
  3. Suggest that we might not understand it and move on.
  4. Suggest that it is indeed loving and merciful but that we simply don’t understand it.

“It can seem so extreme for us,” Fr. Mike admits, but he simply points out that there is a provision for those who do this unwillingly. They’re not to be executed. It’s only those who do so willingly, flagrantly — those who thumb their noses at this god’s commands. He then suggests that the third tithe

Third tithe mentioned in Deuteronomy 14 somehow makes up for it.

Every third year you shall bring out the full tithe of your produce for that year, and store it within your towns; the Levites, because they have no allotment or inheritance with you, as well as the resident aliens, the orphans, and the widows in your towns, may come and eat their fill so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work that you undertake.

It can seem “schizophrenic” (his word), but he points out that it’s extremely generous and merciful to take care of widows. That’s what we’d expect from a god of love

I joined a FB group for this Bible in a Year reading plan and posted my concern: “I struggle greatly with all these passages about stoning. Why would God command such a brutal and barbaric method of execution? I wish Fr. Mike would address that. Thoughts?”

One person responded, “That’s what they could understand 3,500 years ago. You can’t read the Bible with a 21st Century lens.” I’ve heard that argument so many times, but I just don’t understand it. From a Christian perspective, if it’s wrong it’s because God says it’s wrong; so if it is wrong in 21st century, it had to be wrong in all time.

I took a slightly different argument in my response, though:

God is not just condoning this. He’s not looking down from heaven and saying, “Well, they’re stoning people now. That’s wrong. I’ll take care of that, but it will take time because they’re so backward now. By the 21st century they’ll have outgrown this.” He commanded it. It was his instruction. There are other ways to kill that they could have easily understood. They would understand, “Hey, don’t stone people. It’s brutal. It’s awful. To execute them, here are some herbs you mix in water. It’s painless and nearly instant.”

At this point, there are lots of likes for the response to my question, little acknowledgment of the content of what I asked. And I get if: I’m asking questions that challenge comfortable belief. I’m asking questions about one of the many things that led me away from belief. I can understand if no one wants to touch it.

The Inevitable Move

Tuesday 23 February 2021

A few days ago, Fr. Mike, on day 50 of his Bible in a Year podcast read Exodus 37 and 38 as well as Leviticus 26. The passages in Exodus all had to do with sacrificial offerings, but the chapter from Leviticus was, in many ways, the most troubling passage in the whole Bible so far. It is, in short, a list of the punishments the god of Old Testament will mete out on Israel if they abandon the proper worship of him, but it presents such a conditional love, which bears all the hallmarks of an abusive relationship that I don't see how someone can read these chapters and not absolutely cringe.

It begins with a promise of what will happen if they do remain faithful:

“If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. And your threshing shall last to the time of vintage, and the vintage shall last to the time for sowing; and you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land securely. And I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid; and I will remove evil beasts from the land, and the sword shall not go through your land. And you shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. (Leviticus 26.3-7)

One might question whether this god would be upset to discover that people were worshiping him because they want all the benefits, but this supposedly omniscient being should know that and perhaps work that into the passage. "You must honestly love me and worship me." Something like that. Still, that's a trivial point compared to what happens later in the chapter.

By verse 14 it turns quite troubling:

“But if you will not hearken to me, and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my ordinances, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, I will do this to you: I will appoint over you sudden terror, consumption and fever that waste the eyes and cause life to pine away. (Leviticus 26.14-16)

Fr. Mike, in his commentary, explains, "There are consequences for actions. [...] He hands them over because he loves them." If this doesn't call Israel back to their god, Fr. Mike explains, then their god will let more stuff happen to them until they do turn back to him. "The whole point of this is not punishment," Fr. Mike assures us. "The whole point of this is rescue." This is the first problematic idea, and it hits at one of the biggest issues I've had with Christianity for some time now. "Rescue" suggests the following:

  • Force A
  • affects entity X
  • and entity Y somehow stops force A by
    • getting rid of force A,
    • removing entity X from the effects of force A, or
    • mitigating the effects of force A.

Within all of this is the idea that force A is separate from entity X doing the rescuing. If I'm beating my son and then stop beating him, I'm not rescuing him. If I'm holding my daughter's head underwater and then stop holding her head underwater, I'm not rescuing her. It's only a rescue if someone or something else is doing it, and I somehow stop it.

The problem with Christianity is simple: this god is the one doing the beating; this god is the one holding heads underwater. How so? Simple: Christians frame all this "rescue" as a rescue from the consequences of sin. But the god of Christianity defined sin. He designed the consequences of sin (and everything else) by creating the world as he did. He's ultimately the victimizer and the savior. That's not rescuing. That's a sick relationship.

