Biblical Contortionism

Fundamentalists like to claim that they believe the plain and simple literal statements of the Bible. But this is not true. I know this from my own painful experience.

It happened in high school. I had joined (by my own choice) a little Church of Christ cult. To them, belief in Jesus was not enough; even Biblical literalism was not enough. They believed that you could not do anything during a worship service that the Bible did not authorize. For example, the Bible did not authorize the use of instrumental music in church, therefore you cannot use it. (Incidentally, the Bible says nothing about this.) In particular, this little cult said that, since the Bible did not authorize the use of multiple little cups during communion, then you could not use them; you had to use a single large cup for everyone in the whole congregation. This was how they identified “saved” congregations: any congregation that uses multiple cups (individual cups) during communion was damned. This cult was hyper-über-literalist.

Except when they weren’t.  The Bible talks about God creating new heavens and a new earth, both in the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah 65:17) and the New Testament (Revelation 21:1). The old heavens and old earth will pass away. After all the blood-soaked apocalypsing, God was going to make all things new. I loved this idea, because I was then as now a great lover of the natural world, the clean and green forest, and at that time I thought it was God’s pure creation. I did not understand why God would create something so beautiful as the Earth and then destroy it forever. And so, one Sunday, when I was invited to give a sermon at a small congregation, I preached on this subject: we can look forward to not just heaven but a new earth as well.

Brother Bob was following every word. And the next Sunday, he went for the kill. Remember, I was a high school kid and he was in his upper middle age years. He said that the very idea that there was going to be a new Earth was a damnable heresy that would lead anyone who believed it to hell. Of course, that meant that I was going to hell.

But how could he say this, against the clear and plain teaching of the Bible? Here is where the contortionism comes in. A skillful Fundamentalist can take sentences of scripture and weave them into pretzellations (I just made that word up right now) and tie them into knots that make them mean the exact opposite of what they say. What Bro. Bob said was this. The old earth, he said, referred to the Old Testament, which is where the ancient Israelites lived: they lived in or on the Old Testament. Therefore the new earth was the New Testament. The old heaven and old earth had already passed away, and we were already living on the new earth. Therefore, when John wrote Revelation 21, he was wrong; he referred to the new earth in the future tense, and he should have referred to it in the present tense. Or even the past tense: the “new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven” in Revelation 21 had, from Bro. Bob’s viewpoint, already happened. So, this is where we ended up: when the Bible says there will be a new heaven and a new earth, what it means is that there will not be.

There I was, wilting in a front pew as I heard myself denounced as a heretic in front of the congregation that I thought was uniquely saved. This borders on abusive behavior on the part of a man who was supposed to be the spiritual leader of our congregation. It took me weeks before I got out from under the cloud of depression from this. Couldn’t there have been a private discussion with me first? But no; the first I heard about it was in this public forum.

So you can see why I sneer at the idea of Biblical literalism. The “literalists” aren’t really literalists. They certainly ignore the parts of the Bible that are inconvenient for Republicans. For them, the Bible is only a source of rope to hang people with. They have no more respect for scripture than does any atheist.

In the American Religious Scene, the Bible Doesn’t Really Matter

In recent weeks I have reconnected with a lot of old high school friends on Facebook. And some of them are extreme political conservatives. I guess I just have to put up with that and not lash out against their views the way they do against the views of everyone who is not an extreme right wing Republican. I mean, they believe things that would make a moderate Republican feel ashamed.

And, alas, the news bears this out as well. As described in this news report, Texas governor Greg Abbott claimed that President Obama was planning on putting Texas under martial law. What was his evidence? His evidence was that several Wal-Marts have been closed down for remodeling. Abbott drew what was to him the obvious conclusion: Obama planned on using these buildings to retrofit train cars with shackles to treat Republicans as political prisoners. Then Abbott decided to take action. He ordered the Texas State Guard to watch over federal military activities.

The fundamental religious doctrine of Texas Republicans is very clear. It is this: Obama and all Democrats are devils, and only the Republican Party can bring us salvation. Their religious doctrine has nothing at all to do with the empathetic, bleeding-heart Jesus described in the Bible. Does it matter whether I am a doctrinal Christian vs. a Christian Agnostic? No, because none of that matters. Only the zealous affirmation of right wing conspiracy theories matters. Therefore, no matter how much I might ever have affirmed, or ever again affirm, belief in Jesus as the son of God, Texas Republicans will not permit Jesus to save me. And Jesus had better do what the Republicans tell Him, or else they are going to kick His ass.

