Kim Davis and same-sex marriage revisited

This post is a follow-up to commentary I made Sept. 4, 2015, on county clerk Kim Davis’ refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Rowan County, Ky. Here is the original post: Judge: On same-sex marriage, ‘personal opinions … not relevant.’

For those who haven’t followed Davis in the last year, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican, signed a bill into law back in April no longer requiring county clerks in the state to put their name on marriage licenses, thus giving Davis and other public officials who object to same-sex unions a way out, as it were, from being associated with the sinful act of joining two people who, you know, actually love each other. The bill also stipulated that the state will use one marriage form, whereby couples can simply mark whether they considered themselves the bride, groom or spouse. Most recently, Davis has asked the 6th U.S. Circuit Court to dismiss her appeal because the new law makes her complaint null and void. Happily, the ACLU, which was representing four couples in a lawsuit against Davis, agreed with the motion to dismiss.

Credit: Chris Tilley/Reuters

Credit: Chris Tilley/Reuters

Amid a heavily divisive atmosphere in Washington and in politics in general, here is an example of a Republican-dominated state led by a conservative governor coming up with a common sense solution to a contentious problem. As I said in the previous post, echoing the sentiments of a judge who ruled on the original case, the conscientious objector provision does not apply in this case, and Davis’ opinion or convictions about same-sex marriage does not, and should not have, relieved her of her responsibilities as a public servant whose salary comes from the pockets of straight and gay people alike.

If she felt that strongly about it, she should have resigned and sought work in the private sector, where she is free to exercise all of her rights and freedoms as an American citizen. But all things considered, we have to conclude that this was a positive outcome for all parties, and Kentucky lawmakers should be commended in this case for making a smart decision. Of course, I can’t say the same thing about the state’s move to give $18 million in tax breaks to Ken Ham’s abortive $92 million Ark Encounter monstrosity under the leadership of, you guessed it, Matt Bevin.

But back to same-sex marriage. Essentially what I have argued previously was that religion has already and will continue giving up ground to modernity, and increased equal rights and protections under the law for members of the LBGT community are certainly no exception. Indeed, the church’s insistence on holding back progress in this way was, as I have said, “anathema to any kind of successful PR campaign church’s might hope to launch.”

Here is what I said about Davis’ biblical misgivings about issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples:

Refusing to issue the licenses, and thus breaking the law, should have been outside her set of possible actions in any case because breaking the law itself seems to antithetical to biblical law. Doesn’t the Bible say to render unto Caesar that which is the state’s and to obey civil authorities? I am aware that the Bible also suggests that believers should obey civil authorities unless the law contradicts God’s law, but this presents another problem for modern Christians because in a great many cases, Christians happily ignore Old Testament law. They do this whenever they hungrily gulp down shellfish, fail to stone gay people, demure from killing witches and fortunetellers or fail to carry out any of the scores of capital crime punishments listed in the Old Testament. And since homosexuality is barely mentioned in the New Testament, and not mentioned at all by Jesus himself, this amounts to one of the many instances in which Christians cherry pick parts of the Bible to read carefully and other parts that they readily scrap precisely because their conscience was forged by modern sensibilities.

To which, I got the following fallacy-ridden reply from a reader named Larry:

You … clearly don’t understand God or the Bible. Your education has failed you. Just by your statements in the old Testament and shellfish as well as stoning gays. You no nothing about the things of the Bible and now I understand clearly your beef with Christians. It isn’t because of things we believe it more about things you are totally uneducated on. So much for so called education.

I can’t find any semblance of an argument anywhere in there, but essentially, he says I don’t really understand the Bible and that I have a “beef” with Christians — I don’t on any personal level — and that my lack of understanding is at the center of this alleged “beef.” Since he didn’t bother to explain exactly how I was mistaken, I’ll do the work for him.

