A PUZZLEMENT

A PUZZLEMENT

One of my favorite songs from Anna and the King of Siam, is A Puzzlement. For the past week or more I have had good reason to believe that the religiously-primed brain is capable of believing anything. The latest was just a few moments ago when I first come Online. Seems a woman from the British Isles claims to have seen the likeness of Jesus in a jar of something call Marmite, a thick brown spread. If that’s a likeness of Jesus, Jesus had to have been the ugliest Jew who ever lived, and I happen to think that Jewish males are among the handsomest of men.
I am puzzled: should the face of a human being appear in a shadow of some sort, and that face comes anywhere close to resembling a painting of Jesus—painted by artists who had no conception of what Jesus actually looked like but painted him with a beard and golden, light brown hair down to the shoulders—it is automatically construed to be that of Jesus. Nobody knows what Jesus looked like. He never had his photograph taken and, to my knowledge, never posed for a portrait. Jesus was a Jew and would have had the facial features commonly found in the area in which he was born. Because he was a Jew, he would have worn a beard, but according to a Jewish artist I once met, Jesus would not have had long hair down to his shoulders. See 1st Corinthinians, chapter 11, verse 14 for comfirmation.
For all we know the images found in shadows and various mixtures that resemble a Near Eastern male of Semitic heritage, might just as well be that of Caiphas, the high priest who, in one verse of the New Testament, claimed that it was better that Jesus die than the Romans destroy the nation. Had the followers of Jesus risen in rebellion—as did the followers of another “Messiah” some 60 years previously, the Romans would not have taken the situation lightly.
Yes, I am puzzled, but then I am puzzled by many things.

TALK TO ME, PLEASE

May 29, 2009

Each time I boot up my computer, the first thing to greet my eyes is a view of the farm my husband, without discussing the matter with me, purchased just two years after we pledged our lives to each other. The photo was taken from the two-lane, back country road that led by our farm, and from across a grassy field. At the moment, I am wishing the camera lens had caught the back side of the house instead of the front. I can’t help but stare at the front door protected from the weather by a roof just large enough to have created a screened-in patio on which we could have enjoyed an occasional picnic-style meal while free of the swarming flies during the daylight hours and the mosquitoes at night. Although I ventured the suggestion often enough, I had no reason to think the message reached my intended target; I never received so much as a responding grunt. Ah, but my husband had a surprise waiting me when I came back from a ten-day stay in the hospital after giving birth to our second child, a son, on May the 11th, 1945.
With a sheepish grin, he proudly led me through the kitchen, through the living room, into the hallway, out the front door and … into a closed-in porch with a few small windows through which I could stare at the outside world! My screened-in patio was nothing more than a small room added to an already too large a house to my liking. We continued eating all meals at the only table in the house, the kitchen table.

With the above scenario in mind, I have come to the conclusion that there is but one way to put unpleasant experiences in the background: accept what happened and go on as though whatever it was, never happened. This past week I had to deal with a troublesome situation, but I’ve learned a lesson, one I should have paid attention to from the day my husband died back in 1993. Most of the time, I have. Too late for me but take my advice: if you need two large oak trees removed from your property, never deal with the guy who cuts your lawn and trims a hedge or two, a fellow who owns nothing much more than a riding mower and a hedge trimmer. You will be dealing with someone who deals with the guy who does owns the heavy-duty equipment. You will end up not only paying the guy who owns the equipment but also your “agent” for doing nothing much more than making telephone call or two. Guess in my case, I failed to heed the Yellow Page commercial …”let your fingers do the walking”. I kind of like comparing the matter to the cute little puppy who cautions the television viewer to “be kind to your behind”, only in a case such as mine, … be kind to your check book. Whatever the situation, talk it out

My Evaluation of “Left Behind”

A CRITIQUE OF THE NOVEL
LEFT BEHIND
by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
Chapter One