Putting that aside, though, it's disturbing to look at the consequences listed in Leviticus, through verse 45:

  • I will bring more plagues upon you, sevenfold as many as your sins.
    This is not a consequence. This is God responding to one's actions, and with a sort of severity that might even be rare in the mafia.
  • I will let loose the wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number, so that your ways shall become desolate.
    Who is really paying the price if the children are getting devoured by wild beasts? And what kind of relationship does this inspire? We're just cowering in fear of what this being might do to us.
  • I will walk contrary to you in fury, and chastise you myself sevenfold for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.
    What!? God here is saying he will, in fury, bring such desolation that the Israelites will turn to cannibalism. Will he be like with Pharaoh in Egypt? Remember: several times Pharaoh agreed to let the Israelites go, but according to Exodus, "God hardened his heart" so that he would change his mind. Is God going to harden the hearts of the Israelites to make them turn to cannibalism, or will things just get so bad that they won't feel they have any choice? (And when would a parent ever really feel that way?)
  • And I will devastate the land, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be astonished at it.
    The implication earlier is that Israel's enemies will do all this destroying, but here it seems to indicate that God doing it. After all, the enemies come and are astonished, presumably at the brutality which has swept through the land.
  • And as for those of you that are left, I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; the sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight, and they shall flee as one flees from the sword, and they shall fall when none pursues.
    Again, God does this, not the enemies. He seems to be suggesting that he'll make them such cowards that they'll be eradicated.

How does Fr. Mike explain all this? He makes the move I've been waiting for him to make the whole time, really the only move he can make: The fact that it doesn't seem right is our fault. "We just need to trust God and understand that there is an answer to all these questions," he argues:

This is the discipline of a father, and this is so important to us. You know, when we approach scripture, and we don't trust God, we see these things and go, "Wow, that's crazy. I'm done with this. Day 50, that's it. I'm out." But when we approach the word of God, and we have that spirit of trust where it's like, "Okay, if I don't understand this, it must be me that doesn't understand this."

If I begin to be suspicious of God, and I say, "Wait, let me pause. God is a good dad. And while I don't understand what he's doing here or not doing there, I have to look at him, look at life, look at myself through the lens of 'Okay, God is a good dad.' So why would a good Dad allow these punishments to come upon those who are disobedient?" Well, because, like any good dad, like any good parent, I want more for you than just your comfort. I want more for you than for you to just go about your life and do whatever it is you want to do. I want the best for you.

So this is God, who is the good dad. And he says, "I want the absolute best for my children, so if they refuse to walk in my ways and walk contrary to me, here's the consequences. Because I want to bring them back to my heart."

But how do we know that this god is a "good dad," as Fr. Mike suggests? It hits at the very heart of the question of theism: how do we know anything about this supposed being? All Christians claim to know about him comes from three sources:

  1. Personal experiences with what we call the divine.
  2. What the church teaches about this being (and here I have in mind the Catholic idea that the Bible and the church are equal authorities).
  3. What the Bible says about this thing we call the divine.

Personal experiences are just that: personal. If you have a warm feeling in your heart, that's all you know. To attribute it to the Holy Spirit or anything else is interpretation and therefore highly subjective. In this sense, the believer is putting faith in herself and her interpretation of her inner experience. The other two sources, though, inform that faith.

What the church says about its god is just what other people say about, and so ultimately the believer is putting her faith in these other people.

The Bible is just a book. Nothing more, nothing less. If believers purport it to come from the hand of their god, there should be evidence of some sort in the book itself. The safest way to approach it, then, is to look at the Bible and ask, "What sort of god is presented in its pages?" From this reading in Leviticus, it seems a stretch to say that this being is in any sense "good." He's vindictive, envious, and petty at best and ghastly, wretched, and unspeakably cruel at worst.

So where does Fr. Mike get this "good dad" stuff? Simple: it's his working preconception. He's making assumptions about the Bible before he reads the Bible, and he's suggesting believers do the same. And to be fair, what else are they going to do? If they're committed to his idea that their god is good, they have to approach it with that assumption, and no one really wants to worship an evil god. In addition, if they were raised in the church, they were taught that their god is a good and loving god long before they can read the Bible for themselves and see all these terrors.

It is here that the true horror of the situation enters, for it is here that believers being to look like spouses in an abusive relationship. Take what Fr. Mike said about his god and reframe it: imagine that Fr. Mike is an abused wife and his god is the husband:

If I begin to be suspicious of my husband, and I say, "Wait, let me pause. My husband is a good husband. And while I don't understand what he's doing here [with all the unspeakable abuse mentioned earlier] or not doing there, I have to look at him, look at life, look at myself through the lens of 'Okay, my husband is a good a good husband.' So why would a good husband allow these punishments me? It must be because I am disobedient." Well, because, like any good husband, he wants more for me than just my comfort. He wants more for me than for me to just go about my life and do whatever it is I want to do. He wants the best for me.