He might have argued, for instance, that laws in the Old Testament, like banning shellfish and admonishing believers to stone gay people, no longer have to be followed because of the new covenant of Jesus. But since many Christians obviously still read and draw a certain amount of inspiration from parts of the Old Testament, I think it’s still an open question: Should Christians adhere to Old Testament law or not? If so, which ones? Just those that do not condone violence or abuse? Let’s assume that the new covenant superseded or did away with adherence to the old laws. What do we do with the Ten Commandments? If Old Testament law is more or less irrelevant to modern Christians, why do believers spend so much time and energy protecting the inclusion of the Commandments on public property? The Bible’s position on these considerations is so far from cohesive as to make it all but unintelligible.

Whether the Old Testament should be followed to the letter of the law depends, of course, on which passage one chooses to read.

Take Deuteronomy 7:9:

Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations.

What about Psalm 119:160?

Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.

These passages, and many like them, suggest that God’s law is immutable and timeless.

Even Jesus seemed convinced about the unchangeable nature of Old Testament law even though he is supposed the architect of the new covenant itself!

For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. — Matthew 5:18-19

But many others, Romans 6:14, Galatians 3:13, Galatians 5:18, Ephesians 2:15, Romans 6:14, suggest the law was temporary and no longer valid.

The point is that Larry, Kim Davis and millions of believers like them don’t have a firm biblical basis for their strong convictions on same-sex marriage or homosexuality and since they probably have interacted or had a conversation with few, if any, actual gay and lesbian people, they can’t draw from personal experience either.

We are told that the practice of homosexuality is a sin based on the Bible. OK, but the only passages that talk about it openly are in the Old Testament.

When people like myself make the rather obvious case that passages about stoning innocent people or burning witches are among some of the most reprehensible passages in all of literature — thus casting an unmistakable cloud over the supposed omnibenevolence and just nature of the god, Yahweh — we are referred to the more peace-loving and palatable New Testament with its tales of human blood sacrifice, vicarious redemption, scapegoating and eternal torment. So far as we know, Jesus never said a word about homosexuality and the only passages that could refer to it, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 1 Timothy 1:9-10 and Jude 1:7, issued from the mind of man. I happen to think all of it came from the mind of man, but the strongest case Christians can hope to make against homosexuality and same-sex marriage would at least need to come from a source that is attributed to God or someone claiming to be God, even if the texts were fabricated or embellished.

The vote is out on whether the Bible, from the Christian perspective, even takes a firm stance on homosexuality, and when it does take a stance, it comes off as brazenly barbaric and immoral. [note]Dismissing the primitive barbarity of the Old Testament on grounds that it can’t be judged based on today’s standards of morality gets believers nowhere either because they use their own modern standards to make judgement calls on everything else in life, and even about the wanton morality of opposing religions, so why should the Bible, which is presented to us a cohesive book from start to finish, be any different?[/note] We may go so far as to say that since the character of God in the Old Testament is supposedly the same today as he was yesterday (Malachi 3:6), maybe he actually does want us to go around killing gay people in the streets and torching witches in spite of the new covenant.

Comically, we might even imagine Yahweh and Jesus — if we can imagine them at all — bickering over these points. The best we can say, then, is that the Bible is incoherent on the topic of homosexuality. So, where do Christians and conservatives get the idea that they should oppose equal rights for members of the gay and lesbian community, most of whom they know nothing about, at every turn? Maybe that’s a question Christians should ask themselves.

The truth is that sooner or later, the church and conservatives as a whole, are going to have to exercise a small amount of reason and reform their thinking and behavior on same-sex marriage, just as they will, or already have, on other topics — the persistent and morally bankrupt resistance to potentially life-saving stem cell research comes to mind — or face continued irrelevance because they will ultimately lose the argument, as the wave of progress moves forward with or without them tumbling wayward in its wake.

[Credit: Cover artwork, “Falling in the Ocean,” by DeviantArt user kil1k.]

Human origins of the biblical canon

One component of counter-apologetics, and certainly Christian apologetics, that isn’t discussed very often, but perhaps should be, is the creation of the Bible itself; that is, the series of events leading up to what we now have as the supposedly signed, sealed and delivered version of the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, and the New Testament.

