Would You Confuse Your Children...If You Were God?

Well you might, if the interplay between Immortal Parent and mortal children were a great chess game to you. If you were like Zeus, King of the Greek gods, watching the human anthill below Olympus, it just might be interesting to confuse those two-legged ants now and again, see what might happen, teach them a lesson or two.

But would you, as a loving Almighty God, confuse an already confused race?

See, once upon a time - the Book of Genesis claims - humans had only one language. Then, in an area we now call Iraq, a collection of these humans got real proud and architecturally clever and they decided to build a great city with a tower that would reach to the heavens. This remarkable and grand human endeavor seemed to threaten the Bible God though. So here's what that God did to all humans because of the actions of a few very good builders:

"If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other." So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel — because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world.

So the ability to communicate, to understand each other, was bad?

This is another prime example of how the Bible reduces God to a petty, insecure, not-too-bright deity: so inscient that he thinks nothing will be impossible to humans, and that confusing their language will prevent them from such haughty endeavors; so insecure that he feels challenged by these two-legged ants trying to raise their anthill a few feet...

Genesis minimizes God to the level of Zeus, just an average ant diety.

Now, if going to the trouble of confusing language, why did the omniscient God of the Old Testament do such a half-assed job? He seems not to have realized that scattering people would still leave them with remnants of a common core language -- which is why it's easy to trace the English word "God" to the German "Gott" which came from way-back Proto-European "ghut" and so on. He also seems not to have forseen that it would take about half a minute for, say, Genghis Khan, Ramses II, Geronimo and Abe Lincoln meeting and pointing at a rock, and saying their respective words for the object, to understand and start translating their confused languages.

Get it? Verstehen sie? Usted entiende? Okay, enough of the Tower of Babel. Where else does God confuse things?

He gave Moses two conflicting versions of The Ten Commandments; that's confusing.

One commandment says, Thou Shalt Not Kill, yet God repeatedly sanctions killing; that's confusing.

Instead of one ultimate pristine beyond-question true version of The Bible there have been hundreds, often contradicting each other. To this day, the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles have at least a dozen more books than any Protestant bibles; that's confusing

Jesus taught to honor your parents, and to hate them; that's confusing.

Et cetera and so on. This is getting tedious, kids.

Would You Judge People Guilty for Breaking Unknown Laws...If You Were God?

You would? Moses did, and he blamed it on God’s orders. His “guilt offering”. Look closely:

‘The LORD said to Moses: "When a person commits a violation and sins unintentionally…he is to bring to the LORD as a penalty a ram from the flock, one without defect and of the proper value in silver….He must make restitution…and give it all to the priest, who will make atonement for him with the ram as a guilt offering, and he will be forgiven.’
"If a person sins and does what is forbidden in any of the LORD's commands, even though he does not know it, he is guilty and will be held responsible. He is to bring to the priest as a guilt offering a ram… the priest will make atonement for him...and he will be forgiven. “

So, if you sin unintentionally, or do what’s forbidden without knowing what’s forbidden, you’re guilty and held responsible. In Moses’ day though you simply bought your forgiveness, paying a priest with one of your male sheep.

Bummer for those unintentional violators and ignorant scofflaws who accidentally wove two kinds of thread together or who - in their hunger - ate some shrimp. Off to the Priest; but what if they were too poor or too old or too crippled or too mentally deficient to have a ram to pay with? And just for instance, wouldn’t it be impossible for a blind and deaf man to a)understand the laws and b) pay restitution?

Since Moses decreed over 600 laws, and since books didn’t exist in his time, were all Israelites – and Christians and Jews today – supposed to memorize every law? Or rely on what the priests told them? How could one not be unaware, not do something forbidden? Try this: Open your word processor and try to list 600 laws that apply to you. I’m kidding. Try to list 50, and their punishments. I’m not kidding.

Ignorance of God’s laws is no excuse, The Bible warns us. As if life weren’t hard enough, with us puny humans barely able to abide by laws we’re aware of and can understand.

