Christianity and The Cops

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I recently saw an accidentally brilliant metaphor by a Christian while reading a thread on a friend’s FB page. The post that launched the thread was a screenshot of this tweet:

I love the phrase “toxic Christianity,” and was actually pretty excited to see that, rather than a bunch of cheers and jeers from opposing sides, the thread had become a place where thoughtful Christians and respectful secular people were having a frank but productive conversation.

Christians were agreeing with the meme, and saying that patriarchy, white supremacy, and toxic masculinity were actually antithetical to the teachings of Christ. Secular people were arguing that, well… no, they weren’t. It went back and forth, with several Christians arguing about who is and who isn’t a true Scotsman, and a bunch of atheists pointing out what their book says.

Godwin’s law was once again proven true, but it wasn’t a horrible Hitler reference. It was a Christian pointing out how sad it is that people use the good name of Christ to do bad things. In this case, at least the writer was admitting that Hitler was a Christian. I mean, they said a “false Christian”, but whatever. So many Christians refuse to acknowledge Hitler’s Christianity at all, that I’ll take what I can get at this point.

At some point, somebody made the following comment:

“Just as bad cops do not represent the overwhelming number of good ones, the same can be said for Christians and Christianity!”

Well, I thought this was a perfect analogy! But not for the reasons that guy was making it.

The problem with police that is currently being protested isn’t about a few bad apples. It’s about a system that is infected by racism at every level. A system that was purpose-built to favor people of one race over people of other races. It’s such a powerful structure, that even the “good cops” can do nothing to keep even their own policing from participating in racism. Here’s a great explication of how that works.

Time and again, good people of conscience have entered that system, hoping they can break the cycle, only to find the system far too powerful to beat. Their participation, regardless of their intentions, ended up supporting that structural, institutional racism.

Christianity is definitely analogous to that. Sure, there are good, non-misogynist, non-racist, non-homophobic (etc) people within Christianity. But that doesn’t matter. The religion is defined by the structure that holds it up. Many have tried valiantly to reform it, but unfortunately inequality, maltreatment, and hatred are foundational. They’re baked in. You can’t extract them without jettisoning the book the whole thing is based on. You can try to interpret all the stuff you don’t like away, but eventually you have to admit that you’re now beyond interpretation, and are just rejecting your own foundational text.

Christianity is inherently poisonous. All the good intentions in the world can’t redeem the fact that the Bible is a racist, homophobic, misogynistic, genocidal book. In a modern world, where we’ve finally figured out that women and people of color and LGBTQIA folks are all, you know, valid humans… well, that old Bible is doomed to be forever retrograde. And since you can’t really have Christianity without the Bible, I’m afraid Christianity itself is doomed as well.

The only way to be a non-toxic Christian is to get rid of the Christianity.

Is Abortion a Sin?

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A friend of mine posted a meme on Facebook that got me thinking. It had a Liechtenstein-esque pop-art picture of a woman in distress, with the caption “Menstruation is abortion!” above the pic. Below, it elaborated: “Every egg is a baby. Stop menstruating, baby killer!!!” [I added punctuation, because these damned kids don’t punctuate, and it’s madness! Chaos and madness!] [and get off my lawn!]

This was obviously a tongue-in-cheek jab at the anti-abortion crowd, and my friend piled on with a comment that masturbating men were equally culpable. This got me thinking. Because here’s the thing: the bible actually DOES condemn both menstruation and male masturbation. Or at least it can be interpreted to do so. Ironically, considering how modern Christians seem to think, the biblical case against masturbation is pretty sketchy. The case against menstruation–you know, that thing that happens to most women on a monthly basis, over which they have exactly zero control–that case is super strong.

Just head on over to Leviticus 15 to see both things mentioned. Verses 16, 17, and 18 are all about men and their dirty, dirty semen. They delineate what a man has to do if he happens to ejaculate: how much he has to wash, what he has to do if it touches any clothing, and how long he will remain “unclean”. If that spooge happens to go into a lady during mommy-daddy fun time? Well, there are whole protocols for that too, ’cause they’re now nasty little monkeys and unclean. UNCLEAN I SAY!

Verses 19 through 30 are all about the woman and her monthly “period of uncleanness,” and, oof! She is filthy! Just disgusting, really. Like, don’t-sit-in-a-chair-that-she-sat-in disgusting. But the Bible isn’t just concerned with how gross it all is. No! She must repent of her nastiness! When she’s finally clean again (seven days AFTER aunt flow stops her visit), she has to bring two birds to the priest to sacrifice, so that God will forgive her for her yuckiness.

So the meme and my friend were right about those issues. But here’s the thing: menstruation and masturbation aren’t bad because they’re de-facto abortions, because the Bible never condemns abortion! Ever! As a matter of fact, the Bible condones abortion, at least in some cases.

For what extreme cases would the Bible condone abortion, you might ask? Rape? Incest? Danger to the mother? Hahahahahaha! Have you even read the Bible? It doesn’t care about those things! No, the case where the Bible explicitly condones abortion is if a husband suspects that his wife’s pregnancy might have happened when she cheated on him with another man.

