First, interracial marriage is the first topic throughout this lecture series that has been given adequate consideration from the pulpit. Jon says "Racism is dumb." I agree.
Second, secular culture is largely a treatment of how church people should approach things like smoking and drinking and R-rated movies. The larger message of "focus on what is beneficial... do what is best" strikes me as sound. But Jon does take one profoundly unbiblical stance here. He says "Getting drunk is sinful. Drinking, the Bible doesn't say anything about it." To begin with, the first miracle, Jesus Christ turning water into wine at the wedding (John 1:11) serves as a direct Biblical endorsement of social drinking, at least on special occasions. The passage specifically talks about how where most hosts put out the best wine first, so that guests will be too intoxicated to care too much about the inferior wine later, the miraculous wine was better than what the hosts initially served. More than that, though, the Bible only presents two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper. At the founding of The Lord's Supper (Luke 22:14-23), Jesus commands believers to consume wine in ritual remembrance of his blood.
Third, on the subject of gender roles, Dan presents a sound distillation of the egalitarian and complementarian positions. Complementarians seek to deny women full authority to teach and lead in the church and at home based on sexist bible verses. And Egalitarians seek to afford women full standing in the church and in the home. Dan & Jon say they're on the same side in this debate. And then the refuse to admit which side they're on. They cite time pressures. But they've brought these time pressures on themselves. They've decided how many topics to address, and how many weeks to address them in. They have no one to blame for their time pressures but themselves. And from the outside, saying that there's a right answer here and then refusing to explicitly defend it reads to me as cowardice.
There's a bigger issue with their treatment of gender, though. Both Complementarians and Egalitarians would claim that the bible values men and women equally, a position Dan explicitly reiterates. The Bible does not value men & women equally, does not treat them with equal dignity. The Bible's treatment of women is malignant and horrific. Women in the Bible aren't even second class citizens; they're simply male property, which I'll expand on in The Bible and Women section, below.
Finally, on the topic of suicide, the approach of encouraging depressed people to seek counselling and to seek community is sound. But Jon's underlying claim that "there is never a circumstance in life that you will find yourself in that God's power can't get you out of" is simply false. I have known strong, lifelong Christians who have struggled throughout their lives with depression. Christianity simply does not cure depression. And Jon's unwillingness to acknowledge that, in cases of painful, terminal illness suicide can be clearly beneficial serves to potentially extend the pain and suffering of members of his congregation, without necessity or benefit. This is a clear example of where belief in Christianity leads people to inferior ethical behavior. If we begin from a perspective of helping people, of caring about people and their suffering, we will seek to extend to terminal patients the ability to choose when and how they die, rather than forcing them to live in agony out of fear of angering a vengeful superstition.
The Bible and Women
The Bible’s treatment of women reflects the social
environment of the circumstances of the times of its writing. That’s not an excuse that I’m making on its
behalf. I’m pointing it out as a clear
indictment. If the Bible’s origins were
in any way divine, if it was the most important message to humanity from an
all-loving God, it wouldn’t reflect the horrific social environment of its
times. It would criticize them in the
clearest, sternest terms, and call on believers to do and be better.
Noah’s Nameless Wife, and Other
Nameless Women
“On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together
with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark.”
- Genesis
7:13 (NIV)
So, according to the Genesis stories, the human
population of the ark numbered 8: Noah,
and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japeth.
And Noah’s wife, and the wives of his sons. Noah’s wife is, in the story, the most recent
female common ancestor of all living human beings. She’s the great-to-the-nth grandmother of
EVERYONE. And the Bible doesn’t care
about her enough to so much as give her a name.
Her name, her title, her identity, everything the Bible has to say about
the woman who birthed the population of the world fits into two words: ‘Noah’s
wife’[1]. And one of those words is someone else’s
name. She gets no accomplishments, no
laud nor deference. She just gets an
owner. Compare this to the genealogies
of Genesis 4 & 5. Men’s names. All of them.
Some of these guys never get mentioned once in all of Biblical history
except as a bullet point in a genealogy, and every last one of them gets a
name.