The running assumption in Protestant Christian circles, of course, is that the current work we now refer to as the New Testament was written and inspired by God shortly after the death of Christ in the 1st century and then compiled as the complete Bible with 66 books telling a cohesive narrative about man’s fall in the garden, his wandering in the desert, God’s followers prophesying about a coming messiah, Jesus’ birth, baptism, his miracles, his trial and execution and finally, his ascension and eventual return. Although doubting believers or inquisitive types may, on occasion, look outside the accepted apologetic literature in book stores and churches, most lay churchgoers simply take it as a given, as I did for so many years, that these books came together in a packaged, unaltered form straight from scribes and teachers in Jerusalem and Rome. Pastors, of course, know full well that this almost certainly is not the case, that the real history of the biblical canon is a lot messier than all of that, which is why it’s rarely, if ever, mentioned inside the walls of Protestant churches. If believers knew that the Bible was cobbled together piecemeal over the course of centuries, well then, they might begin to wonder about other aspects of scripture that look altogether manmade, and if that happened, pastors might have fewer numbers in the flock and so, the dominos might fall …

Church leaders can’t have that, so they sell a narrative about the divine origins of scripture, and simply leave it at that. And if an inquisitive mind does, by chance, raise a hand to ask how exactly these books came to us in modern form, they no doubt will answer in platitudes and vagaries, and make references to other apologetic works, as does Don Stewart, a contributor for the Blue Letter Bible, in response to the following question:

(Question): Who Decided Which Books Should Be Placed in the Bible?

The simple answer is that God decided which books should be in the canon. He was the final determiner. J. 1. Packer writes:

The church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity. God gave us gravity, by his work of creation, and similarly he gave us the New Testament canon, by inspiring the individual books that make it up (J. 1. Packer, God Speaks To Man, p. 81).

Stewart then quotes from someone named F. F. Bruce, author of “The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?”:

One thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognizing their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirect. The first ecclesiastical councils to classify the canonical books were both held in North Africa — at Hippo Regius in 393 and at Carthage in 397 — but what these councils did was not to impose something new upon the Christian communities but to codify what was already the general practice of these communities.

The implied argument here is that early followers of the Christian church were already adhering to a set of traditions and teachings that were most likely passed down verbally through the generations. The church simply codified that which was already accepted as a coherent narrative carrying through from Genesis to the supposed events of the New Testament. Bruce only tells part of the story here. The work of shoring up various points of theology and developing what would later become the biblical canon actually began with the First Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. and subsequent synods, like those at Hippo Regius, Carthage and Constantinople through the 4th century. Although earlier writers like Origen and Tertullian had mentioned the concept of the trinity, now a central doctrine of Protestantism and Catholicism establishing Jesus as equal and distinct from the Father and Holy Spirit in the godhead, only at the council of Nicea was this idea solidified, despite the fact scriptures do not contain a trinity concept.

According to the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia:

In Scripture there is as yet no single term by which the Three Divine Persons are denoted together. The word trias (of which the Latin trinitas is a translation) is first found in Theophilus of Antioch about A.D. 180. He speaks of “the Trinity of God [the Father], His Word and His Wisdom (To Autolycus II.15). The term may, of course, have been in use before his time. Afterwards it appears in its Latin form of trinitas in Tertullian (On Pudicity 21). In the next century the word is in general use.

And here is Gregory Thaumaturgus in the mid-3rd century as quoted from the encyclopedia:

There is therefore nothing created, nothing subject to another in the Trinity: nor is there anything that has been added as though it once had not existed, but had entered afterwards: therefore the Father has never been without the Son, nor the Son without the Spirit: and this same Trinity is immutable and unalterable forever.

The idea of a holy trinity, then, was “deduced from a collocation of passages” and developed over time, as early church officials read the concept back onto scripture rather than pulling it directly from the teachings of Paul and the gospel writers, and since church leaders could not agree on the trinity through the 4th century, nor on which texts were indeed, canonical, until that time, what constituted “general practice” seemed far from certain, as it does today, given the sheer volume Christian denominations and myriad interpretations of scripture still in circulation. Here is a detailed look at the development of the New Testament from what appears to be a Christian perspective, which is an exception to the general rule I mentioned above that many apologists simply gloss over the information on the various synods that helped develop what would later become the Christian canon.

