Today I heard someone who is Arab talk about how in the Quran it says that God took all the homosexuals, put them in the desert, and killed them.
I was so angry. This is supposed to be a peace-loving religion? If that's what God is like, I want NO part of him. I want no part of a God who murders people. To say God can do what he wants because he's God is a sneaky way out of it. If God kills people because they are different, because they disobey his law, then he is not a God but a devil in disguise. Murdering people because you don't agree with them or because they broke your rules is not a sign of perfection.
We get this same idea in the Book of Job. It talks about how loving God is, yet the devil asks God to make Job suffer to the breaking point, to see how long he will last. The scene where God appears out of the clouds and screams at a puss-filled, suppurating Job on his dungheap as to how he can dare to question God when Job didn't create one hair on his head is a rather brutal scene and downright evil. It's like screaming at a homeless person that he shouldn't complain about his homelessness because he didn't build roads, houses, streets, ect. No matter what you think of a person, adding insult to injury is a terrible way to treat someone. This is what God does to Job. Jesus inherits this kind of God in the New Testament. Jesus says he is a fulfillment of the law not a demolishing of it. Fulfillment, to me, means the old law is INCLUDED in the new. To say that Jesus suffered so that Job's suffering could be vindicated is after the fact. The damage was already done to Job. Why should anyone need to suffer for anyone else?
The Bible has instances where people who are different are put to death by God's wrath, but meanwhile in other chapters it talks about how merciful and just God is. In the next breath, it says, "God loves you." What hypocrisy! Actually, it is NOT hypocrisy because it was written by human beings and NOT by God. It is human nature to fear what's different, and the holy books only reflect this.
To say the purpose of Jesus was to cleanse the sins of homosexuals by loving them (a spiritual, not sexual love) is beside the point. The slaughter God committed of those who were different (i.e., who didn't conform) or rather had others commit in his name long before Jesus came along cannot be forgotten with Jesus' resurrection. His resurrection still doesn't reconcile all the atrocities the God of the Old Testament committed (either directly or vicariously through others).
If you believe the Bible is THE word of God and that every word in it is true, THEN you MUST believe that he slaughtered innocent people who were minding their own business and doing things that perhaps society didn't approve of but were harmful only to themselves (if even that), and you MUST also believe that Jesus came along and saying "All is forgiven." And if Jesus is God, it means you believe in a God who murders people he doesn't like while at the same time claims he loves them. You and your religion are a hypocrisy and you live a hypocrisy.
EVEN IF you say, "God can decide who to judge, whose life to take, and whose life to preserve," and if you back it up in scripture, then you are saying that God treats human beings as playthings he can whack around like a cat. In addition, you are saying that a Creator who took great pains to make his creation will just, without batting an eyelash, without the least bit of discomfort, wipe people out because they don't follow his law. Again, this is not a God, but a devil. If I created another being and breathed life into it, I would be greatly pained if I had to suddenly destroy it. I wouldn't destroy it. I'd simply accept the being for what it is or I would try to reform it, but I would never give up on it. If I am created in God's image, then I suspect God would do the same, otherwise I'm not created in his image.
This is why no one in his right mind can possibly believe any of the stories and morals in the Bible because they contradict each other.
Instead of Bibles and creeds, give us books of the heart and creeds of the soul (you can interpret soul any way you want).
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2 comments:
Let's look at the alternative--if a perfect God can "murder" those who break his law, then what would an imperfect God do? Given that all of us have broken his law at some point, it should surprise us that such examples of God's judgment are so rare. If it were as straightforward as getting zapped when we break a rule, we would be extinct. The fact that we are still here is more of a testament to God's perfection because God is perfect in mercy as well as justice. After all, murderers, thieves, and perverts walk the earth and prosper every day.
This is really just one prong of a two-pronged, but self-negating argument against God. The skeptic says on one hand, "How can God be loving when he judges so severely?" On the other he says, "How can God be loving if he lets so many wicked people walk the earth unpunished?" There is no way for God to win that argument if we are only limited to the physical world.