This isn’t an isolated occurrence. Cain, Seth, and Methuselah[2]
also had nameless wives, as did several other lesser Biblical patriarchs. Abraham’s mother is nameless, as are Lot’s
two daughters and his wife. Potiphar’s
wife who tries to seduce Joseph has no name, and neither does the daughter of
Pharoh who pulls Moses out of the river in a reed basket. Job’s wives, both the one who Jehovah lets
Satan kill as part of the bet between them, and her replacement that arrives
after Jehovah’s won the bet, are both unnamed.
At no point does the Bible refer to a character solely as “<biblical woman’s
name>’s Husband” and not give him a name of his own.
Silent Women
“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 Corinthians 14:34-35 (NIV)
“I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety,
adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or
expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for
women who profess to worship God.
A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to
teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first,
then Eve. And
Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved
through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with
propriety.”
- 1 Timothy 2:9-15 (NIV)
“For man did not come from woman,
but woman from man; neither was man created for woman,
but woman for man.”
- 1 Corinthians 11:8-9 (NIV)
These are New Testament texts that
clearly state that women are inferior and secondary to men in the eyes of the
church. They must remain silent while in
church, and are only allowed to make religious inquiries of their own husband,
and even then, only at home. They must
dress modestly, wear their hair simply, and not wear jewelry. The conservative Mennonites are an example of
contemporary Christians who actually put this into practice, not any of the
supposedly Bible-literal evangelical denominations. Note that the author of Timothy here
explicitly blames Eve for the Fall of Man.
He founds his reasoning for subjecting women to male rule on a literal
read of a demonstrably literally false story.
And then he suggests that the only redemption for women comes by
birthing children.
The gender politics presented by
the Bible are significantly more regressive than those typically enacted by
even conservative evangelical Christian denominations. This is, to me, a clear example of a case
where being a Good Christian and being a Good Person are in direct
conflict. The more closely one follows
the Biblical direction for human behavior, the more repressive to women one
will behave. Contemporary American
Christians largely choose to ignore the clear Biblical direction here, and
American society is better because they do… I just wish they’d apply that
further and abandon all the rest of the regressive baggage of Christianity too.
Rape
Here are the Ten Commandments[3]:
1 – Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
2 – Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven
image.
3 – Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy
God in vain.
4 – Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5 – Honour thy father and thy mother.
6 – Thou shalt not kill.
7 – Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8 – Thou shalt not steal.
9 – Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy
neighbor.
10 – Thou shalt not covet.
Note the things that God hates more than he hates
rape. Feeling jealous? Worse than rape. Talking back to your Dad? Saying ‘God damn it’? Working on Sunday[4]? All worthy of their own special mention,
their own bullet point spot on the list of the Top Ten Things Jehovah Wants To
Command Of You.
Throughout the Bible, female consent is never
mentioned. It’s not an important concept
to any of the authors of the books of the Bible.
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the
Lord. For the husband is the head of the
wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to
Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”
- Ephesians 5:22-24
The Bible never mentions spousal rape because,
under the Biblical worldview, there’s no such thing. Women are just male property; a wife’s consent
is irrelevant. In the ten commandments
passage, women are explicitly just an item in a list of things men own:
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You
shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or
donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
-Exodus
20:17 (NIV)
And here’s a New Testament’s expansion of the
subject:
“Wives,
submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as
Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also
wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”
-
Ephesians 5:22-24
The command of a husband to a wife comes straight
from Jehovah. Whatever it is, “in
everything”, wives must “submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to
the Lord.” Biblical marriage is an
institution of ownership, and an affront to human dignity.
Worse still, Jehovah is universally unsympathetic
towards rape victims (even those who don’t happen to be married to their
rapists), and sometimes He actively encourages child rape. For instance:
“So
there were recruited from the divisions of Israel one thousand from each
tribe, twelve thousand armed for war. Then Moses sent them to the war… And
they warred against the Midianites, just as the Lord commanded Moses, and they
killed all the males.
And
the children of Israel took the women of Midian captive, with their little
ones, and took as spoil all their cattle, all their flocks, and all their
goods. They also burned with fire all
the cities where they dwelt, and all their forts. And they took all the spoil and all the
booty—of man and beast.
Then
they brought the captives, the booty, and the spoil to Moses… But Moses was angry with the
officers of the army, with the captains over thousands and captains over
hundreds, who had come from the battle.