Of course, the best way for Christian leaders down through the generations to try to prove the Bible is the authentic word of God was to either ignore the early history of the canon, which many of them happily did, or purport that the book was formed at some point early in church history as a complete work. Indeed, as I implied earlier, if the Bible did not come to mankind as a complete work, and with it, the story of man’s redemption beginning in Genesis through the gospels and Revelation, is incomplete, or at least it was incomplete for the better part of three centuries until church leaders decided it was time to pull together what they thought was the authoritative word of God. By the time the council of Laodicia rolled around in 363 A.D., all the books of the final canon were included, with the exception of the story’s culmination in Revelation.

As this article on the origins of the Old Testament points out, the Hebrew Bible was not even complete in the 1st century:

… the traditional presupposition that the Hebrew Bible was closed by the end of the first century is simply unhistorical. James VanderKam explains, “As nearly as we can tell, there was no canon of Scripture in Second Temple Judaism.” … So how did the Jewish rabbis come to agreement over which books to canonize? There is no clear answer. It seems as though the canonical status of the books were decided, at least in part, on the grounds of the date of their composition—no books believed to be written later than the period of Ezra were included. This was based in large part on the Pharisaic thesis that prophetic inspiration ended after Ezra and Nehemiah.[44] However, this presupposition is a problematic criterion for Christians who affirm that the Spirit inspired the books of the New Testament.

Although the majority of believers remain completely in the dark on all of this — church leaders are hoping they remain that way — this information is now readily available for anyone who might go looking for it, so pastors and “theologians” have had to spin a new yarn. The new argument among apologists goes something like this: While believers have disagreed about a few details here or there — a few? — the central tenets of the gospel were preserved by word mouth for centuries before it was ever written down and canonized, so surely this speaks to the truthful, authenticity, poignancy and durability of the message? I know longer have a copy of Handbook of Christian Apologetics, but I am certain that I read some version of this argument in that book years ago.

Daniel F. Lieuwen articulates the argument this way:

… Clearly, it was possible for people to be Christians with something less than total clarity about the contents of the New Testament. They were able to be Christians because they belonged to the Church which existed before the New Testament existed and has frequently been forced to make do with no written copies in whole areas due to persecution or poverty. The Church preserved and preserves the teaching of Christ and of His apostles, and not only the words on the pages of sacred scripture, but also the correct set of presuppositions, the authentic tradition which is required to interpret scripture correctly. …

Clearly it was possible, since Christianity is still with us, but this argument falls apart when one considers the nature of God and the actual claims contained in the Bible. In numerous places in both the Old and New testaments, numerous commandments are given forbidding followers to add or subtract anything from the “unalterable” word of God. Here is Deuteronomy 12:32:

What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.

One has to wonder if that includes the 27 brand new books that Yahweh, omniscient as he is, would eventually add to the mix. How about Proverbs 30:5-6?

Every word of God [is] pure: he [is] a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.

Or the ultimate rejection of addition and subtraction from Revelation 22:18-19:

For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and [from] the things which are written in this book.

The irony, of course, is that the church didn’t even accept Revelation as part of the canon until well into the 4th century, as Revelation itself represented a violation of God’s longstanding “don’t add, don’t subtract” message dating back well before Jesus issued his “new covenant,” another violation.

An omniscient and all-powerful god overseeing the dissemination of his one and only transmission to mankind and inspiring the writer of Deuteronomy would have known, at the very moment of inspiration, that parts of the Bible would eventually be added to and embellished and poorly translated, such that Deuteronomy and all the other books of the Old and New testaments read precisely as they should if penned by isolated, fearful desert wanderers grappling in the dark. Indeed, the Bible as a whole, pieced together a little here and a little there, developed exactly as we would imagine it would in the hands of imperfect humans.

On this count, Christians give their deity far too little credit in imagining such a sloppy creator who, when we apply just a touch of logic, disintegrates into absurdity.

Creationists and intelligent design advocates want us to believe that God, in his immense power, fashioned a world as complex as the one we live in, supposedly uniquely fitted to our purposes, innately understands every single nuance of the universe, from biology, physics, atomic theory and quantum mechanics, yet when the time came to deliver his preeminent message to the world, God somehow forgets all that information about science and the physical world and suddenly becomes limited by the middling rhetorical and intellectual power of semi-literate scribes.

