Thoughts, pt. 2

So what does rape culture have to do with atrocities in the Bible? Nothing, really, except my reaction to it. (Warning, I use some language in this post that I don’t often use.)

I cannot fathom people who try to apologize for men who rape women, and try to shift blame to the woman involved. The lure of her hot body is not a yes. Wearing revealing clothes is not a yes. Having too much to drink is not a yes. Getting the in car with him is not a yes. Letting him kiss her is not a yes. Wearing her down until she stops saying no is not a yes. Sleeping on the same bed with him is not a yes. Marrying him is not a yes. For God’s sake, threatening to beat her up if she struggles is not a yes.  Hell, taking all her clothes off and lying down on his bed is not a yes, although at that point he probably ought to ask what she is doing. And point out that she’s being very misleading if she doesn’t want sex. But he DOES NOT TOUCH HER. It really is that simple.

Forgive the bluntness here, but I refuse to entertain the notion that a man ever has an excuse for sticking his dick in a woman without her clear, express consent, which may be withdrawn at any time. And if it is, he needs to stop. Period. He is not entitled to her body no matter HOW she flaunts it at him, and I really don’t want to hear about how she has to share the blame because he “just couldn’t help himself”. Yes, he could. It’s called free will and erring on the side of caution. The only thing he’s entitled to is his irritation at being led on, and yes, if a girl is blatantly flaunting herself at a guy in that way, he is justified in feeling frustrated and disappointed if she says no. But he is not entitled to use that frustration and disappointment to force himself on her. HE IS NOT ENTITLED TO HER BODY. I mean, if he doesn’t fuck her and she actually wanted him to, the worst he’s done is disappoint her. But if he does fuck her and she didn’t want him to, he has raped her. Possible disappointment, or possible rape? IS THIS REALLY A DIFFICULT DECISION TO MAKE??

*coughs* ‘Scuse the language above. If you can’t tell, this sort of thing really irritates me.

Now, I’ve read a few works by Christian apologists, most notably a section of The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel. That one is notable because the particular section I read was specifically about Biblical atrocities, why God would order the extermination of entire peoples, etc. I don’t remember who Strobel was interviewing for that question, but the guy made me want to throw the book across the room. I’ve never read a more insipid, insulting, and terrible collection of “excuses”. My favorites:

“God created everything, therefore he has the right to destroy whatever he wants.” (Bully translation: “I’m big and you’re small, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”)

“Nobody is truly innocent in God’s eyes, therefore he’s allowed to judge *coughmurdercough* them.” (Bully translation: “I’m right and you’re wrong, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”)

“Well, they were gonna attack the Israelites anyway, so the Isrealites were perfectly justified in wiping them out FIRST.” (Bully translation: “He started it!”)

Those are, admittedly, bad excuses. I know there is more solid reasoning to be had out there . But when I was reading about rape culture, and about rape apologists, I realized that it wasn’t the logic or reasoning of the excuses that was bothering me. It was the fact that people were actually trying to excuse something as horrific as rape…and that other people were actually listening to them. And I realized that I feel the same way when someone tries to justify to me why God would wipe out entire cities or murder children. You are trying to excuse an atrocity. I do not feel a moral imperative to listen to the possible reasons why it was actually okay for God to do these things, no more than I feel a moral imperative to listen to the possible reasons why a guy might actually be allowed to stick his dick in a woman who doesn’t want it. The fact that I’m even listening to the reasoning makes me feel dirty, because such excuses simply should not exist. Rape is not okay. Killing people is not okay. End of story.

I’ve come to realize that I have no patience to sit down and read long-winded accounts of how atrocities in the Bible are actually Good. I do not have the stomach to plow through the reasoning and researching and speculating and postulating it would take to make a person reach the logical conclusion that it was okay for God to murder all the firstborn of Egypt.

I don’t care if they had time to clean up their act. Killing people is not okay.

I don’t care if they deserved it. Killing people is not okay.

I don’t care if they would have destroyed themselves eventually anyway. Killing people is not okay.

I don’t care if the act is attributed to God. Killing people is not okay.

I realize I’m being both harsh and impractical. From a human standpoint, yes. And if we were talking about atrocities committed by humans, I would agree that sometimes killing someone is the only way to stop them from ruining the lives of everyone around them. We humans have limited resources, and we have to deal with degrees of evil. Killing Hitler was bad, but letting him continue to exterminate the Jews would have been far worse. War is bad, but letting strong nations conquer weak ones is worse. Sometimes we have to do things that are justified given the circumstances. But here’s the thing: nobody is under any obligation to call these actions good. Necessary, yes. Justified, yes. Good? No, of course not. Because killing people is not okay.

But we’re not talking about what people do to people. We’re talking about what God does to people. God, who is omnipotent, who can perform miracles, who is not limited by practicality the way a human is.

When God kills people, the rules change. Because if God is Good, and all his actions must be Good, and the Bible says God killed someone, and the Bible is true…then all of a sudden people find themselves forced to call a Bad action (killing someone) Good, simply because God did it. And people will go through some really twisted mental gymnastics to do that. (And oddly, concluding that the Bible’s account of events might not be entirely factual, which is the simplest solution and preserves the notion that God is, in fact, Good, is one that most people with a stake in this question refuse to entertain. I’ll be honest, I am constantly baffled that people balk more at the notion that “maybe the Bible is wrong about this” than they do at “God killed somebody”. Because, hello, what’s more important here? The inerrancy of an ancient text or people’s lives??)

