God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible (10 page)
Read God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible Online
Authors: CJ Werleman
God even allows the morally unthinkable act of permitting a man to sell his own daughter into slavery, whether for sexual or labor purposes. God says quite clearly:
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If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as manservants do. If she does not please her master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed.” (Exodus 21:7-8 NIV)
Not even in Tasmania in the 1800s was it permissible to do such a thing! And if Tasmania is more holy than heaven, then god help us all. (Play banjo music)
At the conclusion of God’s dictation of the commandments to Moses, there is the usual required ceremonial bloodbath with the slaughter of calves, lambs and bulls in honor of God’s glory. Then Moses is summoned to the mountain once more:
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Come up to me on the mountain and stay here and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commands I have written for their instruction.” (Exodus 24:12 NIV)
Moses did as asked and sat upon the mountain for forty days and forty nights, whilst God covered the mountain in cloud.
God surely kept Moses busy, if he wasn’t demanding him to scribe the Ten Commandments into stone atop a mountain, then he was demanding that he build for him a Tabernacle. Not sure what a Tabernacle is? Think of it simply as a ‘portable worshipping tent’ and thus it is often referred to as the ‘Tent of Meeting’ in the Bible. God’s instructions to Moses were:
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They shall build me a sanctuary and I will dwell among them. You must make the Tabernacle and all its furnishings following the plan that I am showing you.” (Exodus 25:8-10 NIV)
The Tabernacle comprised of a tent draped with colorful curtains of finely twisted linen and yarn. It consisted of a rectangular, perimeter fence of fabric, poles and staked cords. This rectangle was always erected when the Israelites would set up a new camp. In the center of this enclosure was a rectangular sanctuary draped with goats’ hair curtains, with the roof made from rams’ skins. Inside, it was divided into two areas, the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. Not to be confused with the Holey Moley place. These two compartments were separated by a curtain or veil. Entering the first space, one would see 3 pieces of sacred furniture: a seven-branched oil lamp stand on the left (south), a table for twelve loaves of show bread on the right (north) and straight ahead before the dividing curtain (west) was an altar for incense-burning. Beyond this curtain was the cube-shaped inner room known as the
Holy of Holies
. This sacred space contained a single article called the Ark of the Covenant, which would house the tablets of the Ten Commandments.
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The Lord would often come down and visit Moses and speak to him face to face inside the Tabernacle, as a man speaks to a friend.” (Exodus 33:11 NIV)
The concluding instructions for the Tabernacle’s construction are stated at the end of the Book of Exodus. Immediately following the words about the Tabernacle, God reminds Moses about the importance of the Jewish Sabbath:
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God told Moses to speak to the Israelites and say to them: You must still keep my Sabbaths. It is a sign between me and you for all generations, to make you realize that I, God, am making you holy. Keep the Sabbath as something sacred to you. Anyone doing work shall be cut off spiritually from his people and therefore, anyone violating it shall be put to death.” (Exodus: 31: 12-17 NIV).
But, unlike God, we have to go back to work the day after the Sabbath whilst God continues to rest and rest and rest...
At the conclusion of these laws, God promises that he will deal with Israel’s enemies. Not because they have sinned against God in any particular way, but because they have land that the Israelites desire:
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My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites and I will wipe them out.” (Exodus 23:23 NIV)
If that didn’t give the Israelites the stomach for waging war on their neighbors, then God’s next promise certainly should have:
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I will send terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run.” (Exodus 23:27 NIV)
Exodus Count: 1,031,700
The 7
th
plague hail. Wikipedia estimates the population of Egypt to be anywhere up to 5 million at the time of Exodus. If we allow for a 0.05% death rate = 25,000.
God murders every Egyptian firstborn child during the Passover. If one in 5 of the population were firstborn = 1,000,000.
God drowns the Egyptian army as they pursued the fleeing Israelites during the parting of the Red Sea = 5,000 as a crude estimate.
God helps Moses and Joshua kill the Amalekites = 1,500.
God incinerated an unknown number of Israelites that complained during their wanderings in the Desert = 200 as crude estimate.
Cumulative Count: 31,032,701
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If absolute power corrupts absolutely, where does that leave God?”
George Deacon
Leviticus is the third book of the Torah (Pentateuch).
Leviticus is where God really ratchets up the babbling rhetoric, with the first seven chapters or so, a complete mish-mash of dribble in relation to animal sacrifice. But it’s kinda humorous if read in a Colonel Gadhafi stammer.
Ultimately, this book has little meaning in today’s terms as Jews and Christians have ceased, for the most part, to slaughter animals in God’s name; which serves as a lovely anecdote as to the irrelevancy of much of what is written in the scriptures in today’s modern world.