What we have in the Bible is essentially a period-piece that is, predictably, built on archaic notions of sun worship and blood sacrifice trending across many mythologies and ancient civilizations at the time:

A truly impressive god, perhaps one even worth admiring, could have, with a single utterance or wave of the finger, delivered an impressive, noncontradictory book that accurately anticipates, to the stupefaction of his chosen writers, all the wonders of modern science and all the tragedies and triumphs of mankind without compromising on a basic message of peace, hope and love.

God’s ‘landmark debut’

As I was reading this article from The Onion, “Reclusive Deity Hasn’t Written A New Book In 2,000 Years,” it occurred to me — speaking tongue-in-cheek in order to make a point — that God of Old and New Testament fame has at least two things in common with Thomas Pynchon: both are recluses and both have made careers out of selling fiction to the masses.

Unfortunately for God, Pynchon happens to be the more talented wordsmith.

The Onion picks up from here:

NEW YORK—Leading writers, scholars, and publishers gathered this week at Fordham University for a literary conference and panel discussion on God, the widely praised but reclusive deity who has not published a book since His landmark debut 2,000 years ago.

Hailed by critics as one of the most important authors in recent millennia, the eccentric divinity is said to have long ago retreated from the public eye, eschewing a life of celebrity for one of solitude and quiet. To this day, experts confirmed, His artistic reputation rests exclusively upon His bestselling and highly acclaimed first work, the Bible.

“God has granted no interviews, made no public appearances, and kept entirely to Himself for what seems like ages, and yet it’s fair to say that no other author has been quite so influential,” said noted critic and conference attendee James Wood, observing that while the fiercely private immortal being has only one book to His credit, He remains among the world’s most respected and quoted writers. “For many readers, God’s writing had a transformative impact on their lives, and countless people list His book among their favorite titles. But for reasons that we can only speculate about, God has chosen to stay out of the limelight and let His words speak for themselves. Perhaps it is God’s retreat into His own world that allowed Him to render His vision so vividly on the page.”

“It’s also possible that, with the first book, He simply said everything He had to say,” Wood continued. “Though one would think a writer of such impressive knowledge and power would never lack for inspiration.”

Yes, one would think.

[Image credit: The Onion]

Judge: On same-sex marriage, ‘personal opinions … not relevant’

While I have been engaged in a debate on social media about the Rowan County, Ky., clerk who has refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses after the Supreme Ruling legalized such unions across the nation, I thought I would offer some thoughts on the issue here so that they are all in one place.

Credit: https://twitter.com/chipcoffey

Credit: https://twitter.com/chipcoffey

As most of us who keep up with the news know by now, a judge has held Kim Davis in contempt of court and ordered her to be jailed until she is willing to become compliant with the law. This week, U.S. District Court Judge David L. Bunning has received commitments from five of the office’s six deputies — the sole holdout being Davis’ son, Nathan Davis — and the office planned to issue licenses to same-sex couples today.

Bunning, who the Washington Post described as a “devout Catholic,” had this to say in issuing his ruling:

Her good faith belief is simply not a viable defense. … I myself have genuinely held religious beliefs. … (But) I took an oath. … Mrs. Davis took an oath. Oaths mean things.

And this:

Personal opinions, including my own, are not relevant to today. The idea of natural law superseding this court’s authority would be a dangerous precedent indeed.

To the surprise of no one, the old divisions lines were drawn up after the ruling, with same-sex advocates lauding the decision, while some evangelical Christians played the victim card and others claimed believers should not be forced to go against their conscience, even in fulfilling the duties of public office.

Republican presidential candidate Gov. Mike Huckabee came down in the latter camp, tweeting:

Kim Davis in federal custody removes all doubts about the criminalization of Christianity in this country. We must defend #ReligiousLiberty!

As I pointed out in the conversation on Facebook, religion has and will continue giving up ground to modernity for the simple reason that many aspects of evangelical Christianity, most notably in this case, a contempt for LGBT rights and denialism that homosexuality comes hard-wired through genetics, is incompatible in an increasingly secular society.