Left Behind is a novel based on the acquired beliefs of its authors and to my way of thinking, completely minus anything and everything factual. After finishing the book, I came to the conclusion that Mr. Tim LaHaye and Mr. Jerry B. Jenkins are both woefully ignorant of the religious and political history of the Middle East leading up to the birth of Jesus, his crucifixion and everyhing to do with the onset of christianity.
The novel Left Behind deals with The Rapture, an event that is to take place sometime in the future when all “true” Christians, infants and children under the age of accountability, will be taken bodily into heaven. However, only those who believe in Mr. Lahaye’s and Mr. Jerry B. Jenkins’s interpretation of what a “true” Christian is, will find themselves winging heaven-ward come the hour of the rapture.
Having once been a member of a Christian fundamental church whose members accepted the Bible, especially the King James Version, as the one and only Bible inspired by God, I consider myself at least fairly knowledgeable as to what writers, such as Mr. LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins, consider to be “true Christians”. Catholics, Jews, Unitarians, Unitarian\Universalists, Quakers, Jehovah Witnesses, agnostics, atheists and all those who dare to think for themselves, will definitely find themselves “left behind” on that great and glorious day known as The Rapture.
My assessment of “Left Behind” in not intended to dwell on my personal beliefs concerning such an event. I read the book as I would read any book. I expect a book, even one based on an author’s religious faith, to be “readable”. Of most importance—conversation must sound natural to the reader’s inner senses at all times. In other words, any novel written for the adult reader in possession of a scintilla of intelligence, must not dissolve into fairytale nonsense, not if the author wishes to hold my interest.
If Mr. Lahaye and Mr. Jenkins wrote Left Behind with the intentions of convincing a skeptical reader—and I am a skeptical reader if there ever was one—to believe that such an event as a rapture is to take place sometime in the future, they should have researched their story’s subject matter a little deeper than they did. If they had done so, they might have written their story of a future holocaust event with a bit more realism than they did.
The book might not have been quite the hilarious farce I found it to be if the authors had chosen a sub-plot other than the one they did. It may be of little importance to some readers, but Mr. Lahaye and Mr. Jenkins should not have used a “just discovered, miracle-product”, a product for stimulating the growth of plants as an attention-grabber for their story. Such a product has been in use long before the story was written. Hydroplaning has been used for growing plants with little or no soil for a long time.
Page one through page three of Left Behind reads like the beginning of a paper-back romance novel—and that’s all right for those who enjoy romance novels. That is not a criticism, I simply expected a bit more substance leading into the book’s subject matter: Israel has made peace with its neighbors; it flourishes and all because of a “water-made-into-wine” miracle. Page eight, paragraph two, Dr. Rosenzweig, a botanist and chemical engineer, has discovered, or invented and is keeping secret, a formula for a fertilizer he is using in the state of Israel. The product causes Israelite’s deserts—with the help of a plentiful supply of water—to produce abundantly. Israel, however, refuses to share its closely-guarded secret with the rest of the world. How Israel manages to fertilize and yet keep the world from gaining enough of the fertilized desert sand to analyze the formula, is left to the imagination of the reader, but unless the world keeps on the good side of Israel, people around the world are free to starve to death. Sounds just like the Old Testament Yahweh of the early Israelites to me.
The authors should have done their homework.
Pages 9, 10: Russia, in spite of a devastated economy and a regressed technology, is determined to occupy and to dominate Israel. Even though technology for assessing a rival nation’s ability to launch an attack is available to today’s military leaders, such is not the case in the novel Left Behind. In Mr. LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins’ novel, Israel is caught completely off guard when an unexpected attack takes place in the middle of the night. Evidently Russia, by the time the story unfolds, has no fear of retaliation by the rest of the world. I wonder—just how devastated and regressed does the entire world have to be in the future in order to make Left Behind, plausible reading? According to the plot, it appears God has chosen to take “his own” out of the world and up into heaven to be with him at the exact moment Russia launches its attack on Israel. How any reader could take seriously the following, is beyond my understanding. I give you …
Pages 11, 12, 13 … Every military leader … expected to be put out of his misery in seconds… … Was this some sort of a cruel joke? … veteran military leaders buried their faces and screamed in terror. One man retains his manhood, our hero, Buck. Military leaders scream and cower while our courageous Buck merely crouches under a console for protection. What a calumnious statement against the military leaders of today, tomorrow, next week or anytime in the future.
Buck realized he would be no more dead outside than in… Bolder than the military leaders in the same room with him, Buck, a mere pilot, decides to go outside and do whatever it is a brave man has to do! What a man! What courage! What bravado! Come, now. Just how naive does Mr. LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins believe their readers to be? Or, are Christian readers really that gullible?
He forced open the door against a furnace blast and had to shield his eyes from the whiteness of the blaze. Heat? White hot heat? That’s hotter than necessary to fire clay in a kiln. Buck stood there in the heat, his face blistering … Blistering? In heat hot enough to fire clay? Buck would have been dead within moments from breathing in such heat … What in the world was happening? …. then came chunks of ice and hailstones as big as golf balls … forcing Buck to cover his head with his jacket. Hailstones as large as golf balls falling from the sky would likely kill a man, but chunks of ice and all Buck needs for protection is his jacket? That’s some jacket! … the earth shook, throwing him to the ground … the only sound was fire in the sky … ten minutes of thunderous roaring … Buck turned back to the building … the doorknob was still hot … . The doorknob is still hot and Buck hasn’t been roasted alive? The story, as the author of Alice In Wonderland wrote, gets “curiouser and curiouser.”
The authors clearly used the Bible, Exodus, Chapter 9, verses 22 through 26 to describe the chaos taking place. If the authors had studied the original Hebrew/Aramaic language in which Exodus was first written, they would have known before writing the story that the word “hail” mentioned in the Bible came from the word “barad”. Barad was the word for hot stones, not balls of ice commonly called hail, and certainly not chunks of ice.
Page 14, 15 Captain Rayford and Hattie Durham, the stewardess for whom Rayford has a yen, are on a plane several thousand feet in the air. Buck was stunned when he read Ezekiel 38 and 39 about a great enemy from the north invading Israel with the help of Persia, Libya, and Ethiopia. Ezekiel had good reason to write such a prophecy because he knew full well the strength of the Assyrians—now Iraqians—to the north of Israel. He, too, was among the unfortunate Jewish captives during their sojourn in Babylon. Israel has always had enemies to the north. What is so prophesyingly strange about Ezekiel warning his people to be alert in the future? Any intelligent leader living in Israel and Judah a few thousand years ago would have done the same. Ezekiel knew that in times of peace, the Israelite people, as are most humans when times are good, inclined to backslide into complacency. In such a case, invasion from their northern enemies was inevitable.
I believe it was a General Walker who “prophesied” Japan would rise up, go to war against the United States of America and that Pearl Harbor would likely be the first target struck. He received scorn and ridicule for his prognostication in the early twentieth century. On December 7, 1941, General Walker’s prophecy came true. He is all but totally forgotten by the American people. Ezekiel warned his people against a certainty and is remembered by millions of Christians as a great prophet. General Walker was, in my estimation, the greatest of the two.
Page 16 through 19 People are missing … she was sobbing now … I’ve been everywhere … all over the plane … their shoes, their socks, their clothes, everything left behind … Rayford wanted to comfort her … he wanted to believe the woman was crazy … page 17 Hattie grabbed his shoulder … Should I turn on the lights … no, he whispered … the less people know right now, the better . So, some people are aware of missing individuals, but not making a sound—not even parents who had cradled sleeping children on their laps and have disappeared! Buck backed into a secluded spot and slapped himself hard on the cheek. I wonder how many “real” men slap themselves on the cheek and Buck is, remember?, a supernatural “real” man … page 18 … What was he supposed to do?… First one, than another cried out when they realized their seat-mates were missing. Now, at long last, those parents who are wide awake and aware their children are missing, cry out . They scream, they leap from their seats … Leap? from airplane seats? Not from any airplane seat I’ve ever sat in. … I don’t know any more than you do, but we’ve got to calm these people down. Calm down screaming, terrifed, bewildered, panic-stricken mothers, fathers, wives and husbands? I’m going to make an announcement. your people keep everybody in their seats., Page 19 … As he raced up the stairs … Forget the panic of mothers, fathers, wives and husbands who are already on their feet and milling about in what little space there is in the aisle of any plane, Buck finds space in which to race up a flight of steps. Absolutely the most miraculous miracle ever put on paper … but get the lights on so we can make an accurate record of who’s here and who’s gone, and then get more of those foreign visitor declaration forms. Sounds like a principal of a high school when checking the study hall, finds some of the students have taken advantage of a missing teacher and skipped the study session. In my wildest imagination, I cannot picture all those crying, screaming, frantic-out-of- their-mind- passengers calmly sitting in their seats, ready to fill out questionnaires. What kind of la-la land do the authors of the book live in?
Page 28 When the captain had come back on the intercom with the information about returning to the United States, Buck Williams was surprised to hear applause throughout the cabin … people clapping? people sitting next to sobbing mothers and fathers, despondent husbands and wives and are able to clap for joy? Incredible. Impossible, but it sure raises a question or two in my mind, such as ..
What, besides every last stitch of clothing the people who were instantly taken to heaven were wearing, did they leave behind? I’m trying to be delicate, but finding it a bit difficult: I find it possible to understand how people can believe the body and the mind can be changed in a twinkling—can become santified—but what about the content in the digestive system and especially that in the lower bowel? Are human feces left behind along with clothing and jewelery, or does that, too, wend it way to heaven? If so, will the term “holy-shit” be an acceptable term in heaven as meaning “just that’ and nothing more?

