The Church is the bride of Christ, huh?
God and “his” church have had kind of a rough-and-tumble relationship, don’t you think, especially if we consider the Israelites’ disobedience and flirtations with rival gods through most of the Old Testament, and the god of the universe, almost comically, looking as if he is at his wits end and about to pull his proverbial hair out?
In any case, I found the following image via John Loftus’ blog:
Loftus makes the compelling case that
If a human husband said that to his wife, we would classify it as domestic violence. And rightly so. It reflects a view of the wife as property, and the husband as her lord and owner with sovereign rights to inflict punishment on one who has “stolen” from him his exclusive right to “sow his seed” in a “field” that is his property. …
And verbal abuse is considered domestic violence, so Loftus is dead-on.
His comments on the wife and property also hit center, for that is the very message of Christianity, that we are and should be happy serving as slaves to the big brother in the sky, and if we dare look at another slave driver (maybe a more benevolent one, if that’s possible) with a covetous eye, we will be smashed to bits. And yes, I am comfortable calling Christianity both spiritual and physical slavery because the New Testament itself admits it: in a right relationship to Christ, we are, and no doubt must be, totally void of self-thought or action. Thus, to be “sold out” for Christ, as I have heard the phrase turned so many times, is to be a slave to a guy for which there is not a single contemporary source that confirms his existence, much less his benevolence or grace. Not one. Nonsensically, then, evangelicals will openly admit that they are slaves to Christ, although they have somehow convinced themselves, with the false security of bliss waiting for them all the while, that this is actually a desirable thing.