The idea that people like Huckabee — and I would wager he represents are large block of evangelical conservatives — think that Christianity is somehow being criminalized in America is laughable. Indeed, here in the South, one can find a church on nearly every block and in every city. Even in the more progressive north, while some churchgoers hold more liberal ideologies than their counterparts in the South, one doesn’t have to venture far from home in New England to find a place to attend mass or Sunday school. What is happening, however, is that society as a whole, notwithstanding periodic flareups of racial tensions, has become increasingly more diverse and less tolerant of overt prejudice in all its forms, such that, except in parts of the South and pockets of the Southwest, believers are having to rethink how they approach society. Pew has provided a telling look at how believers’ views on same-sex marriage has changed since 2001. For sure, shilling a literal interpretation of odious Old Testament law is anathema to any kind of successful PR campaign church’s might hope to launch here in the year 2015.

So, what of Kim Davis’ particular case? My friend on Facebook seems to think that she should have been allowed conscientious objector status so that she would not have had to violate her conscience in issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. When asked on what authority she refused to issue the licenses, she simply said she was acting — or failing to act — on “God’s authority.” Davis, of course, had options for moving forward that did not include breaking the law and going to jail. She could have ordered one of her deputies to issue marriage licenses. She could have resigned. The conscientious objector statute in U.S. law narrowly applies to those who have a moral hangup about fighting in combat, and the statute does not abdicate someone from their responsibility to serve.

Refusing to issue the licenses, and thus breaking the law, should have been outside her set of possible actions in any case because breaking the law itself seems to antithetical to biblical law. Doesn’t the Bible say to render unto Caesar that which is the state’s and to obey civil authorities? I am aware that the Bible also suggests that believers should obey civil authorities unless the law contradicts God’s law, but this presents another problem for modern Christians because in a great many cases, Christians happily ignore Old Testament law. They do this whenever they hungrily gulp down shellfish, fail to stone gay people, demure from killing witches and fortunetellers or fail to carry out any of the scores of capital crime punishments listed in the Old Testament. And since homosexuality is barely mentioned in the New Testament, and not mentioned at all by Jesus himself, this amounts to one of the many instances in which Christians cherry pick parts of the Bible to read carefully and other parts that they readily scrap precisely because their conscience was forged by modern sensibilities.

In any case, Davis did not get to endow the public office in which she serves with her own personal beliefs on same-sex marriage. Regardless, issuing the licenses would not have amounted to an endorsement of gay marriage on her part. I can imagine an instance in which a county clerk might not necessarily agree with interracial couples, but they would still be duty bound to issue licenses as per their job description.

As Bunning rightly said, personal beliefs do not and should not factor into the decision-making calculus when a public servant has taken an oath to serve the public, and if Davis had been granted some kind of exemption excusing her from her responsibilities as county clerk, this would have set a dangerous precedent and left the door open for other Bible-believing public office holders to claim that issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples likewise violated their conscience, thus sending us careening down a slippery slope whereby any perceived offensive law or regulation can just be dismissed on the whims of public opinion.

This a road on which we cannot travel. For the law to mean anything, the door to duty abdication based merely on personal beliefs has to remain shut.

His kingdom cometh, haven’t ya heard?

Doesn’t the Book of Revelation say a thing or two about a prohibition against adding or taking away from the Bible? No matter. A would-be prophet in Arkansas has apparently divined a revelation of her own from on high, Joseph Smith-style, that she deems the “True and Unfolding Story of Revelation 12”:

FROM THE MOUNTAIN PROPHECIES

BOOK TWELVE

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

The Kingdom of our God is coming into the Earth!

Oh Lord, my God, this is an evil world, truly a wicked and perverse generation! And, oh Lord, a nation of mockers has arisen before Your face, this nation of America, a nation, which loves a lie, a nation, which loves every kind of perversion, a nation, which takes pride in the killing of the innocent and the unborn! Planned Parenthood is now posting it and surely bragging that they killed more than 325,000 of the unborn and innocent babies in 2014! Oh, God, how we have fallen!

