(My pal, folk singer Addie Brownlee, wrote this on Facebook this weekend, and she has kindly allowed me to post it here. Addie has long been wrestling with Christian-pud-thumpers; if you go to one of her shows, she'll likely do a riff on "Weird Shit in the Bible." Here, though, responding to someone who sent her some pud-thumping, she writes about the dangerous, fucked-up things in the Bible that have affected the way men behave.)
I. Have. Had. Enough. of Anyone. Saying ignorant things like “we can’t throw out God and beebee jeejee the way we have and not expect this stuff. I mean I sympathize with the #MeToo thing..."
Well - here’s what I think of all that shit. A reply I just posted to an ignorance I refuse to tolerate another day.
Hi, (person I knew 20 years ago) - Long time. I hope you’re well.
I can’t understand why you would even post this in response to the #MeToo movement. But regardless...
If by: "his Word that communicates to us what RIGHT and WRONG 'IS'" you mean the Bible? Then you need a refresher.
There’s the obvious - Lot - who in order to try to protect the angel/stranger/men staying under his roof from the angry mob says to said mob, “Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out to you, and do you to them as is good in your eyes: only to these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.”
Here. Gang rape my daughters.
And don’t deign to explain to me that this verse is actually about ancient Middle Eastern hospitality laws.
Ancient or modern - this “righteous” man told a group of men to gang rape his daughters.
Is this one of the moral absolutes we as a society have thrown out?
And then there’s the extra creepy part at the end that they sometimes do and sometimes don’t tell little tiny children in Sunday school - yeah - that part.
And speaking of which - I’d like to pose a question. Which sounds more believable?
1. That two girls who live in an epoch in which a woman who is believed to have had sex out of wedlock can be stoned (and what is better proof than having a child?), and whose father just offered them to be gang raped by the men from the town they just escaped - thought, “Let’s get our awesome dad drunk and have sex with him so we can have children because we will never ever in the rest of our lives ever encounter another man who isn’t our father!"
2. OR that the creepy old dude who wrote this part of what - after additions, deletions, mistranslations, spelling errors, punctuation changes, political calculations, and printing errors over the years became what some Protestant Christians refer to as "the Bible" - was a creepy old dude fantasy?
Cause I can tell you that no woman in the history of freaking ever thought about getting her Dad drunk and having sex with him.
Ever.
And this - as unsettling as it is - is not even an original story in the Good Book - it’s not the last time something like that happened.
There’s the Levite who offered his concubine to a mob made up of men from the tribe of Benjamin (so they wouldn’t hurt him). They took him up on it and raped her to death.
Open the Good Book. Drop your finger on any given page and there’s a decent chance that you may land on a verse in which god is telling his chosen people to kill the men and rape the women of his non-chosen people in battle.
“Well - that’s the old covenant. When Jesus came he made a new covenant.”
😂😂😂😂😂 OK wait. I’m sorr... 😂😂😂😂😂 OK I’m sorry. 😂 That’s one of my favorites. [RP note: If you can't see it, Addie put in a bunch of laughing-to-tears emojis.
So... if the Old Testament is abolished, does that mean you don’t believe in the Ten Commandments?
But GUESS WHAT 😐?
(What?)
Jesus “said” do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them.
No whammies no whammies no whammies noOOOOOH NOOOOOOO
Right.
And if you’re feeling attacked right now? You’d be right.
And you’d be feeling like all of these people you are so flippantly disregarding with your wise man wisdom.
Intelligent women and men are sick and tired. Yes we are TIIIIIRRRRED of people like you who never stopped believing in Santa not just wasting everybody’s time. But causing harm, TRUE harm in this world.
If you REALLY want to do something immediate about this problem?
You can call up the board members of an old church I believe you’re familiar with, and ask them why they would tell a young woman that she could no longer teach Sunday school because it had been discovered that her ex-husband had returned and was living with her (which is adultery), BUT took no action to remove the current church treasurer despite the fact that he has recently been convicted of soliciting a prostitute?
If you want to know what really happened to make this world a place where men rape and torture women with impunity while men like you type up smug statements and refresh your page waiting for the all the congratulatory e-pats on the back you’re about to get, then pick up your Bible.
Open to page one.
The first sentence is your answer.
“In the beginning, God”