For proof, check out Numbers 5, which very expressly delineates what a priest can do in such a case. It’s easy, really. Just make the wife drink a potion made of special ingredients (specifically water and dirt), utter some mumbo-jumbo, and boom! If the baby is her husband’s, she’s golden. She’ll have the kid and all will be well. If it was from another guy, ooooh! She’s in big trouble! But also, the pregnancy will be aborted, so the man won’t have to raise some other dude’s kid.

It’s a perfect solution, when you think about it.

And that’s it. There’s no other mention of abortion in the bible.

So… That’s it. Abort all you want—you’re biblically in the clear. Just don’t do anything nasty like emit any fluid from your body. That, my friend, would be a sin.

How To Be A Christian With Integrity

Posted on by in Believers Exposed, Christians Vs. The Bible, Zeal... too much ZEAL! Permalink | Share
What an asshole. 
 The face of integrity

Remember Scott Roeder? He's the guy who freely admitted to killing abortion doctor George Tiller in the church Tiller attended back in May.  Well in January he was convicted of premeditated, first-degree murder. 

That's a good thing. He's a murderer and he'll hopefully spend the rest of his miserable life in jail. As a matter of fact, I hope they offer him parole a couple of times, and then take it away the day he thinks he's going home.  Since he's into killing, maybe he'll take his own life and save Kansas taxpayers some money.

That said, I also must say that, as despicable as this murder was, it was also the action of a Christian with integrity. The number of times faithful followers of the Bible's god are commanded by that god to murder someone who has acted sinfully is… well, I'm not going to go through and count them, but it's high.  (If you want a list of 130 instances of horrific violence in just the first four books of the Bible, here you go). That crazy book actually commands the murder of several kinds of sinners explicitly.

My point is that if you read the Bible, with so many references to killing as an appropriate response to perceived sin, and you believe that the Bible is true and that its prescriptions are in any way applicable today, shouldn't you be out on a killing spree?  It makes sense to me… I mean, Old Testament is absolutely chock-full of thou-shalt-kills, and the New Testament, which many argue supplants the word in the O.T. actually affirms the philosophy as well. Check the last verses of Romans 1:

 28Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Of course, nowhere in the Bible is abortion expressly forbidden (as a procedure, it's a pretty new phenomenon), so maybe Roeder's actions are based on a questionable premise, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. He believed somebody was killing dozens of humans, and the government was doing nothing about it.  What else is a good Christian to do?  

As far as I'm concerned, this bastard Roeder is one of the only real Christians around.  Christians were expressly commanded to kill.  For a hell of a lot of reasons. If it's important to be true to your insane beliefs, then get out there Christians!  Y'all have some killing to do! 

Christians Vs. The Bible- The Lord’s Prayer

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I was reading the Bible today, and I stumbled on something familiar.  Even though we never did it in my church growing up, "The Lord's Prayer" or "Our Father" or "Pater Noster" is such a huge part of most mainstream christianity that I actually have it mostly memorized. Just from incidental contact (second-hand smoke and mirrors?)!

Pretty writing, eh?
 Pater noster, qui es in caelis

So I'm reading in Matthew 6 and I perk up.  This is something I know.  Everybody put on your most bored monotone and say it with me now:

Our father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our…

DEBTS?

Wait a minute… I may never have had to say this as a penance or anything, but I swear that doesn't sound right. I thought it was "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." Now I'm looking at Matthew, and he's saying "forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." What the huh?

Well of course this launched me into a whole flurry of half-assed research. First, I looked at as many translations of the Bible as I could, just to make sure I wasn't reading some wacked-out version without realizing it (it said King James, but this bible was stolen for me from a hotel- and I honestly don't know who the hell the Gideons are, so I couldn't be sure they hadn't fucked around with it…). Almost every version I read was the same.  For the most part they all said "debts" and "debtors." For the most part. There were some delightfully creative divergences like this, from the "The Message" version of the bible:

 
 Keep us safe from ourselves…

Our Father in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what's best— as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You're in charge!
You can do anything you want!
You're ablaze in beauty!
Yes. Yes. Yes. 

I gotta get me a copy of that piece of crap bible!

Anyhoo…

Having confirmed that the wording I had read was correct, I then googled "lord's prayer" to see if there was any explaination about the word swap. As it turns out, Wikipedia has a whole article about it which is totally adequate for my purposes (really don't care about accuracy that much…).

Basically the explanation has to do with the Greek and the Aramaic and debt is the same word as sin in some language or other… blah blah blah. So most folks who do the Our Father say trespasses. I guess my question is- is the Bible just not good enough for them or what?  Why do they feel like they have to change it?  Matthew wrote out a perfectly nice prayer, and thousands of people say it every day- incorrectly. I mean- if you're going to say it, surely saying it as written isn't asking too much, is it?

Yes yes yes.