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 ex-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 unconditional 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, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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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Wow, Mars Attacks was such a crazy movie, I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like it, before or since!
I forgot about “Mars Attacks”!
Throwing this idea out there – most of us agree that the majority of Christians don’t read the Bible except through carefully created devotionals of Bible Srudy guides. They hear curated excerpts in church services, or in Sunday school or Bible study classes if they participate. I have not met many Christians who have read the entire Bible. Now, were Christians to read the entire Bible cover to cover, how many do you think would take these passages seriously? How many would go out and actually try to kill people who didn’t follow the particular brand of Jesus? How wide would they cast the net – would they give a pass to anyone who purports to be Christian and only go after Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Jainists, Atheists, Wiccan, etc? Would they give protection to Jews with the excuse that they follow the “same God”? Or would they narrow the scope to only Christians of their particular denomination? How many people are they supposed to kill? Do they witness to them first or just go straight to slaughter? See, thus is why part of me DOESN’T want them reading the whole Bible, because they might actually take it SERIOUSLY. Sure, most will probably be averse to committing murder. They’ll find a way to justify NOT following God’s edict, but we can all see it’s clear, US laws and justice system be damned! So there’s a choice – follow God’s command which is counter to US Laws, face the full force of the US justice system, or don’t go slaughtering unbelievers and face God’s justice…… see the dilemma here? Hopefully, most people have enough critical thinking skills to determine “killing unbelievers is wrong”, but I could see how a true blue zealot would read these commands and go for it, using as defense “I was following God’s commands”.
That or Onward Christian Soldiers. Jesus would be so proud.
I don’t think extremist Christians forget about what their side does, not anymore. I think they are fine with the eradication of those of us who are not for them.
Criminy! Deuteronomy is pretty wasteful, what with destroying all that good beef and stuff. Dutch thrift can never tolerate that kind of waste. Maybe that explains all the empty churches back there.
But wait Bruce…..It’s all about CONTEXT! Specifically MY context, which of course, is Bigger than your Context! Which reminds me, when I was growing up we had two old guys in our church that we called the Context Police. We’d argue about something to them that was said in the Bible, such as James 2:24 “You see that a person is justified by works and not faith alone,” vs. Galations 2:16 “A person is justified not by the works of the law but through Faith in Jesus.” And they would say something like “It’s a matter of context, or which translation you have, or don’t question the Lord, Thy GOD.” In my experience most Chreest-shuns today don’t really seem to know or care much about what is actually said in that book that Trump holds upside down.
Thanks Danny. I thought I must be the only person who noticed Trump waved the Bible upside down in that photo op in front of the church. Not that it means anything to him, upside down or otherwise. The saddest thing about that ridiculous moment is that while some of us recognized the insult to our intelligence, it raised his credibility among his zombie believers. It makes me fear for our country knowing so many of them live here. Jesus (reportedly) said the poor are always with you. Sadly so are the gullible.
But he’s, you know, GOD. So doesn’t he, you know, sorta already know whether we love the Lord our God or not?
Bruce….I think I have the answer.
This passage, from the Old Testament, doesn’t count because when Jesus died and resurrected, all those pesky old rules and commandments in the Old Testament no longer are valid. I mean, Paul made that clear, right?
Ok, technically all the old rules and commandments are not valid except the one that are convenient to make a point about abominations or those 15..err.. 10 commandments. And a few passages here and there needed to prove messiahs and such.
Otherwise, the Old Testament no longer counts. It’s mainly just a big warning about what happens when you don’t do what god says to do.
Well, except for Psalms, Psalms are important, but not all of them of course.
Oh.. the whole thing god run government is important to, so that still counts. Not all of it obviously, just the parts that prove god wants the government doing what he tells it.
But outside of that, it the majority of the Old Testament is just not relevant today.
Oh..creation..that and the great flood. Those are important and real. The rest of genesis not so much..it’s a bit of a slog. Except Sodom and Gomorrah is important because, you know, gay people and the whole, abomination thing.
Ooo..right..that rule about not wearing clothes from a different gender are extremely important. Otherwise Deuteronomy isn’t all that useful.
And the exodus too… lots of good miracles there we gotta have Israel created for the New Testament to work
But the point is, most of the Old Testament just doesn’t apply now. Except the parts that do.
These two videos of this movie give off Neville Chamberlain/Adolf Hitler vibes. Chamberlain thought he could negotiate “peace in our time” with Hitler, and of course Hitler played along, smiled, etc. I’m sure sure the Khmer Rouge made similar “assurances” to the people they ultimately sent to the Killing Fields.
A tyrant never changes their personality. Negotiation just emboldens them. Only total defeat (and usually their own demise) ends their terror.
I remember this movie, and even though it was a campy comedy, I felts sorry for the people who were part of that administration, and Nicholson’s president character, because they were facing aliens with that Conquistador mentality, and getting along sure wasn’t on their agenda ! Those American leaders were actually benign, unlike the Clinton Administration was. These people from the movie were “Kennedy -style Democrats”, the kind we sure can use today. When Trump says he’s only going to be a dictator for one day, don’t buy it. What he really means is, he will be a dictator FROM day one. He learned from his first stint, this is why Project 2025 is so dangerous. It comes with all the personnel predetermined and assigned ahead of time. This, plus the Heritage Foundation is taking advice from Viktor Orban.
The trailer was better than the movie – the Martians were all subtitled, and very funny.
This yankee piece of agag trash needs to be silenced. PS you know of the confederate flag yankee boy
Please be advised that I consider this a threat of violence.
You have been warned.