Atheism and Fellowship

 “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs” - Steve Martin

My grandfather had a number of jobs in his lifetime.  He was a Methodist missionary, an English teacher at a Christian boys’ school in Japan, a professor of religion, founding director of the World Council of Churches World Literacy Program (“Lit-Lit”), president of the Pacific School of Religion and author of several books.  His best-known book “This Revolutionary Faith”, was written in 1956.  Writing a few years after Maslow developed his hierarchy of human needs, in this book Grandpa laid out a similar framework for missionary work.  According to my grandfather, people need food, shelter, health, education, and fellowship, and all of these needs come before religion.  A missionary must work to satisfy these primary needs before proselytizing for a particular faith.  Of course, by working to fulfill human needs and living an exemplary life, the missionary is building a foundation so that religious faith will be well regarded.  When religion is finally introduced to a group of people who have found fellowship together, it is much easier to find collective acceptance of the new faith.

Atheism cannot be a binding philosophy in the same way as religion.  It has been said that atheism is a worldview in the same way that not skiing is a hobby.  

Atheism isn’t a movement.  Atheism has no meetings, no music, no collective recitations, no study groups and no buildings.  Atheism has no particular associations or collective goals.  There is no institution that draws atheists together and provides the critical human need of fellowship.  Atheism does not and cannot provide the same social experiences that religion provides so well.  Atheism also does not provide hope for a better life or comfort in times of loss or death.  

Atheists experience social stigma and rejection, something I will explore further in a future post.  In an era of increasing acceptance of human differences, including a wider range of religious beliefs, sexual orientation and gender identification, atheism remains one of the last issues of personal identification to reach social acceptance.  Atheists are still in the closet.  I do not dare to reveal my atheism on Facebook among my religious childhood friends and extended family.  In part, this is because religious people consider any discussion of atheism to be an attack on their beliefs.  

“"I'm atheist. I know that when you die, there's no heaven, so that really bums me out.  I wish I could be Christian and say I'm going to heaven but I know I'm not.  It sucks to know the truth”
- Bree Olson, former pornographic movie actress

Why, then, would someone choose to be an atheist, rather than accept the happiness that comes from church fellowship, the joy in the music, and social support?  It is because religion has a single, fatal flaw.  It isn’t true.  

For those of us who hold the value of truth among our highest lodestars in life, it is simply not possible to accept the comfort of religion.  I think that for many people, there’s a mental compromise, attending church for the friendship, ritual, fellowship, music and activities, but retaining a private core of agnosticism.  They pragmatically avoid thinking about it.  Others struggle to find a comfort zone between their beliefs and the beliefs required by the church community.  

For me, at a certain point late in my life, it became necessary to decide my own belief as documented in this blog.  Luckily for me, my spouse and children agree with me, and each came to atheism as their own belief.  Family does not replace outside fellowship and community, but at least this is not a topic for conflict.

Atheists need community and fellowship, like all humans.  We are social creatures.  For us, it is necessary to find that fellowship in other venues – book clubs, sports, cards or other games, music, etc.  We need to find fellowship in institutions other than church.  We will just not join others in reciting creeds that we know are not true.
---
Atheists Don't Have Any Songs, by Steve Martin

“Christians have their hymns and pages.
Hava Nagila's for the Jews.
Baptists have the Rock of Ages.
Atheists just sing the blues.

Romantics play Claire de Lune.
Born-Agains sing “He is risen.”
But no one ever wrote a tune
For godless existentialism.

For Atheists,
There's no good news.
They'll never sing
A song of faith.
...
Atheists
Atheists
Atheists
Don't have no songs!” 

from “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs”, by Steve Martin
--
Image credit: Runner1928 - Own work, in Wikimedia,
A Lutheran Divine Service in the United States, cropped.

Is Injustice in the Bible a Reason to Disbelieve?

The preceding five posts of this blog concern the Judeo-Christian Bible.  Perhaps that is too much, given the global existence of other religious and spiritual traditions.  The time I’ve spent on these posts reflects my own background as a Christian and the importance of the Bible in American culture.  The Bible itself is often cited by Christians as the ultimate authority on questions of religion, behavior and government without noticing the circular reasoning.  I concentrated on this topic, because, if the Bible is shown to be without moral or divine authority, then the religious conclusions drawn from Bible study are also void.

