Warning! Loads of snark ahead You have been forewarned!
Believing the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible, historically accurate Words of God, requires Evangelical literalists to defend all sorts of violence and barbarity. According to Genesis — the book of beginnings — the Christian God became angry with the human inhabitants of earth and decided to kill all of them, save an old man, his wife, sons, and daughters-in-law — eight in all, out of the millions of people who inhabited our planet at the time. Not only did God plan to kill everyone, he planned to end their lives by holding their heads underwater until they drowned. And what did Noah and his little remnant do while God was busy permanently baptizing millions of people? They safely lived in a boat house designed and built by Ken Ham himself. This boat is on display in Kentucky, as is Ken Ham, the oldest living Neanderthal on the face of the earth.
At the appointed time, God opened up the windows of the first heaven — according to the Bible, there are three heavens — and it began to rain. For forty days and forty nights, it rained, until the earth was covered to its highest mountaintop with water. Millions of men, women, children, and fetuses died in the flood, along with countless land animals. Why did God do this? Why did God slaughter virtually every living thing?
According to Genesis 6, there were a couple of reasons for God’s homicidal rage:
- Women were having sex with fallen angels and bearing them children. These hybrid children became giants in the land, mighty men of renown.
- Humankind was continually wicked, and their thoughts were evil.
In other words, humans were having sex and not living according to God’s moral code. The events described in Genesis occurred before God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses, so a fair question to ask is this: what moral code were humans expected to follow and obey? Did God hand out a mimeographed list titled, Rules and Regulations for Living with a Homicidal Deity? If people were going to be permanently waterboarded, it sure would be nice to know exactly what they did to piss off God. Surely, having sex and partying a bit too much is not reason enough to kill innocent children and unborn fetuses. Perhaps what we really have here is a Carrie Mathison (played by Claire Danes) — from the HBO hit show Homeland — problem. Carrie is bipolar, and when she goes off her meds, well, she can do some pretty crazy stuff. Perhaps, then, God was off his meds when he decided to enact his version of the final solution. Here’s the thing, though, God had one hundred twenty years between the time Noah began to build the boat and the onset of the flood to change his mind or get back on his meds and act like a responsible, thoughtful deity. Instead, God let his anger seethe for three generations. Talk about someone not moving on in life!
Ezekiel 8 and 9 show that God failed his anger management class. After God washed the earth clean from humanity’s collective stain, the eight people who survived went right back to their human ways — having sex (often incestuous) and birthing babies. And quicker than Nick Fuentes can say something anti-Semitic, humans yet again offended God. Damn those humans and their sinning ways. If only their creator had created them without the capacity to sin. But, what fun would Ken and Barbie be if you couldn’t take their clothes off and turn them loose at the Playboy Mansion? Not much. Having sex and pissing off God is what we humans do. You think he would understand this by now, but I have read the book of Revelation, and God plans to, one last time, punish people for being human. And this time, the only people left will be those who spent their lives brown-nosing God and massaging his out-sized ego. These “saints” will spend eternity prostrating themselves before God and praising his name. Sound like fun to you? Nope me neither. Give me Hell every time!
We are not told in Ezekiel 9 exactly what the Israelites did to anger God. The Bible speaks of them committing abominations and filling the land with violence. God, as someone who has never taken responsibility for his actions — an ancient Donald Trump — blamed the Israelites for provoking him to wrath. There’s that anger again. Christians say their deity is a God of love, kindness, mercy, and compassion, but it seems to me that this God sure spends a lot of time violently angry.
As God does many times in the Old and New Testaments, he decides in Ezekiel 9 that it is time to kill a bunch of people. God reminds me of a serial killer who periodically needs to spill blood. This time, God had six men armed with slaughter weapons (AK47s or AR15s?) go through the city and slaughter everyone — men, women, children, and fetuses — who wasn’t sorry for being bad humans.
The Bible says:
Then he said unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here? for they have filled the land with violence, and have returned to provoke me to anger: and, lo, they put the branch to their nose.
Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity: and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them.
He cried also in mine ears with a loud voice, saying, Cause them that have charge over the city to draw near, even every man with his destroying weapon in his hand.
…..
And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.
And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity:
Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house.
And he said unto them, Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain: go ye forth. And they went forth, and slew in the city.
….
I gotta ask, exactly what did little children do to deserve such a violent, bloody end? Back in the days of Moses and the wandering Jews, God at least let everyone under the age of twenty live and make it to the Promised Land. God didn’t hold children accountable for the sins of their parents and adult family members. In Ezekiel 9 however, God kills everyone who isn’t contrite over their sins — including little children. What an awesome, wonderful God Christians worship and serve. I hope they are aware of his LinkedIn page. He has a murderous past. He might, yet again, take to killing to remind people that he is the Kim Jong-un of all the earth. Beware, Christians, your God might poison you if you get on his bad side. And believe me, according to the inspired, inerrant, infallible Bible, the Christian God is one mean son-of-a-bitch.
The answer, of course, is for Evangelicals to realize that the Bible is not what they claim it is; that, at best, it is an ancient book filled will morality plays and stories meant to show how the writers of the books understood their world. Can you imagine the OMG moment the writer of Genesis would have if he were alive today? It’s a fictional story, people, no different from Harry Potter, he might say. I never really meant for you to believe this shit is real!
I’ll let the heretic and former Fundamentalist pastor Rob Bell dot the “i” and cross the “t” of this post:
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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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