Now true believers will scramble to point out, “Moses’ laws were way back then. God’s not nearly so strict now.”

Ah yes, The New Covenant they call it. (Saul-Paul of Tarsus expounded upon this, said you can skip the ol’ timey sacrificial, ceremonial and dietary laws now that Jesus was here). Whew, that’s a relief. I’m in my cotton/polyester blend, eating shrimp as I type, and I’ve broken some of The Ten Commandments in my time. And I’m all out of prime rams to sacrifice.

But wanna bet with Paul against God that the Old Testament laws have changed? Rationalize these as you look ‘em up:

“…all your righteous laws are eternal…” - Psalms

“I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” - Jesus

“Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the LORD your God that I give you.” – God

Could You Be Wrong...If You Were Jesus?

If you could, on what topics might you be wrong? For insight, let's look at what the prolific writer and atheist-turned-Protestant C.S. Lewis wrote on the idea. (Lewis is renowned as a champion of "logical Christianity" [as opposed to Christianity by faith, which Jesus of Nazareth taught]. He's also widely idealized and quoted by American conservative evangelical Protestants, a practice as intellectually rigorous as Scientologists quoting L. Ron Hubbard.)

C.S. Lewis said Jesus was wrong. Check it out in The World's Last Night and Other Essays - 1960:

`Say what you like' we shall be told, `the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, this generation shall not pass till all these things be done. And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.' It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible. …The one exhibition of error and the one confession of ignorance grow side by side. …The facts, then, are these: that Jesus professed himself (in some sense) ignorant, and within a moment showed that he really was so.

Jesus was in error, he was ignorant...? How many "theologians" have been so brave to correct their deity. Of course it begs the following logical question: If, as Lewis judged, Jesus was wrong on one item, of what else was He in error? The Trinity, the Kingdom of Heaven, God, salvation, the soul, loving ones enemies, His own divinity?

If you were Jesus, could you have been ignorant, in error?

Would You Tell People Your Second Coming Would Be In Less Than 100 Years...If You Were Jesus?

That's what he indicated, and he didn't return...did he? Find these passages in your inerrant Bible:

“I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

"I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes."

“What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?" (the disciples asked.) Jesus answered with a lengthy sermon, the summation of which was: “I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”

In addition, over 1900 years ago, St. John wrote:, “Children, it is the last hour..." St. James wrote, "...be patient and stand firm, for the Lord's coming is near." St. Paul wrote, "...Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air..." (referring to his being alive when Jesus returned.)

If you were Jesus, would you have promised your return so inaccurately? See the next post (Jesus 4) for a bit more insight.

Would You Ever Resort to Violence...If You Were Jesus?

“ [Jesus] made a scourge of cords (whip), and drove [the money changers] all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.” (John 2:15)

Here The Bible accuses Jesus of being little more than a vandal, a pissed-off wild-eyed rabbi abusing animals and scoundrels. Would you do that, if you were Jesus and possessed supernatural power? You'd lower yourself to whip men and innocent animals?

Or would you perhaps perform a simple but profound miracle, equal in simplicity and effect to changing water into wine. Say, changing coins into bread, a lesson to the crass godless money changers. Whip them, they'll curse you and keep on gouging the rubes; convince them, and they'll praise you and change their ways, yes?

Think on the context and possible outcomes, kids. See if you wouldn't make more of an impact...if you were Jesus.

Would You Demand that People Hate Their Families...If You Were Jesus?

“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My follower.” (Jesus, quoted in Luke 14)

You'd say that? Come on. How about instead of "hate" you'd say, "distrust, challenge, question, leave behind", etc.? But hate? Your Good Book accuses Jesus of inciting hate against parents. The same book that teaches the Fifth Commandment: "Honor thy father and thy mother..."

Note this: It's a good thing Jesus didn't live under Moses' rule, because the Ole Lawgiver had this to say, as he quoted God: If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death... (Leviticus 20)

You figure it out.

If You Were God, Would You Create a Universe? The World? Mankind?

In fact, why would you make Something, where there was Nothing?