My posts on the Bible discussed various aspects of Biblical injustice: genocide; tribalism; divine extortion and intimidation; misogyny and sexism.  Indeed, these topics have barely scratched the surface of divinely administered injustice in the Bible.  There is the slaughter of innocent Egyptian children (Exodus), the slaughter of innocents in Sodom & Gomorrah and Noah’s Flood (Genesis), the disproportionate punishment of Lot’s wife, and disproportionate punishment of those condemned to eternal suffering in Hell (Matthew, Mark, Thessalonians, and Revelations).  The book of Job anticipates the plot of the movie “Trading Places”, where God and Satan have a wager about the consequences of ruining Job’s life.  The consequences of the wager include collateral damage: the death of Job’s children, servants and livestock.  Is there any regard for the lives of the innocents when God is punishing opponents or playing a game with Satan?  

Saint Paul writes in 2nd Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”  How can we say that the Bible is divinely inspired if it contains a single example of such injustice?  Indeed, the injustice is ubiquitous, spread throughout the Old and New Testaments, though, to be fair, the New Testament is generally less objectionable than the Old Testament.  To make sense of the Bible in terms of justice, we are forced to cherry-pick the best passages: justice for the down-trodden (Beatitudes, Matthew 5:3-12, Luke 6:20-22), love, (1st Corinthians 13), balance in life, (Ecclesiastes 3), and caring for the least of Jesus brothers (Matthew 25: 35-40).  But nearby or adjacent to these verses, we find some deep injustices.  If we hold the value of justice, we have to reject a divine origin for the Biblical texts.  The bad parts are flawed human injustice and the good parts are human wisdom.

You may have noticed that I did not list Psalm 23 or similar texts in my short list of “good verses”.  If you google “favorite bible verses”, you will find many, many verses promising God’s protection and comfort.  If these are comforting to people, why do I not consider them good verses?  It is because they aren’t true.  An earlier post on this site is called “Regarding the Power of Prayer, or Did the People on the Titanic Forget to Pray?”  Simply looking at the lives and deaths of other humans around us, it’s clear that there is no protection by God in this world.  Thus, the promises of God’s protection in the Bible are simply untrue, offering false complacency about the hazards of life.  

The Bible contains its own refutation as divinely inspired guidance for life.

Previous Posts on the Bible and Prayer
Sexism in the New Testament
https://sensibledisbelief.blogspot.com/2023/08/sexism-in-new-testament.html

Misogyny in the Old Testament; Deuteronomy 20 - 22, Numbers 5
https://sensibledisbelief.blogspot.com/2017/11/old-testament-rarely-heard-bible-verses.html

Tribalism in The Old Testament; Deuteronomy 7, 20, 21
https://sensibledisbelief.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-old-testament-rarely-heard-bible.html

The Protection Racket in the Old Testament; Leviticus 26
https://sensibledisbelief.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-old-testament-rarely-heard-bible.html

Religious Genocide in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 13
https://sensibledisbelief.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-old-testament-rarely-heard-bible_29.html

Regarding the Power of Prayer
https://sensibledisbelief.blogspot.com/2016/07/regarding-power-of-prayer-or-did-people.html

 

Sexism in the New Testament: Saint Paul and Revelations

In my earlier post on misogyny in the Old Testament, I focused on a few particularly egregious, specific examples in scripture.  In this post, I want to highlight a few examples of sexism in the more enlightened New Testament.  

We should ask, what is sexism, and why is systematic sexism a reason to refute Christianity?  A simplified definition of sexism is a belief in the superiority of one gender; gender-based discrimination, and attitudes based on gender stereotypical roles.  All three are explicitly present throughout the New Testament.  The New Testament set the standard and justified two millennia of sexism in the Christian church and Christian societies.  

Funerary Portrait of Roman-Egyptian Woman, circa 1st Century CE

Portraits of women in this post are taken from Fayum funerary portraits of Roman Egypt, painted in the 1st century to the 4th century CE.  These women were contemporaries of Saint Paul.

We must again ask whether God is just and fair.  For Christianity, the Bible is the inspired word of God.  When the Bible says that women are subordinate to men, have limited roles, and conveys gender-stereotypical attitudes, is that fair?  Of course not.  We have to conclude that either God is unfair, or the Bible is a human construct, without divine origin or authority.

