There’s a scene in Mars Attacks! — one of my all-time favorite movies — where the Martians meet with the President of the United States. The President, played by Jack Nicholson, says to the Mars ambassador:
Why… are you doing this? Why? Isn’t the universe big enough…for both of us? Ha ha ha ha. What is wrong with you people?
We could work together. Why be enemies? Because we’re different? Is that why?
Think of the things that we could do.
Think how strong we would be. Earth…and Mars… Together.
There is nothing that we could not accomplish. Think about it. Think about it.
Why destroy…when you can create? We can have it all, or we can smash it all.
Why can’t we…work out our differences? Why can’t we…work things out?
Little people…why can’t we all just…get along?
“Why can’t we all just get along?” The ambassador, with tears in his eyes, shakes hands with the President, only to have the hand disconnect and stab the President in the heart, killing him instantly.
Prior to killing the President, the Martian Ambassador and his entourage met with Congress. The Ambassador gave a rousing Ack! Ack! Ack! speech, concluding with him and his support staff whipping out their ray guns and vaporizing Congress. Where are the Martians when you need them, right?
Quite intolerant, these Martians. Every time I watch Mars Attacks! I can’t help but think of the Christian God and his intolerance towards any religion but his own. Jesus — who is God — is the Martian Ambassador in this story. Any other religion but the Christian faith is false, an affront to the thrice-holy God of the Bible. Instead of practicing the time-honored art of toleration, God the Father, and his son Jesus, command their followers to murder everyone who worships other deities (or no deities at all).
Christianity has a deep, vibrant, antisemitic, anti-Islamic stream running through its body. Evangelicals, who increasingly support President Trump’s anti-Muslim bigotry, justify their hatred by pointing to how Muslim extremists harass, attack, kidnap, and murder Christians and other non-Muslims. I don’t disagree with their assessment of groups such as ISIS, Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda, and numerous other Muslim extremists.
However, in becoming so fixated on Islam, Christians forget their own religion’s violence, their God’s command to slaughter all unbelievers, and the rise of violent (and deadly) white Christian extremism in the United States.
The inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God says in Deuteronomy 13:1-16:
If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder,
And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them;
Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him.
And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee.
If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;
Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;
Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:
But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.
And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
And all Israel shall hear, and fear, and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among you.
If thou shalt hear say in one of thy cities, which the Lord thy God hath given thee to dwell there, saying,
Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known;
Then shalt thou enquire, and make search, and ask diligently; and, behold, if it be truth, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought among you;
Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.
And thou shalt gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the street thereof, and shalt burn with fire the city, and all the spoil thereof every whit, for the Lord thy God: and it shall be an heap for ever; it shall not be built again.
But, Bruce . . . Don’t bother. Whatever attempt you plan to make to defend your God won’t work. This passage of Scripture is quite clear. No ambiguity here. The intolerant, genocidal God of Christianity commands his followers (the Israelites, at the time) to slaughter anyone — men, women, children, the unborn — who doesn’t worship him. It’s in the Bible, buddy, and you just need to own it.
So much for the uncondtional love of God. So much for God loving and accepting people where and how they are. No, God commands his followers to whip out their ray guns and vaporize anyone who doesn’t bow in fealty and devotion to him.
Time to sing, What a Mighty God We Serve.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Turns out learning about Jesus and not accepting him means you go to Hell. Unconditional love indeed.
The father who loves his child, chastises and harms the child because God. The fantasy figure GOD is a perfect denial tool so that parents with harmed hearts can delightedly ignore their own damage and instead of facing the painful task of getting help to increase healthy awareness, instead pass the harm to another generation, literally spank/hit/swat/beat/punch that ‘gift’ into them.
How many times have you heard men claim that they were beaten by their parent(s) and how right those parents were to do just that, ow grateful they are for the beatings and what a terrible little devil they were back then. The statement, ‘This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you,’ has an element of buried truth in it. When a parent hits a child, love is harmed in both the perpetrator and the victim. Christianity not only does nothing to defeat this mockery of common decency, it supports and uses it to further its control of people. If an authority can suggest that it is good to take a rod to a child and then parents listen and do it, then Christianity has revealed itself as a sick tool. I think it is the same strain of denial that allows Christians to vilify and condemn other religions while so blissfully denying their own destructive practices. The Prince of Peace, you say?
Brian–Psychotherapists and child psychologists should be grateful for the Christian God: He’s good for business.
This God is such a narcissist. He gets throws his little toddler tantrum if his little minions even look at another deity statue and orders his minions to slaughter those who don’t show the proper adulation. Where are the adults in the room when you need them?
And yet this morning we hear that this christian god is so weak that he requires Dotard J. tRump to protect him. From Eric the Idiot in NC yesterday: “My father will ALWAYS protect God, faith and religious liberty in America!!.” https://twitter.com/EricTrump/status/1301626342841167873
Bruce, this is so damn true. I remember about 10 years ago when my father was talking to me about Moses. I said, “Dad, I don’t revere Moses at all!”. He was incredulous. Then I got out the Bible and read those very passages in Deuteronomy you quoted. Also, I explained that Moses and Aaron, according to scripture, traveled throughout the lands slaying inhabitants of numerous cities in ways so brutal, so vile, that even my father had to declare how treacherous it was. He did not try to defend this. He simply shook his head, astonished.
Now we have that creep in the White House and all the evil minions who love the Old Testament are gleefully spreading wickedness and calling it love. FUCK these people!