That is classic victim-blaming. Worse: it's victim self-blame. "My husband beats me because I deserve it. It's for a greater good, and if I don't understand that, it's just because I'm not as smart as he is."

If any of our friends spoke this way, we would encourage her to go to a shelter immediately with her children. But Christians simply stay in this relationship. They believe they deserve it because of Original Sin and their own short-comings. How many times have I heard Christians talk about how wretched they are? "Amazing grace, that saved a wretch like me."

Most Christians would respond, I think, by saying, "That's the Old Covenant. Look at how beautiful the New Covenant is! That's where I draw my faith. Jesus saved us from all of that!" Yet the response to this is so simple that even a child can make it -- and has. "But that's the same god!" These are not different entities. The Christian doctrine of the trinity paints them into a corner, and they fail to see that it's happened. In doing so, it makes the relationship even more toxic.

I, for one, got out of that relationship, and I feel so much better for it.

Blasphemy

Wednesday 17 February 2021

“I listened to Fr. Mike already,” I told K this morning. I listened to the Bible in a Year podcast while making lunch and breakfast. It’s the best time for me to listen to it: K is taking a shower, and usually I’m alone.

“Was it interesting?”

“Well, more killing, killing, killing.”

Today, Fr. Mike covered Leviticus 24, and verses 10-16, in particular, stood out to me:

Now an Israelite woman’s son, whose father was an Egyptian, went out among the people of Israel; and the Israelite woman’s son and a man of Israel quarreled in the camp, and the Israelite woman’s son blasphemed the Name, and cursed. And they brought him to Moses. His mother’s name was Shelo′mith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan. And they put him in custody, till the will of the Lord should be declared to them.

And the Lord said to Moses, “Bring out of the camp him who cursed; and let all who heard him lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him.  And say to the people of Israel, Whoever curses his God shall bear his sin. He who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him; the sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death.

It struck me that this is a particularly tricky passage because there’s no set definition for blasphemy. Sure, the Israelites would have codified some definition of blasphemy, but ultimately, it’s a relative thing. Just look at the definition the Oxford dictionary provides: “the act or offense of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things; profane talk.” Sacrilege is simply profane talk: treating something that is sacred as if it were not. If that’s the case, then even highly religious people commit blasphemy all the time — in someone’s eyes. It seems that if God wanted to make sure that people weren’t getting stoned for saying “gosh,” which is really a euphemism for “God,” that this ultimate punishment was saved for at least a more heavy-handed approach, like calling someone a God-damned idiot. (Would that be blasphemy? I was just using the term to quote a hypothetical person in a hypothetical situation — but is that blasphemy?)

 

Forever Throughout Your Generations

Tuesday 16 February 2021

Today, Fr. Mike went through Exodus 32 and Leviticus 23. The passage in Exodus deals with the golden calf that the Israelites started worshiping. Fr. Mike also pointed out that this is where the Levitical priesthood is born, in verses 25-29:

And when Moses saw that the people had broken loose (for Aaron had let them break loose, to their shame among their enemies), then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me.” And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him. And he said to them, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘Put every man his sword on his side, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.’” And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses; and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men. And Moses said, “Today you have ordained yourselves[a] for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother, that he may bestow a blessing upon you this day.”

Adoration of the Golden Calf, by Nicolas Poussin

So what made the tribe of Levi so special that priests could come only from them? They slaughtered a bunch of me who were stupid enough to worship a damn cow that they themselves had made. I mean, it's no secret where the cow came from. The chapter begins with a command from the people: "When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron, and said to him, 'Up, make us gods, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.'" These idiots see the idol being made and then turn right around and credit it with their deliverance from Egypt. They're simple people at best. They'll literally worship just about anything. God should have had pity on their stupidity, but instead, he had Moses kill a bunch of them.

At first, God wants to kill them all, but Moses talks him down from that ledge:

But Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does thy wrath burn hot against thy people, whom thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them forth, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou didst swear by thine own self, and didst say to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it for ever.’” And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people.

It's amusing that the way Moses talks God out of killing them is by appealing to God's pride. "I mean, look -- you're going to seem foolish if you deliver all these people from Egypt and then just kill them." Strangely enough, though God never changes according to the Bible and never does evil (also according to the Bible), he "repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people."

Now how does Fr. Mike deal with these difficulties? Simple -- he doesn't. He talks about how we like to make God into an idol that we can control. We put him in our pocket and then take him out when times are tough. That's a fair enough assessment, I think, but it doesn't really deal with the weirdness of the passages he read for us today.