I’ll mention just a few examples.  The first is that Christ’s named disciples are all men, setting the standard for two millennia of Catholic priesthood.  It’s true that a handful of women are mentioned among Christ’s followers but no women are included in the list of twelve disciples given in Matthew, Mark or Luke.  In the stories of the gospel, these women are relegated to supporting roles, a textbook measure of sexism.

  The Last Supper.  No women are among the twelve apostles of the gospels.

Second, about one-half of the New Testament is attributed to Saint Paul.  Up to half of those writings may  have been written or edited by others, writing in Paul’s voice.  If the Bible is the inspired word of God, it really doesn’t matter whether St. Paul or others were the authors.  We simply need to decide whether this entire document is sacred, reasonable, just and fair, or simply an old piece of human writing.

Throughout the chapters attributed to Saint Paul, there is sexist guidance about the role of women and the behavior of women.  Saint Paul advises that women should remain silent in church, must be in submission to men, must never be in authority over a man, dress modestly and without ornamentation, receive instruction submissively, be under the control of their husbands, and subject themselves to their husbands as if their husbands were God.  (1 Corinthians 14:33–35, 1 Timothy 2: 9-15, Titus 2:3-5, Ephesians 5:22–24.)  The sexism is not a single anomaly, it is woven into the fabric of the New Testament.

Funerary Portraits of Roman-Egyptian Women, circa First Century, CE.
These women are contemporaries of St. Paul.

The third example comes from the Book of Revelations, 2:18-23, concerning a woman, Jezebel, who was preaching at the church in Thyatira, in modern-day Turkey.  She is accused of sexual immorality and eating food offered to idols, but her principal sin seems to be preaching as a woman.  Revelations 2:22 follows with the rapey threat that Jesus would “throw her on a bed” where she and others would suffer terribly.  As an aside in this narrative, Jesus says that he will kill all of her followers.  What is this passage doing in the inspired Word of God?  What does it mean that women should be shamed and threatened with sexual violence for presuming to preach as a messenger of God?  When there is a difference of sexual morality, why is Jezebel considered wrong, and the author of Revelations right?  Why is Jezebel to be subject to violent punishment for her error, when men are chided with mere words?  Is it fair or just?  Clearly, it is not.

 
John Byam Liston Shaw’s “Jezebel” from 1896.

The name Jezebel in Revelations may be a literary allusion to Queen Jezebel of the Old Testament Book of Kings.  The first Jezebel was a Phoenician princess related to the royalty of Carthage.  Married to Ahab, King of Israel, she instituted the worship of the goddess Ashera and the god Baal, and repressed the prophets of Yahweh.  She was killed in the ensuing revolt.  It is important to note that there is nothing to suggest immorality on her part, but as part of the patriarchal slander of any female opponent (extending to the present day) the name Jezebel became synonymous with sexual licentiousness and debauchery.  Images on current Christian websites seem to show that Jezebel of Thyatira has been rehabilitated. It seems complicated.

Art images of Jezebel of Thyartira, from present-day Christian websites.

There are more examples of sexism in the New Testament, including Jesus shaming the Samaritan woman at the well for having several husbands, and in Revelations the characterization of cities as the Whore of Babylon.  Much of the sexism is rooted in a patriarchal code or sexuality granting license to men and penalties to women.  Regardless of its origin, the broad sexism of the New Testament is unjust and inconsistent with a sacred origin.  

Cited Verses
1 Corinthians 14:33–35  (Paul)
As in all the congregations of the Lord’s people. Women should remain silent in the churches, They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

1 Timothy 2: 9-15 (NASB) says:  (Paul)
Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.

Titus 2:3-5 (Paul)
younger women must love their families and be "self-controlled, chaste, good homemakers, under the control of their husbands.”

Ephesians 5:22–24
Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior.   Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.

Revelation 2:18-23
The Message to Thyatira
18 “To the angel of the church in Thyatira write:
This is the message from the Son of God, whose eyes blaze like fire, whose feet shine like polished brass. 19 I know what you do. I know your love, your faithfulness, your service, and your patience. I know that you are doing more now than you did at first. 20 But this is what I have against you: you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a messenger of God. By her teaching she misleads my servants into practicing sexual immorality and eating food that has been offered to idols. 21 I have given her time to repent of her sins, but she does not want to turn from her immorality. 22 And so I will throw her on a bed where she and those who committed adultery with her will suffer terribly. I will do this now unless they repent of the wicked things they did with her. 23 I will also kill her followers, and then all the churches will know that I am the one who knows everyone's thoughts and wishes. I will repay each of you according to what you have done.