I'm not sure why your interpretation of the Book of Job is so harsh. God wasn't speaking out of anger with Job. He was angry with Job's friends because in trying to justify what God did to him, they misrepresented God. Job's character never failed and his life was restored. His suffering wasn't purposeless because he understood more on the other side of it. His suffering was vindicated in his own lifetime.
I don't know anything about this Quranic story, but the story of Sodom and Gomorrah are close enough for this case. It's a common error, particularly among conservative evangelicals to see Sodom's destruction simply as a judgment on homosexuality. Sure, the men of Sodom's peculiar form of hospitality was taking guests out into the town square for a good cornholing, but that pastime was just a symptom of a more extensive depravity. A later book in the Bible attributes Sodom's destruction to its people being arrogant, overfed, and indifferent, which describes many of our own cities today. Las Vegas should remember God's mercy every day.
In the age of Christ, God doesn't need to make such severe examples because revelation is complete. Before the Law of Moses, God overlooked many offenses, but some things merited swift judgment, as in the case of Sodom. You can say they were just "different" or "minding their own business", but that is from our own limited, imperfect perspective of justice. The people of Sodom got nothing they didn't deserve from a just God. The more remarkable thing is that so many get what they don't deserve, which is mercy and forgiveness.
Being perfect in emotional capacity, God doesn't indifferently snuff out his creations. Our sinful nature makes it far easier for us to kill with indifference and we can project that onto God. Each lost soul is a grievous loss, but God doesn't force anyone to be with him. If you don't want anything to do with him in life, why would you want anything to do with him afterwards? Death actualizes the choice you make while alive. Nobody is dragged by the hair into heaven.
God is not quick to destroy people. He'll work for decades to reform somebody. There are many examples of people who deny or defy God for years and finally come to repentance. There are also many who never do. C.S. Lewis and Josef Stalin were both atheists. Their ends turned out quite different, though.
It's hard to say what an imperfect God would do because the only dogma we have experessed in the Bible is that God is perfect and all-knowing. If he's all-knowing, then he would KNOW in advance that he would test Job, and he'd KNOW in advance that Job would remain faithful despite his suffering, so then what's the point of playing all those games with Job.
The moment you say any God is perfect, you are faced with a dilemma. When that God does something that smacks of imperfection, you scream, "There are holes in the God theory."
The Bible and any other holy book is a great work of literature filled with allegories, fables, and human behavior, albeit primitive and at times despicable behavior, but behavior none the less. Psychologists would have a field day with holy books.
As such, holy books were written by and for MEN (and by extension women, although when many of the books were written, women were on a par with slaves), often to establish a basis of morality (however harsh), and as such holy books will have contradictions, anachronisms, and bizarre human behaviors.
Additionally, such books should be read metaphorically and symbolically, interpreted in the light of and tempered with the veil of modern thought (because it's difficult to imagine ourselves living like 1500BC Israelites).
If you were a hunter gatherer, nomadic people like the early Hebrews, you needed to have a law and religion which reflected your environment and the geography in which you found yourself. Thus, religion and politics were one and the same and served the simpleton purpose of keeping people's animal desires and tendencies at bay.
To say, for example, that you believe in the bodily, physical resurrection of Jesus means you are a good Christian, because you can't call yourself a Christian unless you believe in the bodily resurrection of a savior nor can you call yourself Christian if you don't believe in the Trinity, at least as it was laid down by the early church.
However, I find it FAR more meaningful to interpret the resurrection more as a spiritual, soulful resurrection in which the old self, the old desires, the old behaviors are shed and a new life of the self begins.
This all said, I don't think I'd want to base a religion on the Bible or any other holy book we have to date, particularly because they are to be read interpretively. It would be far better to base a religion on good behavior with your fellowman (or woman) and brethren animals because you live in a world of human and animal creatures (not of angels and demons), and good behavior only makes sense in the long run to perpetuate the species.
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