The other passage today was Leviticus 23, which deals with the feast days God wants people to celebrate. "These are the appointed festivals of the Lord, the holy convocations, which you shall celebrate at the time appointed for them" (verse 4). Obviously, Christmas and Easter aren't in there, but a whole bunch of feasts that I grew up celebrating are, and I grew up celebrating them for a very simple reason: the Bible says to do so, and nowhere in the New Testament does it say to stop celebrating them.

Indeed, the passages requiring them are quite specific that these are ordained for all time:

  • Verse 14 is about the offering of First Fruits: "You shall eat no bread or parched grain or fresh ears until that very day, until you have brought the offering of your God: it is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your settlements."
  • Verse 21 is about the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost): "This is a statute forever in all your settlements throughout your generations."
  • Verse 31 is about Atonement: "You shall do no work: it is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your settlements."
  • Verse 41 is about the Feast of Tabernacles (Booths): "You shall keep it as a festival to the Lord seven days in the year; you shall keep it in the seventh month as a statute forever throughout your generations."

Recall Zachariah 14:16 from a few days ago: "Then every one that survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of booths." It seems pretty clear that God is ordaining these celebrations for all times and all people. Why don't most Christians celebrate them anymore?

Fr. Mike, of course, did not deal with that. And I can't really blame him: this is "The Bible in a Year" podcast, not "The Bible in a Year for Skeptics" podcast. But it does illustrate one tendency I've noticed about believers. Those tricky parts, those troubling parts -- they don't see them. Even when they're there in front of them, they don't see them.

"God is mysterious," and it's all taken care of.

More Silence

Saturday 13 February 2021

Earlier, Fr. Mike explained that the reason Christians are to follow some of the Old Testament commands and disregard others is a question of audience. Some were meant to be only for Israel while others are clearly meant for everyone. He tried to elaborate it with an example about homosexuality in the Bible in which he pointed out that the text points out that the nations surrounding Israel "defiled" themselves in this way (I guess by showing tolerance to the gay community) and that Israel was not to do the same. Thus, Fr. Mike contended, it was clearly meant for those other nations as well. That's how he explained away the command not to wear clothes of mixed fabrics but insisted that the prohibitions against homosexuality were still binding.

Alright, so let's take that as a given for the sake of argument. I don't think the point stands: I think it's just a bunch of verbal sleight-of-hand (I know -- horribly mixed metaphor). There's nothing in the text that explicitly even suggests that some of these laws are binding for all people and some are not. Most Christians today don't keep the OT feasts like the Feast of Tabernacles (also known as the Feast of Booths) even though Zechariah 14:16 states, "Then every one that survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of booths." If anything seems directed toward all people, this surely is. By Fr. Mike's logic, then, Christians should still be keeping at least observe the Feast of Tabernacles/Booths. Be all that selective-application-of-a-dubious-hermeneutic as it might be, let's just take for the sake of argument that Fr. Mike's interpretative principle is sound. What do we make of today's reading, then?

Leviticus 20 is a brutal chapter. It lists the penalties for various infractions of the law. Most commonly, the penalty is death, and that death, most commonly, is by -- guess! bet you'll never guess it right! -- stoning.

It starts out with a fairly disturbing command: "The Lord said to Moses,  'Say to the people of Israel, Any man of the people of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, who gives any of his children to Molech shall be put to death; the people of the land shall stone him with stones'" (verses 1 and 2). This giving of children to Molech was always explained as child sacrifice. So it's disturbing that child sacrifice is such an issue (or potential issue) that right out of the gate, the first penalty deals with this. We might think, "Well, that's good. At least this god has the children's good in mind." That reassuring thought disappears as soon as we read verse three, though: "'I myself will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, defiling my sanctuary and profaning my holy name.'" So it's not that they committed this awful cruelty to children, it's not that they betrayed their responsibilities as parents, it's not that they tortured children -- no, it's all about this god. Burning children is bad because it profane's this god's name. That's just sick.

From that auspicious start, we have a whole litany of death:

  • In verse 9, we're instructed to kill incorrigible children: "For every one who curses his father or his mother shall be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother, his blood is upon him."
  • In verse 10, we're instructed to stone adulterers: "If a man commits adultery with the wife of[a] his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death."
  • Verses 11 and 12 as well as 14 through 21 deal with the penalty for various forms of incest and beastiality. Death, of course.
  • Verse 27 deals with those who supposedly talk to the dead: “A man or a woman who is a medium or a wizard shall be put to death; they shall be stoned with stones, their blood shall be upon them.”

As a side note, many people have demonstrated that this "talking to the dead" nonsense is just that -- it's cold reading. Derren Brown has walked into a room and convinced people he was talking to the dead just after saying to the camera, "I'm going to go in there and make them think I'm talking to the dead, but I'll be doing no such thing."