Why would you bother? See, as God you would be self-sufficient, self-existent, self-contained, self-defined, yes? Needing nothing, wanting nothing, lacking nothing. All powerful, all knowing, all present. Eternal and Infinite. Infallible and Perfect.

Then why create something as finite and terminable and imperfect as the Universe? As an experiment, perhaps, a cosmic chess game? Just to see what would happen, as little galaxies collide and tiny suns explode and dust-speck planets coallesce and bacterial creatures like humans emerge? You wouldn’t need such trifling diversions. Not if you were Almighty God.

And why create something as fallible and fleeting as Man? For companionship? A thing to love? A life-form to worship you? To grant existence to a cognizant being who would be awestruck by your creations? A steward for planet Earth? You wouldn’t need such a trifling diversion as mankind, not if you were Almighty God.

Moreover, would you – in your absolute perfection -- create such a pathetically doomed species as Man as your crowning achievement? Look closely: here’s a creature that, according to The Bible, is an utter failure. A species drenched in war blood and defined by absurdity and catastrophic self-interest. The very first human (Adam) failed miserably and his impulsive stupidity ruined and condemned every human since, Genesis says. So wretchedly wicked were Adam’s descendants that God later had to kill everyone on the planet in a great flood.

Would you have created such a species? Why create them if you’re just going to wipe them out? Would you, as god, not create a new and improved crowning achievement, made “in your image”?

Being omniscient, would you create a species endowed with such an overwhelming chance of living in poverty, ignorance, disease, hunger, suffering? Most of whom – after a miserable existence – would die waving a ticket to Hell, where their anguish would continue eternally?

Better for most of mankind to never have existed at all, yes? No people, no suffering. Many good clean Christians will tell you that Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Athiests, Mormons, Buddhists, Scientologists et al -- by virtue of their disbelief in Jesus’ divinity -- have no chance of an afterlife with God, and will simply end up in Hell. Imagine being a Jew, slowly starving in a Nazi concentration camp, only to wake up after death in Hell. Except for the geography, you wouldn’t know the difference.

Now then, kids; if you were god, would you create such a Universe, such a species as Man? Would you need to, or want to? You tell me…

If You Were God, Would You Conspire With the Devil and Wager an Innocent Man’s Suffering?

The Bible blames God for this in the notorious Book of Job. In a nutshell: a righteous man named Job enjoys a good life. He’s wealthy and has a large family. One day Satan visits God. (huh? God tolerates the presence of The Evil One, ruiner of mankind? Well if you say so…)

So God says to Satan, “You’ve been roaming around the world, have you seen my boy Job? No one like him anywhere. He’s blameless and upright, he worships me, fears me and he shuns evil.”

Satan says, “Sure he’s blameless, he has everything. Let's take it all away and we’ll see if he still worships you.”

And God says, “The bet is on.”

So all of Job’s livestock (his source of wealth) are killed or stolen, and then his seven sons and three daughters are killed.

Through all this tragedy, Job says, “the Lord gave and he took away”. And he doesn't blame God for complicity. A remarkable man.

Satan goes back to have another sit-down with God. God says, “See, I told you. You incited me to ruin him without reason, and still he obeys.”

Satan says, “Well let’s strike his flesh and bones with pain. I’ll bet he curses you then!”

So poor homeless childless Job suddenly notices that he's covered head to foot in sores so painful he takes to scraping at them with a broken shard of pottery. He’s so reduced that some visiting friends don’t even recognize this once great man. When they do they weep at his agony. Job cries, “If my anguish and misery could be weighed, it would outweigh the sands of the seas. God’s terrors are marshalled against me!”

At one point God, inside a storm, engages Job in a gabfest that pretty much goes like this for several chapters:

Job: “I’m not worthy.”
God: “No, you’re not.”

Now in the end, God gives Job back his health, his prosperity, and ten brand new children.

Question: if you were Almighty God, would you make a wager like this with the devil to gain bragging rights? “Look at Job, we utterly ruined the bastard, yet he still follows Me. So there!”

Once again, the Bible diminishes God to the level of a playground bully.