And
Moses said to them: “Have you kept all the women alive? Look, these women caused the children
of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the
incident of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, kill every male among the
little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man intimately. But keep alive for yourselves all the young
girls who have not known a man intimately.”
-
Numbers 31:5-18
In Malachi 3, Jehovah says “I am the LORD, I do
not change.” This is your unchanging
Jehovah, right here. According to its
own tenets, that same unchanging monster encouraging soldiers to rape the child
daughters of the enemy’s slaughtered wives after they’ve slaughtered their
husbands and child sons is the same Jehovah currently the object of the
worshipful devotion of contemporary Christianity[5]. Deuteronomy goes into detail about how the
law should treat rapists and rape victims:
“If a
young woman who is a virgin is betrothed to a husband, and a man finds
her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the
gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young
woman because she did not cry out in the city, and the man because he humbled
his neighbor’s wife; so you shall put away the evil from among you.
“But if a man finds a betrothed young woman in the countryside, and
the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall
die. But you shall do nothing to the
young woman; there is in the young woman no sin deserving of
death, for just as when a man rises against his neighbor and kills him, even so
is this matter. For he found her
in the countryside, and the betrothed young woman cried out, but there
was no one to save her[6].
“If a man finds a young woman who is a virgin,
who is not betrothed, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are found
out, then the man who lay with her shall give to the young woman’s father fifty
shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has humbled her;
he shall not be permitted to divorce her all his days.”
- Deut
22: 23-29
If a married woman gets raped in the city, she
gets put to death, just like her rapist because Jehovah apparently believes
that it’s magically impossible for a rapist to prevent a woman from
successfully calling for help inside city walls. The rapist isn’t being punished for the harm
he caused his victim, he’s being punished for the harm he caused her owner, her
husband. Rape here is a sin corollary to
vandalism. The rapist damaged another
man’s property. And if a man wants to
force a young virgin to be his wife for the rest of her life, all he has to do
is rape her, and pay off her father. That’s
Biblical marriage. One girl, one
rapist. And fifty shekels to the girl’s
previous owner, her father. For the
damage to his property.
[1]
Non-canonical Jewish texts refer to her as Naamah. That is to say, the texts that bother to
include a name for her didn’t get canonized.
[2]
“But who’d call that livin’ when no gal will give in to no man with nine
hundred years?” – Heyward/Gershwin
[3]
Actually, these are the Protestant Ten Commandments. Catholics treat #’s 1 & 2 of the
Protestant numbering system as just 1, and separate out Protestant #10 into not
coveting your neighbor’s wife (Catholic Commandment #9) and not coveting your
neighbor’s stuff (Catholic Commandment #10).
Two groups of serious religious scholars, faced with the same source
text and the task of removing from that text a simple numbered list came to
incompatible conclusions about which points get a bullet in the list. Which, to me, gestures towards the ways that
this whole Christianity thing is just a human invention. Your gestures may vary.
[4] Or
Saturday, if that’s when you take your Jehovan day of rest.
[5]
I’ve heard preachers suggest that when evaluating questions where different
parts of the scripture suggest different answers we should weigh the scriptural
claims against one another as on a balance.
Write all of the scriptures that seem to lean one way on one half of a
piece of paper, write the scriptures that indicate the other answer on the
other, and count them up. And never
think about the implicit acknowledgement of scriptural self-contradiction
inherent to the process. And never think
about how different counting methods affect the outcome: Most verses? Most
Chapters? Most Books that seem to
comment one way or the other? New
Testament verses count for one point, and Old Testament verses count for 3/5 of
a point? Like I say, it depends on the method.
But when I run the numbers for the question “Is Jehovah in favor of or
against rape?” I see a terrible, terrible diety. That’s really how far into monstrosity we
are: did Jehovah encourage rape more or less often than he discouraged it? It depends on how you run the numbers. Different people are going to get different
answers. Read in the most positive
light, the very best thing you could say about Jehovah on the subject of rape
is “he discouraged it slightly more frequently than he actively endorsed it”.
[6]
Seriously? What about Jehovah? Why wasn’t Jehovah there to save her?