It's verse 13, though, that stands out when juxtaposed to what Fr. Mike said earlier: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them." This is a clear condemnation of homosexuality. The question is this: if the prohibition of homosexuality is to be interpreted as universal, why shouldn't the punishment be likewise?

Verses 22 through 24, though, is even more interesting, for it seems to demolish Fr. Mike's whole distinction between universal and non-universal application of the Old Testmant law:

“You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my ordinances, and do them; that the land where I am bringing you to dwell may not vomit you out. And you shall not walk in the customs of the nation which I am casting out before you; for they did all these things, and therefore I abhorred them. But I have said to you, ‘You shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey.’ I am the Lord your God, who have separated you from the peoples."

Fr. Mike argued that the earlier condemnation of homosexuality was universal because it was set in opposition to what the surrounding nations tolerated, but these verses do the exact same thing for all God's commands.

So what does Fr. Mike in his post-reading reflection say about all this brutality? How does Fr. Mike deal with the verse that seems not just to undermine his earlier argument but to demolish it completely? Simple: he says nothing. He instead focuses on the other reading for the day, Exodus 27 and 28, which deal with the priestly garments, and he talks about his own experiences wearing modern priestly garments.

It's not a problem if you don't acknowledge it...

Emissions and Lapidation

Tuesday 09 February 2021

"That can be a very challenging, challenging reading," Fr. Mike begins today's commentary, which I take to mean something like, "It's really tough to explain away these passages that seem so barbaric or seem so weirdly obsessed with relatively unimportant things. They seem to challenge the very goodness and wisdom of the god we worship." The reading was Exodus 22 and Leviticus 15, and he says that the Exodus reading seems to be more commonsensical.

The first part of the chapter has to do with the laws of restitution -- things like what to do if your bull gores another animal. That type of thing. Fr. Mike discusses these laws fairly quickly, and he's probably right: they are fairly commonsensical in a way. These passages, Fr. Mike explains are "revealing something about God's heart." These are "the principles according to justice."

What he says not a word about are the instructions in the latter half of the chapter, particularly the first set of so-called social and religious laws:

“If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed, and lies with her, he shall give the marriage present for her, and make her his wife. If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equivalent to the marriage present for virgins.

“You shall not permit a sorceress to live.

“Whoever lies with a beast shall be put to death.

“Whoever sacrifices to any god, save to the Lord only, shall be utterly destroyed." (Exodus 22 16-20)

We're to stone incorrigible children. We're to stone witches. We're to stone those who change religions. Stoning is such a brutal, barbaric punishment that the fact that not only does this god justify it ("I'd rather you not do it, but I guess if you do it in these situations it's alright") but simply commands it -- that thought alone disqualifies this god of anything other than contempt from right-thinking people, from people who have a modicum of empathy and decency.

These are, remember, the "principles according to justice" instead of vengeance; this god is all about making sure the punishment fits the crime. So apparently, taking your child out, burying him to the waist, and bludgeoning him to death with stones is a just punishment. Stoning is appropriate for the imaginary crime of sorcery. And just as we see in Islam, the punishment for leaving the faith is -- you guessed it -- stoning.

Remember, too, that these things, according to Fr. Mike, "reveal something about God's heart." What it reveals to me is simple: this is not a just god; this is not a decent god.

But it is the god presented in the Bible, so all this behavior must be justified. We have to explain away this barbarity somehow. How does Fr. Mike justify it? Simple: he just doesn't comment about it at all. Not a word about any of the commands to stone anyone. Not one word.

He does go into detail about the passage in Leviticus, which is what all we're to do regarding menstruating women and semen-spilling men. It reads like this:

“And if a man has an emission of semen, he shall bathe his whole body in water, and be unclean until the evening. And every garment and every skin on which the semen comes shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the evening. If a man lies with a woman and has an emission of semen, both of them shall bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the evening. (Lev. 15.16-18)

This is what the creator of the universe, the ground of all being, is concerned with: what to do after a wet dream.

Fr. Mike explains it this way: "The bodily emissions are important why? Because life is in the blood. They're important because they refer to very intrinsic and necessary parts of our relationships." But why would there be rules about this? Fr. Mike explains,

[It] is because the body is sacred. The emissions of the body refer to life but also because this particular kind of emissions of the body have to do with sex, have to do with reproduction, have to do with relationships. [...] There's some kind of guidance, some kind of restraint again placed upon people when a) they are engaged in sexual acts with one another, and b) they're in community with each other. And this is just part of the genius of God's word. God's word is saying "we're going to show restrait." And that restraint is not for restraint's sake alone and also not like "oh, gross!" -- that's not what uncleanness means. Uncleanness simple means whether this is an issue of blood, an issue of seman, whaterver this is, those are things that can bring forth life. But because they bring forth life, we have to be careful around them. This is something that's so important for us to rediscover in the twenty-first century that because there are things so connected to life we need to be careful around them.