Wouldn't You Come Up With a Better Plan Than Unlimited Free Will...If You Were God?

This is a big ticket item with true believers, this concept that God allows his children free choice to commit good or evil. Absolute free will. Without it, we’d be mere robots and puppets, right? (The Bible never refers to “free will” by the way; the concept is an interpretation, mostly created by Augustine of Hippo.)

In their attempts to explain why there’s suffering in the world, good clean Jews, Muslims and Christian popes, preachers and proselytes will tell you, “There’s suffering because God allows us free moral agency, to choose good or evil, to obey or disobey Him, to act beneficially or harmfully toward our fellow man. And so often, we disobey and our actions cause suffering.”

Well that's an understatement. But kids, it doesn’t have to be that way. If you were God, you could have given humans limited free will; freedom of choice in everything except causing suffering in others. No puppetry or robotics involved.

You doubt it? Look closely: God endowed you with the ability to move, to walk. You can choose to walk forward, backward, side to side. You can run, crawl, hop, roll, dance like a Dervish or just sit like a Zen master.

But you can’t walk thru walls, or across ceilings. You can’t fly either. (Bummer.)

Why not? Easy. God’s limitation; in this case, gravity. You do not have absolute, unrestrained free movement. The Creator could have given you the ability to float, pass thru walls, dance on ceilings, but he put in place the laws of physics. They can't be broken. And that limits your free choice of movement, your free will.

At this point imagine if you were god then, and you set in place "MGL" -- The Moral Gravitational Limit. Your MGL states: “You humans can think any thought and feel any feeling. You can do anything except harm another.”

All those little bitty human beings down there on Earth exercising their limited free will, thinking bad thoughts and feeling bad feelings as they choose. But never harming another person: They’d deem causing suffering as impossible as walking up a wall, and give up before trying.

Now they’d still have choice, of course. They could choose to dislike others, to be prejudiced against them, hope for their misfortune, even hate them. They could choose to be gluttons, sloths, misers, drunkards or mewling politicians. They could be as greedy as Midas, as vain as Narcissus, as jealous as Othello; as angry as Goebbels, as cowardly as Barney Fife, as lustful as Hugh Hefner.

These humans of yours could be as weak and evil in their hearts and minds as the devil himself. But they could not harm another person. No harm in that, right?

Doubt that it’s possible, this MGL? Not if you were God. And not if you're a true believer about Heaven. Picture Heaven -- I’ll give you 30 seconds...

Done? I bet you pictured your own kind of Paradise where the weather’s just as you like it, the landscape’s just as you like it, where mosquitoes never bite but fish always do, where everything you need is provided and there ain't no locks on the doors. And you can even fly.

Oh, and neither you nor your celestial good neighbors ever think of harming another person. Because harming another can't be done in Heaven.

MGL exists after all.

Would You Exhibit Banal Human Frailties...If You Were God?

The Bible accuses God of such pettiness and frailties as vengeance, jealousy, hatred, anger, indifference. Your homework assignment: dust off that holy book of yours and find where it claims that The Creator of the Universe, The Architect of Existence, The Almighty Infinite Eternal One is said to utter such pitifully low-life remarks...

“Vengeance is Mine, and retribution…”
“I…am a jealous God…”
“There are six things the LORD hates…”
“So in my anger I gave you a king, and in my wrath I took him away.”
“Compassion will be hidden from My sight…”

Would You Order the Slaughter of POWs and the Enslavement of Virgins...If You Were God?

"Then The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, take full vengeance for the sons of Israel on the Midianites..."

So begins Numbers Chapter 31, a Bible tale of incalculable horror. Read it. I dare you. Thomas Paine and Mark Twain considered this particular tale a showpiece of how The Bible blames a vicious God for man's unspeakable inhumanity to man.

(For the backstory on Moses' war with Midian, read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midian.) What we're here concerned with though, is God's scorched-Earth extermination policy, the treatment of war captives -- particularly, little girls.

For after defeating the Midianites, Moses orders his Generals -- citing God as the Supreme Commander -- to murder every man, every woman, every boy, every baby; to take all spoils, and obliterate Midian itself.