Some Texas Republicans were horrified at the blasphemous stupidity of the current Republican leadership. Former state representative Todd Smith told the governor, “Your letter pandering to idiots…has left me livid.” But opinions of Republicans like him carry no weight in Texas. God has directly infused inerrant wisdom into the brains of right-wing Republicans, and that settles it.

Our Shared Environment

I am sure I have written about this idea previously: What we do to the environment of the Earth, locally or globally, is directly involved with how we relate to other people. How can we say we love our human brothers and sisters if we pollute the environment we share with them? Love your neighbor—and it is your neighbor’s Earth.

A particularly amazing example of the disregard that some people have for their neighbors, and their neighbors’ environment, has come to my attention in rural Oklahoma, where I live. When I first heard about it, I could hardly believe it, until it was corroborated by a second person. I still find it hard to believe, but I will pass the story on to you.

One way that some rural residents of Oklahoma have of getting rid of their garbage is to put it in the flatbed of a pickup truck and drive around until the wind blows it away. This does not work for heavy objects like beer bottles—those are more efficiently disposed of by throwing them out the window—but it works very well for paper and plastic. There are two reasons for this. First, Oklahoma has a lot of wind. Second, the air pressure is greater down in the pickup bed than in the moving air (moving, that is, relative to the pickup bed) above the pickup bed, virtually guaranteeing that the light garbage will be lifted out and blown away.

People who do this sort of thing might as well have a bumper sticker on the truck proclaiming, “This is what I think of you, you worthless miserable fellow Americans—I will dump my garbage on you.” Of course, they do not want to actually say this, so they pretend that, oh-oh, the wind just happened to lift the garbage out of my truck, oh well. Maybe they are even salving their own consciences by pretending that they are not really dumping their garbage when they do this.

As I said, I would not have believed this story had it not been told to me by two people who do not know one another or live in the same town.

Creationism and the Ten Commandments

Christian fundamentalists are fixated upon the Ten Commandments. That’s pretty much all there is, as far as they are concerned, at least this is what it looks like to outsiders. Get those commandments etched in marble and put up at the courthouse or the capitol building, and we’re all set, we are a godly people.

And creationists say that the Ten Commandments depend upon young-earth creationism. Without creationism, there is no basis for the Ten Commandments. They may have a point there. In Exodus 20, it says that because God created the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh, humans should work six days and rest on the seventh. (Fundamentalists note: the seventh day is Saturday, not Sunday. But we’ll let that pass.) So without a six day creation, the Ten Commandments are invalid.

Well, there is no way around that argument. And since young-earth creationism is clearly incorrect (I refer you to my Encyclopedia of Evolution for 350,000 words of proof), then the Ten Commandments are out the window.

Lest you think this is bad news, think again. Trashing the Ten Commandments does not mean that we are all going to start jumping on each other and having wild sex and murdering one another like animals. (Actually nonhuman animals don’t do this; only humans do.) And this is because, even if the Ten Commandments as a list of commandments are invalid, the principles behind them are not. It is the principles that count, according to someone whose wisdom I trust a bit more than that of creationists. I refer to Jesus.

Back up a bit, to the Roman era Jewish theologians. One of them was asked, “Could you summarize the law of God while standing on one foot?” His answer was, “Don’t do to anybody else what you would not want them to do to you.”

The Golden Rule.

Jesus said it too. His summary was to love God (which is the point of the first commandments) and to love your neighbor (which is the point of the last commandments). It is sort of intuitive to humans who evolved as an at least partly altruistic species. It shows up in most religions and philosophies.

So let the creationists have their Ten Commandments. I will pay attention more to the Golden Rule.

Good Friday Message: What Kind of a God Would You Be?

I guess I wouldn’t make a very effective God. The real God, if there is one, makes certain that the laws of nature ruthlessly afflict anyone who happens to have bad luck, for example inheriting certain bad mutations, or happens to get a contagious disease. Would you be able to do this? I couldn’t do this. I would be unable to resist helping those who suffer and who beg for help. I would not be able to be as cruel as religious people think God is. I just couldn’t do it. I would be too much of a bleeding heart. You probably would be too.

That is, I would be more like Jesus and less like God.