In Response To A Friend Regarding Prayer At Public Functions

A letter to the editor on the subject of prayer appeared in the Opinion pages of our local newspaper a couple of weeks ago. It reminded me of a letter a devout Christain sent to me three or four years ago, and to whom I sent this reply. I decided to end a much too long absence from my blog with …

Dear M*******
Yes, for the most part I agree with everything in your list of what a non-Christian can, or should do, when prayers are said at public functions. Ever since I left the fundamental church of which I was a member for some eleven years, I’ve made no spoken objection to prayer except when called upon to do the praying. In spite of my lack of faith in prayer, I do as you suggest … up to a point. I sit back and think on anything other than the prayer prayed. Sometimes I think about how grateful I am to be free from belief in such things as an unseen God, gods, angels, demons, devils, spirits—both good and bad—and all things relating to the paranormal. I am thankful to be free from all myths and superstitions with which the religious zealot endeavors to shackle my mind.
In your letter you stated, ‘it wouldn’t bother me a bit if, while at a graduation service, I heard a Buddhist pray a Buddhist prayer.’ Buddhists, my dear friend, do not condemn the unbelievers to a mythical hell as does the fundamental Christian church to which you belong.
However, if the praying-believer you were listening to happened to be a Muslim praising Allah—just another name for “God”, and for keeping Muslim-believeing nations safe from their enemies, and thanking Allah for his goodness to the Muslim world, your words, It wouldn’t bother me at all, might change to something like, Why can’t they keep their faith in their mosques, or in their homes where it belongs? Somehow that thought does not occur to Christians who think it is both their right and their duty to spread their faith wherever and whenever the occasion presents itself—even in tax-free, public schools and other such institutions.
Having written that, I still can’t get my panties in a knot objecting to people praying wherever they want to pray. The question is: why, when Jesus himself said it is far better to go into one’s closet to pray than to do as the hypocrites and pray aloud in public, why pray in public at all?