Oh, America, how you have fallen! Witchcrafts, pornography, adulteries, fornications, lying and stealing and covetousness abound! Oh, Blessed Saviour, how the people have fallen into these and into every pit of the flesh!

Oh, Blessed Saviour, hear my cries; for a great wickedness is upon this nation and upon all nations! Oh, Blessed Saviour, hear my cries! For a great wickedness is upon the nations and evil is thick and covering this nation and all nations …

And it goes on at length from there, rattling on about a mouse crawling up Obama’s leg and — spoiler alert — the mouse is none other than Pope Francis himself.

This is proof positive that anyone — and I do mean anyone — can put pen to paper, claim divine revelation out of thin air and it has precisely the same amount of legitimacy as anything written 3,000 years ago in Palestine.

The Abrahamic dilemma

Twitter was all a-bluster this week with a hoax — what a surprise? — about Ray Comfort and the story of Abraham sacrificing his son for God. A person named Martin Roberts supposedly asked Comfort whether he would be willing, like Abraham in the Bible, to kill his son to show his devotion.

Here is Comfort’s fictitious reply:

Of course I would do as The Lord commanded, it isn’t murder if it’s in God’s name, nothing he commands could ever possibly be considered evil as morality comes from God. Even cancer is a gift from God.

I would kill a thousand children if God asked me to, that’s because I have faith. As an Atheist you can’t possibly know the joy of faith. If The Lord commanded me to rape and kill my own children tonight it would be done by morning, you can’t shake my faith!

Comfort refuted this on his Facebook page:

I noticed an excessive amount of anger towards me today from indignant atheists, who were accusing me of saying “If the Lord commanded me to kill my own children tonight, it would be done by morning.” I never said such a horrible thing, nor would I. Please join me in prayer for the person who wrote this fake post.

Of course, that begs a question: Doesn’t a believer’s response to what I will call the Abrahamic dilemma really cut to the core of a person’s faith? If, for instance, a believer says he would, in fact, sacrifice his child, or otherwise commit some violent act against another human being, for God, this indicts him as a hideous person, at least based on our set of moral principles. If a Christian says he would not raise the knife and sacrifice his child for God, then the person is not a true believer.

Even if the words were falsely put into Comfort’s mouth, I think the first quote above is telling, for if a person has truly given their life over to God, then no act, however immoral it may seem to us, is off the table, so long as God commands it and so long as God is the progenitor of goodness itself. The person can simply make the plea, “God commanded me to do it,” and while we may lock him up and throw away the key, he may not face the death penalty on reason of insanity. Thus, so long as God “commands” it, rape can be good. Molesting young boys can be good, and it must be especially so among priestly circles in the Catholic Church. The same sort of “goodness” can apply to homicide and genocide, and since the Old Testament sets such a fine example for us, let’s throw in genital mutilation, the killing of the first born, pillaging, thievery, stoning and the rest of it.

This is why monotheistic religion itself, regardless of denomination, is dangerous when taken at face value and to its conclusive ends. It can be used as an excuse for any behavior, however mildly offensive or however vile. And in the Christian tradition, specifically, a person can make a career out of raping, killing and slashing his way through life, but as long as he comes back to the loving arms of the flock, repents and turns to Christ, he too can find absolution. And then, when his taste for bloodlust or sexual depravity returns, he can go back out into the world, cut a new path and return to the fold, time and again, rinse and repeat. This is known as the especially noxious notion of “once saved, always saved.” Or in other words, to quote the immortal words of the band Cake, “Jesus wrote a blank check:”

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Note: Martin Roberts, the person referenced above, has contacted me and said Comfort’s response to the question about sacrificing his child to God was not a hoax and that his screenshot of the response was genuine. Given what I know about Comfort’s propensity to bend the truth and skew arguments to suit his own ends, I’ll take Martin’s word for it. But as I told Martin myself, the Facebook post, hoax or not, was almost beside the point, and I just used it as a way to lead into the main part of what I was going to say about Abraham’s decision and whether Christians today would be willing to take the same gambit to prove their faith.