I understand the argument that God lets people suffer because God expects other humans to come to the rescue. But this argument has many exceptions. What about the situations where nobody is available to help? What about the situations when there is no way to help? In these cases, only God can help, and he does not.

Oh, and of course, a competent God would have to send to Hell anyone who got their doctrine wrong.

Oh well. You can’t have a bleeding-heart God running the world, I guess.

When Religion Is Really Just Politics

A brief post as I get ready to teach a class.

Ted Cruz announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president. He was born in Canada. The Constitution says that the president must be born in the United States. But apparently Cruz and many other Republicans believe this does not apply to them. In contrast, the “birther” contingent is still powerful within the Republican Party: they consider that Barack Obama is not really an American despite the fact that he was born in Hawaii. Clearly, many Republicans do not consider themselves bound by the Constitution.

Cruz made his announcement at Liberty University, which is the pulpit of the late Jerry Falwell. For both Cruz and Falwell, God’s work on Earth consists entirely of whatever the conservative wing of the Republican Party decides it wants to do.

Christianity is sort of irrelevant to all of this. The only relevant connection with religion here is that Republicans consider themselves to be the chosen people of God upon the face of the Earth.

The Image America Creates

I frequently check the news on the Francinfo website, partly to practice French, but partly to hear about European and world news that frequently gets overlooked by American news outlets, even by NPR. Recently, I have begun to realize that it is a good place to discover what Europeans think about America.

And the French news about America is nearly all bad. One day recently, the top headline was about the racist video posted by frat boys at the University of Oklahoma. American news outlets that I saw did not indicate what the offensive lyrics of the chant were; the French news did. This event was so spectacularly offensive that the response that the University of Oklahoma made to the problem—essentially terminating the fraternity—kind of got lost. The image that is left is of a stupidly racist Oklahoma. (I say stupidly because the offensive lyrics were not exactly Shakespearean in their quality.)

And then there is Missouri. The French news has carried numerous items about Ferguson, and how the American federal government has identified pervasive elements of racism in the operation of that municipality. Here is one example.

All of this came within a few days of the historic commemoration of the Selma March. Franceinfo ran an article in their Expliquez-nous (explain to us) series about these historic events. Anyone reading the French news, and seeing these items in close proximity, can be excused for thinking that America was and remains a hotbed of racism.

Even if it is not true. In my experience, the vast majority of Americans are not racist. The college students I see every day—in rural Oklahoma—have interracial friendships, and it comes naturally: they are not making a point by it. But the slow work of building up goodwill is easily overpowered by the highly visible evil of a few people. In my own field—teaching biology, especially ecology and evolution—I find that the vast majority of students either accept some form of evolution and global warming, or else do not get vocal in their opposition. But a few vocal evolution and climate denialists create the impression that the whole country has of Oklahoma and the whole world has of the USA. You can say all you want to that this image is unfair, but there it is. I almost feel that I have to apologize to the people of the world for things that I do not do and which, in some cases, are done to me (e.g. the occasional creationist attacks). A Facebook friend posted that a friend of his who frequently visits Europe has repeatedly encountered the European view that Americans “are a bunch of gun toting, ultra-conservative, and self-centered bigots. Not to mention just plain nasty people.” This image, too, is created by a relatively small number of loud tourists who think that everybody should accommodate their every whim and for God’s sake speak English. I fear that the French visitors I have met may think that I and my family are among the relatively rare Americans who are nice.

This is a big problem. Terrorists recruit a lot of people who are convinced that most Americans are evil people who are perfectly happy to kill a hundred civilians to get one militant and who are perfectly happy to keep the vast majority of people in the world poor so that we can have cheap materials to import. They think that we think that we can create goodwill in the world by bombs and drones. No amount of military power—and we already have more military expenditure than all other major countries combined—can keep us safe if the world hates us. I think that Barack Obama has created a lot of goodwill (despite Congress telling the world that they are unwilling to support any of that goodwill, and asking the world to disregard anything Obama may say that is not militaristic), though even his overseas friends sort of look uneasily over his shoulder to see if there is a drone hovering there.

If only, if only the voices of good Americans had an equal impact to those of the evil ones. But this is not the case. Humans have the capacity to create reciprocal altruism on an individual level, but we have seldom been successful on a societal level, and the voices of selfishness seem to be making sure that any chance of goodwill solving any world problems will fail.