Whether one prays or not, for me the answer lies in the final verse of a poem I wrote on the subject of prayer. . .

The world goes spinning on through space
while heaven’s graces fall
as randomly as springtime rain
and sunshine on us all.

In the meantime, let us agree to disagree.

Worth repeating 2004

It is as I suspected: I’m dealing with a slight case of pneumonia, something I’ve always called “walking pneumonia”. yesterday’s xrays revealed the condition, but I believe the medication I’m taking, will have it under control in short order. But just think of this: In my entire life, I can’t recall ever having the flu—even when the entire household, six children at the time, a husband and a brother-in-law, all living in the same house and, one after another, smitten with the bug, apparently, I was immune. It was no picnic for anyone. Because I haven”t been up to writing lately, I’m going to rerun a much earlier blog.

AND ALL BECAUSE OF AN IDIOM
April, 2004

Once again, because the King James Bible, used by most fundamentalist churches, contains a mistranslation of an Aramaic idiom, another believer in the inspiration of the Bible, is dead.
Mark, Chapter 16, verse 18. They shall take up serpents … it shall not hurt them. Somewhere in the hills of either Virginia or West Virginia, another person, this time a preacher, believed he could safely handle a deadly rattlesnake and paid the price for his ignorance. He believed he could defy a rattlesnake’s affinity for safety and freedom, and learned otherwise. Because the event did not appear in the morning paper, or perhaps I overlooked it, I have only what I heard via the television for the theme of this small essay. Had I seen and clipped out the item from a newspaper, it would have been but one of many such stories I’ve collected over the years and stored away for future essay material. If only readers of the Bible understood this one fact: the Aramaic language, the language Jesus spoke, the common tongue of the area in which he lived and preached, was as replete with idioms as is the English language and just as easily mistranslated into other languages.
An English-speaking person has no problem understanding the meaning behind such phrases: born with a silver spoon in the mouth, he’s as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, she’s a mite long in the tooth, he carries a chip on his shoulder, she’s been around the block a few times, and on and on and on. In simple, easy to understand terms, Mark’s words should have been rendered: You shall handle your enemies. You shall overcome opposition.
How sad and how pathetic. Absolutely anybody who trusts in their ability to handle a deadly reptile for any reason whatsoever, has to be as naive as they come, or, willing to commit as idiotic an act as can be inacted … and all because of the belief that God inspired the writing of the Bible, including all the translations that have taken place over the centuries, and therefore, every word is “God’s Word”.
I sure hope they freed the snake.

Not In The Best Of Moods

For well over a week I have been “chained” to a roll of toilet paper. Not for the purpose for which it is intended but because it is less expensive than boxed tissues and just as kind to the nose. A couple of days ago I was invited, by e-mail, to visit a certain blog which turned out to be authored by a Christian Minister using the study of the Bible for solving various domestic problems. The visit did nothing to placate my somewhat surly disposition, and all it took were the following words—somewhat paraphrased: Are you comtemplating changing your single status to that of a couple? Is your marriage in trouble? The writer than invites his visitor to a class discussing the virtuous woman and divorce.
The VIRTUOUS WOMAN AND DIVORCE? What about discussing the virtuous man and divorce?
I have a few comments of my own before going into anything the Bible has to offer in the way of advice when it comes to choosing a mate and marriage, particularly when it comes to the female of the species.
The physical, and all too often, mental abuse of women by husbands, ex-husbands, live-in boyfriends or even would-be boyfriends, is not new. Here, in the United States of America, often referred to as a “Christian” country, the physical abuse of women is so common an event that it often takes the murder of an abused and unfortunate woman to bring the barbarity to the public’s attention. Women were, and apparently still are, in the minds of many men, property to do with as they wish. How can this be when, since this nation’s founding, the Bible has been hailed as an infallible source of wisdom and the supreme authority in every aspect of our lives? Perhaps that has been part of the problem.
Pious Christians, anxious to turn society back to the past, quote the Bible as the highest authority one can turn to for counsel–all the way from fundamental family values to schooling and politics. There is much that is wrong in today’s society, but do we really want to turn to the Bible and the way things once were? Do we truly want to use the Bible as an example of family values?
1 KINGS 4:29-30 And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much , and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore. And Solomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt.
Let those who believe that Solomon is the last word in wisdom, think on the following:
THERE ARE IN THE BOOK OF PROVERBS… 31 chapters containing 882 verses. Approximately 100 of those verses single out women as sinful and the root of man’s sins.
Chapter 02:16-17-18-19-20-21-22
Seven verses singling out women as sinful.
Chapter 05:
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-20-15-16-17-21-22- 23
Twenty one verses directly or indirectly singling out women as sinful.
Chapter 06:23-24-25-26-27-28-
Six verses referring to sinful women
Chapter 07:
5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20-21-22-23-24-25-26-27
Twenty-three verses referring to sinful women
Chapter 09:13-14-15-16-17-18
Six verses referring to sinful women.
Chapter 14:1 (A wise woman builds her house; but the foolish tears it down….)
One verse referring to a foolish wife.
Chapter 19:13
One verse refers to a contentious wife.
Chapter 21::9–19
Two verses referring to quarrelsome women.
Chapter 22:14
One verse referring to women as a deep pit.
Chapter 23:26-27-28…33
Three verses referring directly to women as a deep pit, one to strange women.
Chapter 25:24
One verse referring to a quarrelsome woman.
Chapter 28:15
One verse referring to a quarrelsome woman.
Chapter 30:20-23
Two verses referring directly or indirectly to sinful or contentious women.
Not one proverb warning women to beware of sinful men!
MISCELLANEOUS PROVERBS CONCERNING WOMEN
Chapter 12:4
A virtuous wife is a crown to her husband; but a wife who does evil destroys her husband…(No mention made concerning the evil done to women by evil men)
One verse referring to a wife who does not honor her husband.
Chapter 15:17
One verse referring to a house where love is.
Chapter 18:22
One verse refers to a man finding a good thing when he finds a good wife..
NOT ONE PROVERB COMMANDING A MAN TO BE A LOVING AND KIND HUSBAND TO HIS WIFE.
PROVERBS ON THE LOW STATUS OF WOMEN
Chapter 17:6 (Children’s children are the crowns of old men; and the glory of children is their fathers. Mother’s not mentioned.)
PROVERBS CONCERNING THE DUTIES OF WOMEN
Chapter 31:10 through 31 The duties of a diligent and virtuous woman.
Twenty-two verses inform men what to look for in a wife and mother. Not one proverb in the entire Book of Proverbs instructs a woman how to tell a good man from a bad man. Chapter 19:14 Women are the property of men and with no right to wealth of their own.
PS: Women were and still are, in many churches, considered under the authority of their husbands, and that includes the New Testament.
Proverbs castigating MEN for their sins and weaknesses.
Chapter 04:-14,15-16-17-19
Five verses refer to evil doings of men.
Chapter 05:18-19-20
Three verses counseling a man to be content with his wife.
Chapter 06: 29-30-31-32-33-34-35 Only seven verses warning men of the danger of adultery.
The Book of Proverbs give women little to no defense against the brutality of men.