Image credits:
Images of first-century women are from Fayum Portraits, funerary portraits of mummified women in Roman Egypt, circa first century AD.

John Byam Liston Shaw’s “Jezebel” from 1896.

Charcoal Jezebel image art, K. Kostecka, http://www.burningpointministries.com/jezebel
Jezebel image art, from: https://robinrevispyke.com/2017/03/15/do-you-have-a-jezebel-spirit-2/

Misogyny in the Old Testament; Deuteronomy 20 - 22, Numbers 5

Sexism

The Old Testament is systematically sexist in a way that is inconsistent with my belief in fairness.  There are too many cases to cite; you can randomly open the Book to any page to find examples.  Deuteronomy, as well as other books, contains various laws pertaining to sexual purity and rape.  Of course, the laws regarding sexual purity apply only to women, and not to men.  The following examples are randomly taken, literally by browsing an open Bible.  These examples are better described as misogyny than sexism, for the specific, disproportionate cruelty to women dictated by the Bible.

Here we return to the key questions of this blog.  Does the Bible represent the word of God?  Is misogyny fair, just and reasonable?  If the word of God is not fair, just and reasonable, why should we believe in God?

Judah and Tamar, by Arent de Gelder, 1661

Sexual Purity of Women

Deuteronomy 22 considers the situation where a young man no longer wants a woman he has married, and claims that she was not a virgin at the time of the wedding:

20 “But if the charge is true and there is no proof that she was a virgin, 21 then they are to take her out to the entrance of her father's house, where the men of her city are to stone her to death. She has done a shameful thing among our people by having intercourse before she was married, while she was still living in her father's house. In this way you will get rid of this evil.

Of course, there is no corresponding proscription on behavior or punishment for men. 

 

Rape and Ownership of Women

There are also laws concerning rape in Deuteronomy 22.  The penalties for rape vary according to the status of a woman.  If a woman is engaged to another man, the penalty is much more severe – death.  Presumably, the harsher penalty is not because the woman was violated, but rather because her fiancé was violated by the attack.  If a woman who is not engaged is raped, the penalty is fifty pieces of silver, to be paid to the father of the woman.  The woman is given to her rapist to be his wife.

25 Suppose a man out in the countryside rapes a young woman who is engaged to someone else. Then only the man is to be put to death; 26 nothing is to be done to the woman, because she has not committed a sin worthy of death.…27 The man raped the engaged woman in the countryside, and although she cried for help, there was no one to help her. 

28 Suppose a man is caught raping a young woman who is not engaged. 29 He is to pay her father the bride price of fifty pieces of silver, and she is to become his wife, because he forced her to have intercourse with him. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

The sense of these passages is that a woman is chattel, property with no more rights than a slave or an animal.  If she is violated by rape, the only concern of the Bible is how her owner – her father, her fiancé or husband – has suffered by the damage to his possession.

Women Captives by War

[Deuteronomy 20]

10 “When you go to attack a city, first give its people a chance to surrender. 11 If they open the gates and surrender, they are all to become your slaves and do forced labor for you. 12 But if the people of that city will not surrender, but choose to fight, surround it with your army. 13 Then, when the Lord your God lets you capture the city, kill every man in it. 14 You may, however, take for yourselves the women, the children, the livestock, and everything else in the city. You may use everything that belongs to your enemies. The Lord has given it to you. 15 That is how you are to deal with those cities that are far away from the land you will settle in.

The treatment of women who are captured in war is different than the treatment of men.  Men are to be enslaved, if the city submits, or killed.  Women, are to be taken, and used, like everything else that belonged to the enemy.  This underscores the idea that in biblical tradition, women are possessions of men. 

 [Deuteronomy 21]

10 “When the Lord your God gives you victory in battle and you take prisoners, 11 you may see among them a beautiful woman that you like and want to marry. 12 Take her to your home, where she will shave her head, cut her fingernails, 13 and change her clothes. She is to stay in your home and mourn for her parents for a month; after that, you may marry her. 14 Later, if you no longer want her, you are to let her go free. Since you forced her to have intercourse with you, you cannot treat her as a slave and sell her.

A woman captive may be required to marry one of her captors.  The same tradition exists today in extreme Islam, in ISIS or Boko Haram.  The woman’s rights are still minimal, but a woman granted status as a wife cannot later be treated as a slave.  If the husband no longer wants the captive wife, she is to be freed.