Many apologists take the position that God only kills guilty people, and because they are guilty, it’s fair for him to do this. That’s because no one could defend a God who kills innocents on purpose. Only sociopaths think doing that is okay. But in most human societies, it is okay to kill criminals in order to prevent further crime. It is also understandable when innocents are killed in the pursuit of the guilty (i.e, war). Regrettable collateral damage. Therefore, the apologist must find a way to condemn the person being killed by God, and cast the blame for any innocents lost upon the actions of the guilty party. If the person is guilty, they reason, then their execution and any collateral damage is justified…because among humans, this is so.

No. Remember, we’re talking about God here. It is fair for us to kill guilty people; it is understandable that we should cause the death of innocents by accident or circumstance…again, limited resources and degrees of evil.  But it is not okay for God to kill guilty people for the same reason it is not okay for a large person to beat up a small person. Even if the small person is provoking the large person, even if the small person is hurting other people, even if the small person is really pissing off the large person…the moment the large person takes a fist to the smaller, the encounter ceases to be fair. Because the small person doesn’t stand a chance. We don’t stand a chance against God. No encounter which ends with God smiting a human being can possibly be fair. The imbalance between humans and God prohibits any justified violence on God’s part, because God has unlimited power and unlimited resources.

So what possible reason could God have for killing people? If his purpose in killing is to teach the person that their actions were wrong…um, well, that’s a really sucky teaching method because they’re kind of, you know. DEAD. If God wanted the person to do better in the future, if God’s motivation was to help that person, why would he kill them?

Okay, so why does our government execute criminals? To keep them from hurting more people, and to teach a lesson to other criminals. Why does God execute people who challenge him, or who cause others a lot of grief? Presumably for the same reasons: to stop them, and to make an example out of them. But this ignores two facts about people that we are able to ignore, but that God, being God, cannot.

1, God created all people. 2, no person is irredeemable.

When we kill a person who does wrong, we are essentially saying to that person, “You are beyond our help and must be disposed of.” And this may be true. There are limits to the amount of help people can offer each other, and people cannot always save other people. However, this message becomes monstrous when it’s God doing the killing, because what is he essentially saying to that person? “You are beyond My help and must be disposed of”? As the Creator of all people, NO ONE should EVER be beyond God’s help.

The notion that God kills people as examples or warnings for other people also ignores 1 and 2. In order to kill someone as an example, you must essentially deny or ignore that person’s humanity. You are forever defining them by their crimes, and denying that their good actions matter or that they might redeem themselves in the future. You cannot care about such things if you want to use that person to prove that THIS bad action is wrong. The criminal becomes an object to be used. An example. A lesson. A warning. Certainly no longer a PERSON. Why should God, whose resources are unlimited, have to resort to using the corpses of his own creations to teach the rest of his creations to behave? It’s sometimes necessary for us to treat each other this way. It’s sick for the God of creation to treat his people that way.

I’ve heard the notion that God had to kill people and uproot nations so that the world would know that he is a Holy God, and people should worship him. Whaaaa…? I think this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how most people react to powerful acts of violence. When the Taliban blew up the World Trade Center, did the world react by saying, “Ah, clearly these people are powerful and awesome and therefore we should revere them for what they have done”? Um, no? So why should anyone be persuaded that God is worthy of worship because he can blow shit up? “Ah,” says the average Caananite, “Israel’s God incinerated Sodom and Gomorrah, smited Egypt, uprooted my family, ran us out of our homeland, caused my friends to die or become slaves and their daughters to be given as wives to the intruders, and destroyed my nation. Clearly he is powerful and awesome and I should revere him for what he has done.”

The only people who would be so persuaded are the people who are already convinced that God is worthy of worship…in which case is it not persuasion, but confirmation of what they already know. “Yes, this proves that the God I already knew to be mighty is, in fact, mighty.” The unconvinced, however, are not going to be persuaded by an argument of “You really should worship and obey me because look what happens when you DON’T AND I GET PISSED AT YOU?” If anything, the unconvinced are only going to be further alienated by a God who makes examples out of entire nations. They’re not going to fall on their faces before a Holy God, because they’re going to be too busy screaming in terror and running AS FAR AWAY AS THEY CAN GET from the SCARY TYRANT GOD WHO BLOWS THINGS UP.

Ah, but he only blows up the bad nations, right? Except for the fact that a nation is made up of people, no person is devoid of goodness and EVERY PERSON MATTERS, and the only one capable of consistently acting in a manner that affirms these truths is GOD. Our world is full of moral shades of gray, and not all of our actions have to be good in order to advance the greater good. But Christians glean their definition of Good from the things that God does. God, therefore, who is the originator and source of all that falls within the definition of Good, does not have the “luxury” of doing Bad things for Good causes.

Therefore if God says killing people is bad, either he is lying, or he doesn’t kill people. So where the Bible says God murdered Egyptians and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, I must take the stance that the Bible is wrong if I do not wish to take the stance that Evil is Good when God Does It. If God says vengeance is bad, then either he is lying, or he doesn’t take revenge on people. Therefore where the Bible says God ordered the Israelites to kill the people who had killed them on their way out of Egypt, I must conclude that the Bible is wrong if I do not wish to conclude that Evil is Good when God Orders It. If God says jealousy and envy are bad, then either he is lying, or he is neither jealous nor envious. Therefore where the Bible says that God kills people for worshiping other gods, or refusing to worship him His Way, I have to say that either the Bible is wrong, or Evil is Good when It’s About God Getting What He Deserves.

The originator of Good cannot have it both ways, or Good and Evil become meaningless. And I cannot tolerate it when people try to make it seem like he can, which is what one must do in order to justify a God-ordered or caused atrocity. Evil is not Good. Killing people is not okay.

Tags: rants