What does that even mean? Why would we "be careful"? In what sense would we "be careful"? Is he talking about being careful with sex? I guess that's what he means, but the Levitical passages aren't solely about sex; they're about menstruation and simply ejaculation (not necessarily during coitus). It all just becomes a big confusing bundle of squishy words that don't seem to mean anything.

I feel like he's just providing an answer that he knows, consciously or unconsciously, is vague but will communicate enough to reassure believers who are troubled by this passage. They might not even understand it, but it gives them something to calm their worries about this passage. I can even hear someone saying something like this, then appending it with, "I'm not sure I explained it right. Fr. Mike does it better. You should just listen to the podcast."

Header image is a still from the film The Stoning of Soraya M.

Slavery in the Bible

Monday 08 February 2021

K asked me to listen along with her has she goes through Fr. Mike Schmitz’s podcast The Bible in a Year. I’ve been eager to see how Fr. Mike deals with the more troubling parts of the Bible, and today, he hit Exodus 21, which deals with how to treat slaves:

“Now these are the ordinances which you shall set before them. When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s and he shall go out alone. But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for life.

“When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed; he shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has dealt faithlessly with her. If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money. (Ex 21.1-11)

Fr. Mike explains it this way: it’s a difficult passage, but it’s important to understand Old Testament slavery in the proper context:

He’s not revealing himself to a people who knows who he is. […] He’s not revealing himself to a people who, for lack of a better term, are civilized. He’s revealing himself to a people who are familiar with a kind of Wild West justice. He’s revealing himself to a people who have a sense of what’s right and what’s wrong but don’t necessarily know how to pursue what’s right and what’s wrong in a way that’s absolutely just and fair. […] He’s teaching them, “I am a god of justice, a god who does hear the cry of the poor.”

Yet Fr. Mike contends that because slavery was so common in the ancient world, God had to take baby steps with them. First of all, slavery then wasn’t what we think of slavery. It was more like indentured servitude. So it’s slavery, but not slavery slavery. Next, he contends that God had to teach the Israelites that you can’t just do anything you want to your slaves. They’re human beings. That’s all fine and good, I guess, but it seems to me that that’s a pretty basic step, a pretty small step. Add to it the dimension of sexual slavery (“If she does not please her master”) and the thought of selling one’s daughter into this sexual slavery — it’s just astounding that someone can justify this.

More problematic is the realization that, if God was just taking these “baby steps,” we would expect to find an outright prohibition of slavery somewhere later in the Bible. After all, Christians are fond of explaining that Jesus did away with all that Old Testament stuff when he instituted the New Testament. And it seems to have caught on: Paul writes in Galatians 3.28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Surely that’s the next step implied by this baby-steps argument.

It’s hard, then, to understand why Paul himself would contradict himself and walk back this argument in Ephesians 6.5-8

Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as to Christ; not in the way of eye-service, as men-pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that whatever good any one does, he will receive the same again from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free.

Even more troubling is the whole letter to Philemon, in which Paul returns a slave to his master In verses 12-18, he writes,

I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart. I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel; but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own free will.

Perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me. If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.

Here would be a perfect chance to condemn and prohibit slavery. Here would be the perfect location to take that final step started with those baby steps in the Old Testament. Here would be the place to say something like this:

I am not sending him back to you. I would have been glad to keep him with me, but I gave him the choice to stay or to go, and he, being a free man not just in Christ but because slavery is itself vile and immoral, chose to leave. I preferred to do nothing without your consent, but because he has his own rights and liberty, I told him to go his own way.

Perhaps this is why he was parted from you, that you might realize how vile slavery is and repent of this evil. Understand me now: there is no place in the body of Christ of slavery of any kind, of any shape, of any definition. So if you consider me your partner, receive this news as you would receive me. If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, he paid it off long ago.

There. I fixed it.

Sunday Theological Thoughts and a Ride

Sunday 13 September 2020

A Ride

We went for a bike ride this afternoon to our favorite local park. We got an up-close view of a local:

We see them at a distance quite frequently, and they even come into our creek behind our house from time to time, but this is undoubtedly the closest we've ever been to one.

Sunday Theological Thoughts

While in Mass today I noticed an oddity that I'd heard many times but never really thought about: just before the congregation recites the Lord's Prayer, the priest says, "At the Savior's command and formed by divine teaching, we dare to say..."