Ritual Poisoning of Women Suspected of Infidelity

In Numbers 5:1-30, if a husband believes his wife is unfaithful but has no proof, or has feelings of jealousy about his wife, she is to be ritually poisoned. 

Numbers 5: 12 - 28

It may happen that a man becomes suspicious that his wife is unfaithful to him and has defiled herself by having intercourse with another man. But the husband may not be certain, for his wife may have kept it secret—there was no witness, and she was not caught in the act. Or it may happen that a husband becomes suspicious of his wife, even though she has not been unfaithful. 15 In either case the man shall take his wife to the priest. He shall also take the required offering of two pounds of barley flour, but he shall not pour any olive oil on it or put any incense on it, because it is an offering from a suspicious husband, made to bring the truth to light.

16 The priest shall bring the woman forward and have her stand in front of the altar. 17 He shall pour some holy water into a clay bowl and take some of the earth that is on the floor of the Tent of the Lord's presence and put it in the water to make it bitter. 18 Then he shall loosen the woman's hair and put the offering of flour in her hands. In his hands the priest shall hold the bowl containing the bitter water that brings a curse. 19 Then the priest shall make the woman agree to this oath spoken by the priest: “If you have not committed adultery, you will not be harmed by the curse that this water brings. 20 But if you have committed adultery, 21 may the Lord make your name a curse among your people. May he cause your genital organs to shrink and your stomach to swell up. 22 May this water enter your stomach and cause it to swell up and your genital organs to shrink.”

The woman shall respond, “I agree; may the Lord do so.”

23 Then the priest shall write this curse down and wash the writing off into the bowl of bitter water. 24 Before he makes the woman drink the water, which may then cause her bitter pain, 25 the priest shall take the offering of flour out of the woman's hands, hold it out in dedication to the Lord, and present it on the altar. 26 Then he shall take a handful of it as a token offering and burn it on the altar. Finally, he shall make the woman drink the water. 27 If she has committed adultery, the water will cause bitter pain; her stomach will swell up and her genital organs will shrink. Her name will become a curse among her people. 28 But if she is innocent, she will not be harmed and will be able to bear children.

29-30 This is the law in cases where a man is jealous and becomes suspicious that his wife has committed adultery. The woman shall be made to stand in front of the altar, and the priest shall perform this ritual. 31 The husband shall be free of guilt, but the woman, if guilty, must suffer the consequences.

The poison will cause great suffering, and leave her unable to bear children.  If she has been faithful, God will protect her and she will be unaffected by the poison.   Would any reader volunteer for this test, deliberately taking poison, and trusting to God’s timely intervention?  

Of course, there is no parallel trial by poison for men suspected of infidelity by their wives.  The entire picture of sexual roles in the Old Testament is one of male privilege, and of women as powerless chattel, subject to cruel treatment for the mere suspicion of illicit sexual behavior.

These passages represent unmitigated misogyny.  If this is the word of God, we should ask ourselves if God is real.

Tribalism in The Old Testament; Deuteronomy 7, 20

Tribalism

The God of the Bible is very tribal.  The God of the Old Testament is concerned with the well-being of only the faithful among the Jewish people.  In Deuteronomy, other people and cultures are to be swept away with little mercy.  Women prisoners of war are to be forced into marriage with their captors; cities are to be razed, children to be slaughtered – all for the greater glory of God.

Deuteronomy 7 describes the conquests to come.

“The Lord your God will bring you into the land that you are going to occupy, and he will drive many nations out of it. As you advance, he will drive out seven nations larger and more powerful than you: the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 2 When the Lord your God places these people in your power and you defeat them, you must put them all to death.

Deuteronomy 20 continues.

10 “When you go to attack a city, first give its people a chance to surrender. 11 If they open the gates and surrender, they are all to become your slaves and do forced labor for you. 12 But if the people of that city will not surrender, but choose to fight, surround it with your army. 13 Then, when the Lord your God lets you capture the city, kill every man in it. 14 You may, however, take for yourselves the women, the children, the livestock, and everything else in the city. You may use everything that belongs to your enemies. The Lord has given it to you. 15 That is how you are to deal with those cities that are far away from the land you will settle in.