Adjusting

About noon today, a compassionate veterinarian first gave Penny an injection which caused her to lose consciousness, then injected the lethal dose into a vein causing a sleep from which she would never awake. Now, with tears shed, I’m adjusting to her absence here in the studio. For many years I’ve been accustomed to seeing her beautiful full-colored calico body stretched out on a cot along one wall or, sometimes, alert and staring out the window. Poor, half-wild and frightened kitten that I adopted and brought home with me, a Penny that never fully acclamated herself to living with human beings—with the exception of myself—made my bedroom closet and this one room her world. I was her “God” and I trust, she found me to be a “good God”.

Reading My Way To Freedom

Many years ago I ceased to feel the anger and resentment I once held against fundamental Christianity. I’ve also forgiven those who convinced my husband that he needed to be “saved” and become a member of a local super-conservative church. It won’t do for only one of us to be a X******, were the only words I recall uttering when he first told me he was joining the church. I have only myself to blame for meekly following him into a church that I am positive I would never have chosen on my own. A few weeks after our basic instruction, sometime during 1948, I found myself among the “saved” and a member of a strict, King-James-Bible-only, Bible-believing, congregation.
My skepticism began one evening, either in 1957 or 58, when a good friend—a learned doctor—said to me, you think you are thinking but you are not cogitating. Two or three years later, after reading first, Worlds In Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky, a Russian scientist, and Man And His Gods by Homer W. Smith, a history professor and pundit on ancient Middle East religions, I knew for a certainty I was on my way to “Freedom From Religion”.