Murder them all, except the virgin girls, who are to be rewarded by becoming the sexual slaves of the conquering generals who massacred their families.

The death toll? No one knows. But consider this: 32,000 virgins survived and were enslaved. Extrapolate from that figure at least 100,000 killed.

Now, there are numerous accounts in the Bible of equal bloodbaths and Totaler Krieg ordered by God. Joshua, Moses' successor, fit the battle of Jericho indeed, and the battle of Makkedah, and Hebron, and Eglon and other cities. And notice this: in every battle, Joshua and the Israelites "left no survivors, but utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel, had commanded." (Joshua 10)

"Now kill (the captives)..." Moses ordered his army in Numbers 31:17. Moses, the Lawgiver, the same man who'd carried stone tablets carved by God's own hand, wherein was written, "Thou shalt not kill..."

Followup on Noah's Flood: Was God Dimwitted?

If you were God, and you went to the trouble of slaughtering all but Noah and his family, would you then encourage the same dumb wicked species to re-populate the planet? "...be fruitful and multiply," God tells Noah and the animals after the flood waters recede.

Look closely: Let's say you're a cat lover. You have a male and a female in your house. They breed. Then their offspring breed and keep breeding and so on. And they're nothing but a disappointment, these cats of yours. The little bastards claw the furniture, puke in every corner, steal each others' food, hiss and piss and yowl. "Quit breeding so much," you tell them. "Quit fighting. Quit fouling the place. Share your food and quit making so much goddamn noise." But they ignore you - because their nature is to ignore you, after all - and one day you've plain had it with the lot of them.

So, except for your favorite male and female, you tie up all the others in bags and throw them into the river. Problem solved, yes?

Ah yes. And there you are later in your clean quiet house -- with two cats in the yard -- and you tell them, "be fruitful and multiply"...?

Would You Murder Everyone on Earth...If You Were God?

Surely you wouldn't. But kids, your Bible accuses God of doing just that in Noah's Flood of Genesis. "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the Earth," a regretful grieving God announces to himself before unleashing the Great Flood. Not so grieving though that he won't simply evaporate mankind out of existence; poof, you're all gone.

No, they must be liquidated. And look; it's pretty gruesome.

Imagine that rushing rising endless sea engulfing and sucking down every orphaned child and screaming baby and pregnant woman, every pathetic terrified soul clinging to anything that floats as they flail in the muck-filled water, their mouths and nostrils inhaling and choking and spitting the mud and foam, and imagine the mentally deficient, confused and helpless within this horror, and imagine the panicked parents abandoning this or that child as they flee to hopeless higher ground with stampeding horses and dogs and legions of vermin, ever higher to ever smaller patches of ground moated by the infinite corpse-clogged waters...

So much for the sanctity of human life, the innocence of animals...

Surely you'd find a way to teach the wicked little world a lesson without slowly drowning all but eight adults on a big boat filled with animals, wouldn't you? (How come every animal? If Noah could build a ship the size of a football field, and get two of every animal species on it, why not leave the sewer rats, wolverines, black widow spiders and tapeworms off, and take aboard a few more people instead?)

Now perhaps you're an enlightened enough or skeptical enough Christian who agrees that maybe The Bible Flood didn't happen as written, yes? Then how come you still believe the "core" of The Bible as written? You don't believe snails and snail kites and ants and anteaters climbed two by two aboard the Ark? But you believe that 2000 years ago a teenage virgin was impregnated by a ghost, had a child who was part god part man, and walked out of his own grave after he died? What special insight makes you arbiter of what's historic fact and what isn't in your holy book? How do you determine what's mythic, what's historic, what's symbolic, allegorical, poetic: faith?

You think the Flood's an exaggeration, an ancient Babylonian legend, an Israelite myth? If The Flood's a myth, then so's Noah. If Noah's a myth, then so's Adam. If Adam's a myth, so must the second Adam, Jesus, be.

If you were God, wouldn't you make all this clear?