16 “But when you capture cities in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, kill everyone. 17 Completely destroy all the people: the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord ordered you to do.  18 Kill them, so that they will not make you sin against the Lord by teaching you to do all the disgusting things that they do in the worship of their gods.

Many other passages in the Old Testament deal with war against neighboring tribes, and in particular, wars of conquest and genocide “in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”  There are too many passages to include in a blog post.  But the essence of the passages is that the other people have no right to live, no right to their lands and the cities they have built, no right to live peacefully in their own homes.  Does the behavior of the Old Testament God pass the test of reason and justice?

The words of Deuteronomy are disturbingly close to the Muslim fundamentalist ideas and practices of the Islamic State.  The ethic expressed in the bible calls on other cultures to submit to the Israelites and the Jewish God or be crushed.  The script is the same, whether we are considering the Israelites, Alexander the Great, the Romans or the Mongol hordes.  The God of the Old Testament operates on the same level – submit or die.

The Protection Racket in the Old Testament; Leviticus 26

The Protection Racket

Leviticus 26 1:13 promises good treatment to those who are faithful to God, while Leviticus 14:46 threatens punishment to those who are not faithful to God.  The essence of the passage is repeated in Deuteronomy 28.  

Leviticus 26

14 The Lord said, “If you will not obey my commands, you will be punished.

I will bring disaster on you—incurable diseases and fevers that will make you blind and cause your life to waste away. You will plant your crops, but it will do you no good, because your enemies will conquer you and eat what you have grown.

…

18 “If even after all of this you still do not obey me, I will increase your punishment seven times.

...

21 “If you still continue to resist me and refuse to obey me, I will again increase your punishment seven times. 22 I will send dangerous animals among you, and they will kill your children, destroy your livestock, and leave so few of you that your roads will be deserted.

23 “If after all of this punishment you still do not listen to me, but continue to defy me, 24 then I will turn on you and punish you seven times harder than before. 25 I will bring war on you to punish you for breaking our covenant, and if you gather in your cities for safety, I will send incurable diseases among you, and you will be forced to surrender to your enemies.

…

27 “If after all of this you still continue to defy me and refuse to obey me, 28 then in my anger I will turn on you and again make your punishment seven times worse than before. 29 Your hunger will be so great that you will eat your own children. 30 I will destroy your places of worship on the hills, tear down your incense altars, and throw your dead bodies on your fallen idols. In utter disgust 31 I will turn your cities into ruins, destroy your places of worship, and refuse to accept your sacrifices. 32 I will destroy your land so completely that the enemies who occupy it will be shocked at the destruction. 33 I will bring war on you and scatter you in foreign lands. Your land will be deserted, and your cities left in ruins.  [Good News Translation.]

 ---------

For those who are disobedient to God, in addition to other punishments, God will force the unfaithful to eat their children, due to starvation.  Really?  Is there no consideration for the innocence of children in God’s judgment?  Is this the same God of Love who is presented at church youth camp?  In these passages, God seems to have the character of a mafia “protection” boss, rather than the supreme being of love and ultimate goodness.  Extortion as a process for gaining love and devotion doesn’t seem very divine to me.

Martin Luther, founder of the Reformation, wrote: "If grace depends on our cooperation, then it is no longer grace" (1525. On Bondage of the Will).  And if the love of God depends on intimidation, it isn't love.

Religious Genocide in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 13 & 20, and Numbers 31, 15-17

This post will be the first of several posts examining troubling passages of scripture in the Old Testament.  These verses are rarely read during Sunday Scripture lessons.

Standard Christianity

The Bible

The Bible is an amazing document.  It is amazing for its antiquity, for its content, and that it remains a living keystone of life for many of the people in the world.

However, the inconsistencies and absurdities of the Bible (including multiple creation stories, inconsistencies between the Gospels, anachronisms or general nonsense such as the story of Jonah and the whale) clearly preclude the Bible from being the literal and truthful word of God.  The Old Testament contains any number of fantastical accounts: human lifespans on hundreds of years, the sun stopping in the sky for three days during the battle of Jericho, the plagues of ancient Egypt and parting of the Red Sea, Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt.  If such things are literally true and part of objective reality, why do they not happen today, when the fantastic occurrence can be documented and objectively verified?  Such things do not occur in modern times, and it is unreasonable to think that miracles could only occur in the past.  So, we are left to acknowledge the human authorship of the Bible, and derivation from various pre-biblical texts and traditions. 