"Why 'dare'?" I thought. "Doesn't Christianity present God as a father?"

A little research revealed this:

The priest notes what a privilege it is for us to be able to talk to God in this way: "At the Savior's command and formed by divine teaching, we dare to say …" What is it that we dare to say? "Our Father". This is precisely what Jesus calls us to do. It underscores the intimate relationship we now have with God because of Jesus' work of salvation. We share his life because he came to share ours. Through our union in Christ, God has truly become our Father.

Website for Church of St. Vincent DePaul in Singapore

I suppose the argument might be that pre-Jesus, no one would have thought to call God Father. I don't really know. But there's always been something of a thread of fear in most theisms, which seems somewhat unhealthy to say the least.

It's certainly present in the Bible, including this curiosity: "The fear of the Lord leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied; he will not be visited by harm" (Proverbs 19:23).

It seems somehow to echo what's said later in Mass, just before going to take communion: "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed." If God is indeed to be seen as a father-figure, who ever talks to their father that way? If my children said they're not worthy of being in my presence, I would wonder how I'd managed to raise them with such little self-esteem. I don't even know that you could raise children to think that way without emotionally abusing them. I understand the sense of humility, but this just seems to be a little much. I know, I know -- I'm viewing it through a human perspective. That's all any of us have, though, and it seems, honestly, a little like a cop-out. "Who are we to question the ways of God?" covers a multitude of unanswered prayers.

Day 77: First Day in Conestee in Rainbows

Sunday 31 May 2020

First Day in Conestee

We've been waiting for our favorite park to open for weeks now. It seemed to us that going for a walk in the park should be something that lends itself rather naturally to social distancing. Certainly, you have to be aware of where everyone is and perhaps not go at the pace you would normally walk, but those are small concerns that mature people can keep in mind and in action relatively easily. But the city kept the parks closed.

Today, they were open, so we went for a walk in the morning when it was likely to be less crowded. We kept our distance from everyone and behaved as model citizens.

The kids were just glad to get out and do something. Perhaps they were also glad to see other faces -- I know I was.

But I've had concerns about this opening up of South Carolina. I don't get the impression that everyone else is being as careful as we are. And the numbers prove it. Earlier this week, we had a day with 300+ new cases -- the highest we'd ever had. Then we had a couple of more days in the 200s or high 100s range, then yesterday we saw that the number jumped up again. Today, there were 312, but there was also an addendum about yesterday's count:

154 cases that should have been reported in yesterday's positive case counts were not updated from suspected to confirmed cases in our database by the time yesterday's news release was issued. An additional quality check of yesterday's positive case numbers revealed the omission of these cases in the daily reporting total. The corrected total of positive cases for yesterday (May 30) has been updated to 420. (Source)

So we've gone from having no single day with more than about 280 to having a day with over 400. Just about two weeks after restrictions were eased. Which is to say that I'm afraid people's stupidity ("This has all blown over -- back to normal") will cause a spike that will undo all we sacrificed over the last months.

In Rainbows

When Noah and the survivors emerged from the ark after God had wiped out all of humanity except them, there would have likely been some consternation: what if God decides to do this again and this time, we don't make the cut? It seems God wanted to assuage exactly those fears:

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds,  I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.” (Genesis 9.8-16)

A skeptic like me has a lot of issues with this passage. Well, there are a lot of issues about the whole story of Noah and the ark, not the least of which is God deciding to wipe out all of humanity instead of, say, coming down and teaching them how they're making bad choices, like a parent would do. Perhaps a spanking of some sort if we want to get Victorian. Then there's the question of getting all the species in the boat, the inexperience of Noah as a shipwright -- just problems all over the place.

But just these few verses offer a couple of big issues: first, why does God need reminding? "I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant" not "you will see it and remember the everlasting covenant," though I guess that's implied. But I suppose we could work out some literary way to get around that.

What we can't get around is the simple fact that text here seems to suggest that there was never a rainbow before this event: "Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds" certainly hints at this. So you see the opening: "You mean to tell me that the lingering droplets of water in the sky that act as a prism and break the sunlight into its various colors -- an act of physics -- never happened before this?" Rainbows are not mysteries: we know exactly how they form, and I would imagine that meteorological sciences have gotten to the point that they can list several conditions that need to exist before a storm that will set in action a chain of events that will end in said rainbow.

Apologists who take the Bible literally have to deal with this. How to do so? I suppose they could suggest that, yes, God altered the laws of physics at that moment. But a more common explanation is a little more baffling: it had never rained before the deluge, apologist suggest. Mists and dew and the like were enough to water the flora of the Earth.

I mentioned this to K: she raised her eyebrows. "That's the first time I ever heard of that." I suspect it's an Evangelical (i.e., American Christianity) attempt at explaining an obvious problem with the Biblical text in such a way that allows believers to continue interpreting it literally, word-for-word.