This book is a celebration of the mundane, and really highlights that the Bible is more an ancient agriculturalists’ how to guide, rather than a book of profound revelation to enlighten the human experience. Here’s an example of how bogged down in the laborious Leviticus truly is. God commands that the Israelites must offer him not just animal sacrifice in worshipping him, but also grain offerings. His instruction for this includes:
Take a vase of oil and pour it onto fine flour that has had a stick of incense burnt on it. Then take this to Aaron’s sons, the priests. It is then to be cooked in an oven without being mixed with oil. Once cooked it is to be smeared in oil. If the grain offering is prepared on a griddle it is to be mixed with fine flour and oil, but without yeast. Because all offerings made to the Lord must be without yeast or honey.
Did you write all this down? Because I want the right incense burnt when you make my pie. Damnit!
But if you are in search of literature to make yourself feel guilty as a result of your sexual fantasies then this is the book for you. A diatribe of whom you can and can’t sleep with, and under what circumstances, is prescribed herein. This is the book that declares homosexuality an abomination. But if guys have been shagging guys since the dawn of time, bearing in mind that we were created in God’s image, wouldn’t this suggest that the practice of gay sex is consistent with the laws of nature, as evidently it is? And therefore, by reverse logic, is it not probable that God too wears ass-less chaps and a policeman’s cap? I’m just saying!
What makes this book special is that it makes the best case for demonstrating religious hypocrisy. With all the laws, some contradictory, others plainly immoral an atheist can really exploit this book of law to counter fundamentalist zealots. For example a Christian will reference Leviticus 18:22 as proof that God hates homosexuals:
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Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.”
If I were gay I would counter this assertion with, “Yeah, but Leviticus says that I may also sell my daughter into sexual slavery and that I am to put my son to death if he curses me. Your move first!” Twenty-first century Christians have, by the majority, determined that these moral laws are outdated and repugnant. The paradox, however, is they believe God is still righty-right on the gay issue. Hmm! Thus the coining of the phrase ‘cafeteria Christian’ – choose whichever laws suit you from the buffet selection of commandments.
All jokes aside, the one positive we can draw from Leviticus is that at least it is conscious of inequality, so much so that one may be forgiven for accusing this book as being the origin of Marxism: Each time it describes a sacrifice, it specifies what a rich man must do, before providing a more affordable alternative for the poor:
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If he cannot afford a lamb, he is to bring two doves or two young pigeons to the Lord.” (Leviticus 5:7 NIV)
A read of this book makes it glaringly obvious it is written by a different author to those of the preceding books of Genesis and Exodus, whom at least told their fictionalized version of events in an imaginative way full of literary vigor. Conversely, Leviticus is a horrible book to read due to its monotonous repetition in reciting the precise method for killing each kind of animal; the preparing of each kind of offering; and the rules for preparing food.
The boring tedium of the first half dozen chapters is suddenly broken, however, with a return of the all too familiar vengeance of God. Moses had ordained Aaron and his sons as priests, but just two chapters later, the sons of Aaron (Nadab and Abihu) made the unforgiving error of burning the wrong incense as an offering. Bloody evil-doers!
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...and they offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, contrary to his command. So fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them and they died before the Lord.” (Leviticus 10:1-2 NIV)
Two priests incinerated on the spot for burning the wrong smelling sticks! Wow, the ruthlessness of this guy, but boy oh boy what a clean hit. With their smouldering corpses lying in the dust, the Lord then gives Moses instructions to ‘take the bodies out the back’, in true ‘Godfather’ style.
As we move forward, Leviticus prescribes in incredibly painstaking minutiae, the dietary laws God had commanded Moses. Animals that don’t chew their cud, or don’t have hooves are forbidden as food. Sea creatures without fins and scales are out. Eagles, vultures, ravens, owls, hawks, osprey and bats are out. All insects that walk on all fours are out. Oh, but insects have six legs. Oops! All kinds of lizards are out. Basically, any creature that moves along the ground is to be detested.
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I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be Holy, because I am Holy. Do not make yourselves unclean by any creature that moves about on the ground. I am the Lord who brought you out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be Holy because I am Holy.” (Leviticus 11:44-45 NIV)
What an insecure little fella the Lord is, always having to remind everyone of his accomplishments, “Hey, psst, it was me that brought you out of Egypt and don’t you forget it.” Coincidentally, the repetitive language of God, as illustrated in the above verse, mirrors that of the Leviticus author! Hellllloooo!
We also learn from God that women are wretched and dirty for at least one week after having given birth to a son; but are so for two weeks, if delivering a daughter. There’s a fine message to all the young ladies out there, further illustrating God’s distaste for women.
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A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days. If she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean.” (Leviticus 12:2-5 NIV)
The second part of Leviticus ventures into the laws of holiness, such as those pertaining to sexual conduct and stipulations made upon bestiality, homosexuality and incest. Of the latter, it floors me that God had to take the time to stipulate every relative that cannot have sex with me, as it seems obvious just to say, “Hey, don’t fuck anyone that is family, you perverts!” But he lists a whole litany of blood and non-blood relatives off limits in Leviticus 18; The Lord said:
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Do not dishonor your father by having sexual relations with your mother.”
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Do not have sexual relations with your father’s wife.”
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Do not have sexual relations with your sister.”
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Do not have sexual relations with your son’s daughter.”