Some thirty-six, thirty-seven years later, I answered a rapping on the front door to find a neatly dressed, pleasant-faced man, possibly in his mid-forties, holding a small briefcase in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other. He introduced himself as a Baptist preacher making a tour of the neighborhood, inviting its residents to attend a special service being held the following Sunday in a nearby boating club. I thanked him politely, but told him I did not attend church services of any kind, something he must not have been accustomed to hearing. He paused for a moment, then insisted on knowing my reasons for not attending church. I told him I did not care to discuss such matters on the porch and invited him in. Although I suspected he had a Bible in his briefcase, he asked me if I had one and I told him I did. I went into my studio and chose the Revised King James Bible. I might just as well have handed him the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures favored by Jehovah Witnesses, which I have. Seems the one and only Bible containing the “Holy Word of God” is the King James Version published during the reign of King James of England. I happened to own a well-worn copy of that particular Bible and brought it forth.
As he began to explain the one and only way to salvation, a subject with which I was already well-versed, and since he wanted to know why I shunned church, I asked him to explain Leviticus, Chapter 27, verses 28 and 29. He opened the Bible to Leviticus, found the proper verses and read them—to himself. He continued to gaze down on the page for a few moments, then closed the book and told me he would explain them by letter. However, in the letter I received three or four days later, he completely ignored the book of Leviticus. Instead of an explanation, I received, not only a sermon, but discovered I was a sinner no better than Eve, the Eve who first brought sin into the world when she disobeyed God. Furthermore, I was on my way to hell! He hoped I would reconsider my obstinacy, and that he would pray for me. It isn’t prayer I was after.
Until somebody can convince me that Leviticus, chapter 27, verses 28 and 29 means something other than what they so obviously state, those verses will continue to mean exactly what I read into them when I first stumbled upon them. No Sunday School teacher I ever had ever referred to those particular scriptures, nor had I ever heard them used in any sermon I ever listened to. Seems God, according to the Bible, and at least up until the birth of Jesus, approved the practice of human sacrifice—as long as the victim was sacrificed to him. They also explain Jephthah’s vow to the Lord and his subsequent sacrifice of his only daughter to God in the form of a burnt offering. They also explain why God, without the slightest protest, willingly accepted the murder of an innocent virgin. Judges, Chapter Eleven. As for Onan, Genesis, Chapter 38, verses 9 and 10, for merely “spilling his seed on the ground”, God slew him. In no way could I accept and love such a God.
Recently, I shared a few memories on my blogsite. I wrote about my reasons for becoming a member of a fundamental Christian church sometime during 1948, and my reasons for leaving the church sometime during 1960. A friend from long ago, keeps in touch with me via e-mail and reads everything I add to my blogsite. In spite of her affection for me and her concern for my soul, I felt a bit challenged when she accused me of blaming God for the bad turns in my life. There are consequences for turning one’s back on God, she wrote. When challenged, I rise to the occasion.
How can I blame God for “the bad turns in my life, when I believe this: if there is a “God”, a Divine Creator, he could not be the God of the “Holy Bible”. For all I know, there is a Force that set all things into motion, but whatever that Force is, I cannot believe that “He/She/It/ Whatever”, inspired men to write what I read when I read the Bible—for instance: according to most Christians I’ve met over the years, God created just one man and one woman with whom to begin the population of the earth. To believe in that God, I have to believe in the Creation story as found in the first five chapters of Genesis. Ah, but I see a serious flaw in the account.
Cain was sent into exile before the birth of Seth. Seth, the first son said to born in the likeness of Adam, was born when Adam was one hundred and thirty years old. I digress a bit here … in whose, or what likeness, were Cain and Abel born? Perhaps a bit ape-like, with Cain a bit more ape-like than Abel? That would somewhat explain “Biblical” evolution, would it not?
According to Christians I have known throughout the years, I am not permitted to assume anything whatsoever when I read the Bible, and yet, they do it all the time. Christians assume, in spite of the Bible’s silence on the subject, that Adam and Eve had other children after the birth of Abel and before the birth of Seth. If true, how was it possible for those sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters, to have committed incest to the point their offspring could have multiplied, moved far away, built cities and become strangers to Cain—and to have done so in the space of one hundred and fifteen years, give or take a year or two. Cain must have been at least in his teens when he slew Abel. Not that it really matters but, at what point in time did God change his mind and declare incest to be a sin?
To believe in the God of the Bible, I have to believe in a God who, at one time, delighted in the sight of sacrificial blood, and found the stink of burning flesh, a pleasing aroma. I’ve never understood that God and never will.
To believe in God, I have to believe in a God so devoid of pity and understanding that he demanded the death by stoning of any bride who did not produce proof of her virginity—blood on the sheet after her wedding night. I find it impossible to believe in and love such a God.
To believe in God, I have to believe in a God who commanded the wife of a priest to be burnt to death, should she commit adultery. I would despise any God who demanded such a cruel death for anyone, regardless of the sin committed. To heads of households, God gave them power of life and death over all female members in the family. As a female, I’d also despise that god—if he existed.
To believe in the God of the Bible, I have to believe in the power of voodoo. I have to believe God gave husbands the right to drag their wives—whom they only have to suspect of committing adultery—before a priest and force them to drink a concoction that could very well kill them. Ordeal by trial was widely used by the church for proof of innocence during the dark ages. In the Bible story, the accused, or suspected women, were given a bowl of water to drink containing dust gathered from in front of an altar where goats, sheep and cattle were sacrificed. The concoction might well kill the women because the gathered dust could contain anthrax! Anthrax can be fatal if swallowed.