I first heard that argument when I was a kid. I want to say, "It struck me as strange even then," but I don't really recall. I remember hearing it, so it made some kind of impression on me, and it stuck in the back of my head as another example of some of the odd contortions literalists bend themselves into in order to continue interpreting the Bible literally.

I heard it again tonight. Or rather, overheard it. I wasn't involved in the conversation, just listening from the fringes. "I mean, God created the world so perfectly that they didn't even need rain -- just a mist was enough," the apologist explained.

It was one of those times that I really wanted to jump into a conversation but knew that there would be no point. Neither of us would budge from our view.

Day 52: A Fort of Sympathy

Wednesday 06 May 2020

The Fort

Work continued this evening on the fort. We needed some more bamboo canes, so we headed over to our neighbor's stand of canes and selected four after school was over. By the time we got them back on our property, it was nearly dinner (school for me went really late today), and it was raining, making it impossible to continue working.

After dinner, though...

The process has been one of evolution. We start with a design idea, discover it works, continue for a while, then have another idea. We try to incorporate it into the old idea; it sometimes works; it often doesn't. We see if a third idea will bond the two original ideas a little more firmly. And so on.

E is discovering that the men who do all the primitive building on YouTube are in fact deserving of quotes: "primitive" building, for there's nothing primitive about it except the tools they're using. I could have tried to explain that to the Boy, but I don't think it would have convinced him. Working on it himself, though, has certainly done that.

Sympathy

I went for a run this evening. It's been a while. I get in these phases that I feel certain that a fitter, healthier G is just within reach: I simply have to get a regular exercise routine going and monitor what I snack on (or eliminate it altogether). It's easy -- nothing at all to it. And then I put the Boy to bed and find that I almost fell asleep with him and reason, "I'm already almost asleep. It would be a shame to waste it." Or I just decided a glass of wine and some chess online is a better way to spend my time. Or occasionally (this is a cycle I've been going through for about 18 months now), I get this routine going and then some injury or previous pain flares up and I have to stop running for a week or more, and my motivation is back to where it usually is, which is to say near zero.

So I went out for a first run in probably two weeks, cueing up my running soundtrack on Spotify. The first song shuffled out: Beck's "Devil's Haircut." I wasn't in the mood for it, so I swiped on to the next song: the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil." (One run, Spotify played "Sympathy for the Devil" followed by Van Halen's "Running with the Devil," and concluding with "Devil's Haircut." A more superstitious person would read something into that.) The second verse began, and it got me thinking:

And I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

It reminded me of the scene in Mel Gibson's take on the passion story. During Jesus's scourging, a very androgynous Satan crying a child who looks surprisingly old walks through the crowd, looking as if he's somehow winning a victory by having Jesus crucified.

In both these examples, and in general Christian thought, Satan is presented as having had a part in influencing humans to kill Jesus. But why in the world would he do that if Christian claims that Jesus was foretold for millennia? Christian theology teaches that through the crucifixion, Jesus somehow defeated Satan and ultimately saved our souls, and that this plan was in place from the Fall in Eden.

That is kind of confusing as well: if God is omnipotent, he knew that was coming, and so it was part of the plan to begin with. But if it was part of the plan to begin with, it seems like a bad plan, as if the failure implicit in the Fall is integral to the whole scheme. Which means we were made to fail. Odd plan, that.

At any rate, I was wondering why Satan is always shown to be crafty and yet an idiot at the same time. Evangelical views make Satan even more of an idiot: he's going to try to overthrow God in Armageddon, yet he's doomed to fail. All Evangelicals know this. It's preached every Sunday. And yet somehow Satan, a being who is supposedly so much more powerful than humans in every way imaginable, doesn't know about this.

More questions about the devil: why would he torture people in hell? Wouldn't he want to reward them for choosing him over God? Wouldn't he make it a paradise to rival Christian views of heaven just to thumb his nose at God? He's literally an instrument of God's punishment in the Christian view, yet he has free will and hates God. Why in the world would he be God's pawn like that? That's the whole reason he got tossed out of heaven in the Christian story.

And that's another thing: how did this war in heaven happen? How do spirits battle? Wars have to do with one thing: inflicting more death and carnage on your enemy than he can on you. How in the world would immortal spirits fight then? It just doesn't make any sense. Maybe that's why we should have sympathy for the devil: in the grand scheme of things, he's just a schmuck doing God's dirty work in punishing souls who reject God. What a crappy job.

So I was jogging along, all these thoughts bouncing about in my head, and it struck me that perhaps that's as good an argument as any against going for a run: I roll about in silly, useless speculation...