But, notwithstanding the human authorship of the Bible and the inclusion of various myths, to what degree should we accept the divinity of the Bible, and its authority over Christian life?  Does the Bible consistently display a standard of morality that should command our obedience and devotion?

Old Testament

The portrait that the Bible gives of God is hardly flattering.  The God of the Old Testament is brutal and fickle, vengeful and prone to human jealousy.  For the moment, I will focus on the book of Deuteronomy. 

Religious Genocide

Consider the horror of the commandments in Deuteronomy 13, for example, which is not often the topic of Sunday’s Scripture reading. 

Deuteronomy 13: Verses 6 – 10: 

“Even your brother or your son or your daughter or the wife you love or your closest friend may secretly encourage you to worship other gods, gods that you and your ancestors have never worshipped.   One of them may encourage you to worship the gods of the people who live near you or the gods of those who live far away.  But do not let him persuade you; do not even listen to him.  Show him no mercy or pity, and do not protect him.  Kill him!  Be the first to stone him, and then let everyone else stone him too.  Stone him to death!”

And continuing, Deuteronomy 13: Verses 12 – 16: 

“When you are living in the towns that the Lord your God gives you, you may hear that some worthless men of your nation have misled the people of their town to worship gods that you have never worshiped before.  If you hear such a rumor, investigate it thoroughly; and if it is true that this evil thing did happen, then kill all the people in that town and all their livestock too.  Destroy that town completely.  Bring together the possessions of the people who live there and pile them up in the town square.  Then burn the town and everything in it as an offering to the Lord your God".     

[Good News Translation.]

So we are given a commandment of religious genocide.  By what standard of ethics can these verses be considered “good”?

Deuteronomy 13 is particularly ironic in the context of Christian fundamentalists.  For these Christians, who believe in the literal truth of the Bible as the word of God, must honor this passage; but for the ancient Hebrew who first recorded this passage, these Christians worshiping Jesus Christ would surely be among those deserving of death.  I wonder how fundamentalists interpret and rationalize that passage.

 

Religious genocide is a repeated theme through the Old Testament, an ever-present directive in the continuous warfare of the Israelites against their neighbors.  The command is repeated in Deuteronomy 20, as I will discuss in a post on tribalism in the Bible.  These verses in Numbers give a clearer look at the practice of genocide.  

 Numbers 31:Verses 15 - 18

"15 Moses said to them, “Have you allowed all the women to live? 16 These women here, on Balaam’s advice, made the Israelites act treacherously against the Lord in the affair of Peor, so that the plague came among the congregation of the Lord. 17 Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by sleeping with him. 18 But all the young girls who have not known a man by sleeping with him, keep alive for yourselves." 

 

The reason for the execution of women who are not virgins may be understood in verse 16; it is possible that the rape of captive women introduced sexually transmitted disease to the Israelites.  Concern for plague may have also influenced the ritual treatment of plunder.  In Numbers 31, plunder taken in the course of genocidal warfare must be purified by fire or water before use by Israelites.

 

 The specifics of the genocidal commandments differ from book to book.  Deuteronomy 20 distinguishes between warfare in lands far away and warfare against neighboring tribes.

 

Deuteronomy 20: Verses 13 - 15
"13 and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword. 14 You may, however, take as your plunder the women, the children, livestock, and everything else in the town, all its spoil. You may enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you. 15 Thus you shall treat all the towns that are very far from you, which are not towns of these nations here."

 

But towns and lands near the Israelite's lands are given harsher treatment in the following verses, where the commandment for genocide is complete.
Deuteronomy 20: Verses 16 - 17

"16 But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. 17 Indeed, you shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded."

[New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition]

 

To me, as a 21st-century American liberal, these genocidal commandments are horrific.  I am baffled by my contemporaries and fellow-countrymen who continue to look to the Bible for guidance in life.  Our recently elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, says that the Bible is his worldview.  

"I am a Bible-believing Christian.  Someone asked me today in the media, they said, 'It's curious, people are curious: What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?' I said, 'Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That's my worldview.'"

I don't know whether to be appalled that Johnson doesn't understand the Bible, or worried that he does.

That concludes today's Bible study of rarely-heard Bible verses.

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Originally published on 10/25/2017, updated on 10/31/2023
https://www.businessinsider.com/mike-johnson-earn-his-views-by-reading-the-bible-2023-10