To believe in God, I have to believe in more voodoo … sheep and goats able to defy genetics—if they but mate before saplings stripped of their bark, but even more, …
To believe in God, I have to believe he sanctioned child sacrifice! Exodus 22: 29, 30. I would like to read so much as one scripture in the Bible where God “specifically” forbids the early Israelites from sacrificing their children to him. He did, indeed, forbid the sacrifice of children to other gods, such as the Philistine, Baal. If the early Israelites were not commanded to sacrifice their firstborn sons to God, how did the commandment find its way into the “Holy Bible”? I am aware that the word “likewise” has been removed from at least one Bible in my possession. The word, likewise, is ignored by believers who do not, or cannot believe verses 29 and 30 really mean what they say.
Even so … why, if it was not an accepted practice to sacrifice a son to God, was it possible for Abraham—for no other reason than he believed God told him to sacrifice Isaac—to set off on a journey without fearing the wrath of the priests, his neighbors, or the camp elders, upon returning home without his son? God’s intervention in the matter, does not negate the seriousness of the question.
To believe in God, I have to believe God gave instructions to his people, by way of Moses, to stone to death and discard the flesh of any ox who gores a man, and the man dies. The unfortunate animal is not to be killed humanely and its flesh given to the poor. No, God demands the helpless and doomed creature to suffer a slow and hideously-painful death. Naturally, after being stoned to death, its flesh would be unfit to be eaten by a human being. No: I cannot believe in that God.
I also have to believe that any animal: sheep, goat, calf, dog, when used for sexual pleasure, those helpless creatures whom God created without the sense to know right from wrong, must suffer the same senseless and brutal method of execution as its abuser. They, too, must be stoned to death. Why, in the name of God, would God command such cruelties as those few I’ve stated? There are many, many more. Christians may have no problem with such a God, but I do.
My friend’s letter continued, Now you refuse to acknowledge His existence. That is definitely your right to choose. But please know, that when we turn our back on Him, there are consequences. I wrote: I know, you believe those “consequences” to be eternity in hell. Well, at one time, a long time ago, I, too, believed that to be true. My friend added, “Even Paul taught on judgment”.
I replied, “Yes, Paul indeed wrote on the subject of judgment, but Christians, those already convinced that hell exists before they read Paul’s letters to the churches, read his words without comprehending what he actually wrote. Paul, indeed, believed in eternal life for the “saved”, and I have no wish to even try to alter the fact, but a careful reading of his letters, reveals that while he believed in salvation for the saved, he also believed the “unsaved” would simply cease to exist. Please, somebody, send me so much as one scripture wherein Paul describes the torments of a fiery hell awaiting the unsaved, and I will re-examine his letters more closely than I have. Just remember, Paul was, as were other Jews of his time, caught up in the “end of the world” fervor—something still going on today among Christians—especially fundamental Christians as well as those Christians who have a somewhat, more sensible understanding of the Bible—Jehovah Witnesses. At least the latter wisely rejects all belief in hell. Did Jesus believe in hell?:
Fact: Jesus was a Jew. Have Jews ever believed in a literal Hell? If not, Jesus could not have used the terms Gehenna and Gehenna Fire to mean anything other than what the people to whom he was speaking, understood them to mean. If he did believe in hell, he would have had to be referring to the Old Testament. Where, in the Old Testament, can a reader find anything resembling the teaching of hell?
Fact: Jesus spoke the common language of the area in which he lived and taught—the Aramaic language. Just like the English language, the Aramaic tongue is rich with idioms. Jesus used terms such as Gehenna, and Gehenna fire, terms familiar to the people, when admonishing them against stealing, trespassing, envy and so on. Example: Better to cut one’s foot off than to enter Gehenna with both feet meant: Stop your trespassing if you wish to keep the respect of your family and community. Better to cut your hand off? Stop stealing if you wish … etc. and etc.
I picture God, if he exists, as weeping and greatly saddened by the knowledge that his supreme creation, the talking spirit—according to a Jewish friend of mine—finds it possible to believe all the horrible, as well as the foolish things men have written and claimed to be “His Holy Word”. I may have turned my back on the “God” fundamental Christians believe in, the God I know does not exist, but I’m open to anything the God “Who May Exist” wishes to tell me personally. “Something” must be pleased with me because, “Something” keeps leading me to the truth, such as …
I don’t believe in the impossible. Just four thousand years ago, according to the Bible, water is supposed to have covered the entire earth for several months to a depth of fifteen to twenty feet over the highest mountains and then … just drained away … to where? Don’t try to tell me that just four thousand years ago, huge plates, far under the earth’s crust shifted, mountains such as Mount McKinley, the Tetons and the Alleghenies here in North America, the Andes in South America, Mount Everest in Asia, the Alps in Europe, Mount Ararat in the Middle East—as well as all the other mountain ranges throughout the world—rose and land under the seas gave way creating deep basins. Though evidence of a catastrophic flood was discovered in Ur, the region from which the Biblical Abraham migrated, and directly south of the Black Sea, there are remains of civilizations of equal age scattered throughout the world that do not show any sign whatsoever of ever having been destroyed by flooding. There are pristine caves right here in America which contain delicate stalactites and stalagmites that took hundreds of thousands of years to form and which can be damaged by a careless touch of the fingers and yet, today, those same caves show absolutely no sign of ever having been disturbed by raging, debris-saturated flood water for close to a year some four thousand years ago.

