God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible (27 page)
Read God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible Online
Authors: CJ Werleman
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Your rod and your staff they comfort me.
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You prepare a table for before me in the presence of my enemies.
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You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
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Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,
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And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Some other better known Psalms include the following:
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Have mercy on me, O God,
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According to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.
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Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
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For I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me.
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Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.
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Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
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Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.
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Cleanse me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
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Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out my iniquity.
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Create in me a pure heart, O God and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
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Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
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Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will turn back to you. Save me from your bloodguilt, O God, the God who saves me and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise.
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You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would I bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
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In your good pleasure make Zion prosper; build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then there will be righteous sacrifices, whole burnt offerings to delight you; then bulls will be offered on your altar.”
What a terrible and psychologically damaging notion to convince children, and even well-functioning adults, that we are born in sin. Even as a fetus, we are sinful and thus we must throw ourselves at the feet of an entity to repent for sins we committed in uteri.
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By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.
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There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
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How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? If I forget you O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill.
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May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, If I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.
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Remember O Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell.
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Tear it down’, they cried, ‘Tear it down to its foundations!’
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O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us – he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”
That last paragraph sure is a doozy. The Israelites whilst in exile in Babylon, are hoping that God will repeat his Egypt baby killing performance, and that last sentence in particular is as bloodthirsty as any piece of literature I have ever read.
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The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible.”
George Burns
The book of Proverbs is referred to as wisdom literature. The book does not tell a story but is rather a collection of one to two paragraph quotable quotes for one seeking a path of God-endorsed righteousness. The authorship of the book is not for certain, but the book itself claims to be the writings of Solomon, Agur the Oracle and Lemuel the Oracle.
In a way the book reads like a letter, written in bullet point form, from a dad to his son on the ways to live his life. Literally, hundreds of one sentence proverbs for attaining wisdom, with recurring themes that include: fearing God; shunning evil; rewards for living a righteous life; the folly of foolishness; the curse and temptation of wickedness; the fruits of laziness; advice for dealing with a nagging wife; the sin of beer and wine; the healing qualities of beer and wine; and recommendations for disciplining your slaves.
Interestingly, the feminine gender of our species is given a pleasant token gesture, in that ‘wisdom’ is spoken of as a woman. Scholars cite the reason for this is that the Hebrew (chokmah) and Greek word (sophia) are of feminine origins. In the first of the thirty-one chapters this is evident:
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Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises at the head of the noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech.” (Proverbs 1:20-21 NIV)
To be completely fair, there are some brilliant pieces of writing in this book and quotations that truly can be used as guidance for living a good life. Some of the better ones include:
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Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold.” (Proverbs 3:13-14 NIV)
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The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out.” (Proverbs 10:9 NIV)
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When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.” (Proverbs 11:2 NIV)
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He who seeks good finds goodwill, but evil comes to him who searches for it.” (Proverbs 11:27 NIV)
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A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights in airing his own opinions.” (Proverbs 18:2 NIV)
But with my dark hair now showing speckles of silver as a symptom the ageing process and an inheritance from my mother, I am particularly fond of this passage:
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Grey hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life.” (Proverbs 16:31)
The grace that women are afforded in Proverbs does not last long, however, as a return to the permeating theme that women are evil temptresses with evil intent to lure men into wicked ways is narrated from the fifth chapter. Offering this warning to all red-blooded males:
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For the lips of an adulteress drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as gall, sharp as a doubled edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave. She gives no thought to the way of life; her paths are crooked, but she knows it not.” (Proverbs 5:3-6 NIV)
In chapter seven, a passage is told of a young righteous man lured into the wanting loins of a married lady, with the message being that women are so evil that even the taken ones will try to budge you off the road to righteousness:
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With persuasive words she led him astray; she seduced him with her smooth talk. All at once he followed her like an ox going to slaughter, like a deer stepping into a noose, till an arrow pierces his liver like a bird darting into a snare, little knowing it will cost him his life.” (Proverbs 7:22-23 NIV)
Some of the stranger or at least somewhat humorous proverbs include:
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It is better to live in the desert than with a quarrelsome and ill-tempered wife.” (Proverbs 21:19 NIV)
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Wine is a mocker and beer a brawler; whoever is led astray by them is not wise.” (Proverbs 20:1 NIV)
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Heaven won’t take me, and Hell is afraid I will take over.”
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A first glance of this book, and it reads like a man wallowing in self-pity, as evident by the author’s opening paragraph:
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Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” (Ecclesiastes 1:2 NIV)
The book claims to be the work of Solomon, but most scholars are of consensus that the writer be a descendent of Solomon, with the authorship guessed to be approximately 250 BC.
On this issue of authorship, the New Bible Dictionary writes the following:
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Although the writer says that he was king over Israel (1:12) and speaks as though he were Solomon, he nowhere says that he is Solomon. The style of the Heb. is later than Solomon’s time.”
There are two significant messages this book tries to convey, one being that despite all earthly pleasures available to man
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man will only find true pleasure and happiness in worship of God. The second concerns death and mortality, with the author going so far as to say that the dead are dead and that there is no afterlife or resurrection. Thus, the ultimate message is quite a sobering one for believers of Judaism or Christianity, that being that a meaningless life is followed by nothing but an eternity spent in the dirt (grave).
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A live dog is better off than a dead lion! For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward and even the memory of them is forgotten. Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 9:5-6 NIV)
If you were thinking that the Old Testament was a path to Heaven, well you can readjust that mindset because Ecclesiastes makes it undisputedly clear that a lifetime of worship will reward us with absolutely nothing in the afterlife. Dead is dead! Final.
The author tries to persuade us that the only pleasure worth pursuing is the pleasure derived from worshipping God and that the following pursuits will provide no pleasure at all:
Wisdom: “For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.” (Ecclesiastes 1:18 NIV)
Pleasures: “I bought male and female slaves. I acquired men and women singers and a harem as well – the delights of the heart of man.” (Ecclesiastes 2:7-8 NIV)
Work: “I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me.” (Ecclesiastes 2:18 NIV)
Wealth: “Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless.” (Ecclesiastes 5:10 NIV)