No, I don’t believe in “adult fairytales”, or in magic, or in voodoo. Iron axes floating, oil vessels and grain containers refilling themselves for days, bread and fish that miraculously multiplies itself, wind that obeys a spoken command, and so on and on and on. I cannot believe in such impossibilities, and, I cannot conceive of a God, who is supposed to have endowed me with intelligence, expecting me, or anybody else, to accept such nonsense for truth. I gaze in speechless awe and wonder at the marvelous photographs the Hubble telescope has taken of the universe and sent back to earth, and laugh to myself when I think of some of the things I’m supposed to believe when I read the Bible.
Paul warned his followers to beware of myths and ‘old wives’ tales. I think I am on solid ground when I follow suit.
Fact: The King James Bible was not the first Bible in existence. If all Bibles before the King James Bible were directly inspired by God, why did it require, forty-seven learned men divided into six groups, three years to translate the King James version? And, why, did it require another nine months to revise it? That does not sound like inspiration to me. It sounds like good old-fashioned research and study, as well as a “hell” of a lot of comparison and selection from available resources. From pages 244/245, Six Thousand Years of the Bible, by G. S. Wegener, as well as in the preface of a King James’ Bible I once owned.

Fact: History would have to be rewritten, carbon-dating proved a fraud and archaeology determined to be a farce in order to be compatible with “God’s Holy Inspired Word. No, I think it is the Bible which needs to be corrected.

I fully understand: there is a faith that brings a peace beyond understanding. For me, I will continue content with the peace that does not require faith.

Just Musing

Although I have previously used the following poem of mine on Meander With Me, I am using it once again. After reviewing my reasons for not being able to accept the “God” of the Christian Bible as a Creator I can believe in, I have a few questions concerning how Christians managed to take the Jewish adversary Satan, who appears to have been on friendly terms with God—at least in the book of Job—and turn him into the Christian devil. Have you noticed, fellow-females, how “Mother Nature” is completely left out of the creation process and how women, from the very first chapter in the very first book of the Bible has but one role to play in God’s great “Plan”? I am going to allow your imaginations to take over at this juncture…? That’s it, for now.

THREE TIMES AND YOU ARE OUT

God is Good. God is Love,
or so Believers say
and all who hear and doubt this Truth
are doomed to Hell on Judgment Day.

In the Beginning there was God,
naught but God and God, Alone.
If God is Good and God is Love
then surely Sin was yet unknown.

If God with Holy Powers made,
to keep Him company,
a Heavenly Host of Angels, Pure,
as sinless Pure as He
then How and When, then What and Who
caused Lucifer to fall from Place?
Who tempted him, as he is blamed,
for Eve and Adam’s Fall from Grace?

Without the Devil’s Wily Schemes
we’re told that Eden still would be
the Realm of Man with Sin unknown,
with only Good for Thee and Me.

But Satan foiled God’s Plan for Earth
but how was Satan tempted?
Will Heaven see God’s Plan perfected
and the Saved from Sin exempted?

When once this World has passed away
and Goats and Sheep are separating,
the How and When, the What and Who
will still be out THERE waiting!

Not Even Prayer Will Help, If.

Seems an Online newsletter is making the rounds these days on how to avoid sure-fire castasthophe should climate changes cause the oceans to rise enough to cause shore lines to recede, or cause worldwide starvation.
According to the letter, the answer to any and all ills, both present and future, depends on this: a slew of “if onlys”. If only, human beings would be kind to one another, and, if only they would share what bounties they have with one another and so on. If only. If only. All those “if onlys” looks great—in words on paper. In real life, they just don’t work.
There have always been those who yearned for and envisioned brotherhood among the masses, but so far, I’ve yet to read of any but minor, long-time successes. I have the Quakers in mind and another, almost extinct sect called the “Shakers”.
Some eighty years ago, when I was just nine years old, the daily newspapers printed news such as that found in the Online Newsletter: We are seeing financial markets collapse in a domino-like fashion. We are watching our retirement accounts wither … investments wither … jobs eliminated, worry about sending our children to college … unable to pay our debts …the list of worries go on and on. I remember well the 1930s and its poverty. Men stood placidly in long lines hoping for a job, any job. There was little in the way of welfare and many went to bed hungry. Notwithstanding, few people locked their doors in fear of losing what little they had. Today, instead of patient, placid men standing in line for jobs, we would have riots. Because this country has not taken the stern measures China did to curtail its drug problem, if we have a deep recession, no house will be safe from invasion of drug addicts seeking a “fix”.
We survived the great depression of the twentieth century because the majority of the population in America were descendents of legal immigrants who had deep respect for law and order. Overpopulation of America was not yet a valid reason for cutting back on unrestrained growth. Today? The population, both by birth and immigration, legal and otherwise, is growing a a rate when people will soon far outgrow the available jobs. Unlike nations such as China and India, who have jobs making products for sale here in America, for whom will the people in this country produce products?
Those who believe that each and every fertilized human egg must be compared to, or viewed as a newborn baby, had better begin visualizing this world stripped of its resources while overflowing with hungry, homeless and desparate human beings with nothing left to live for. To date, the Hubble telescope with its ability to probe outer space, has not located so much as one, large or small hospitable planet to which the human race can escape when needed. Unless disease, war and the elements succeed in reducing the population, this planet is in for serious problems: not in the lifetime of most living today, but in too many other lifetimes, such as my grandchildren and all the grandchildren to follow. To get back to the thirtie’s depression. …
Many of those “ifs” mentioned in the online newsletter, were applied to one another by the average citizen in this country during the thirties. That was then: now is now. You’ve only to keep up with the daily news to understand that. America is not the America I remember eighty years ago. As for nations? In all the history of mankind, there appears to be no record of one nation volunteering to “move over and make room” for another, or willing to reduce its standard of living in order to improve that of another.
If the present depression deepens to equal that of the thirties, I fear the consequences. Yes, we had crime during thirties, but when a teenager, I felt no fear walking home from a movie late in the evening, old women needn’t fear being mugged carrying bags of groceries home, and old men could sit in a park late in the evening without fear of being beaten by teenage hoodlums. Situations have a way of getting worse the older a country grows.