Memo: Editing Jesus

Rick Bachabee
President

Cross and Sword Coalition of America

“Wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”

Brothers and Sisters,

The Religious Right has had some real success in the the last few years. The Tea Party movement has finally brought Christ's message of small government and low taxes to state governments and the halls of Congress. I'm happy to say we're as powerful as we've ever been. 

But, brothers and sisters, I'm troubled by the things I hear from our enemies. No, I'm not talking about the Muslims or the gays. I'm talking about those who call themselves Christians, but turn their backs on far-right politics. Some of these pretenders, and their secular allies, have taken to calling us the H word. You guessed it...hypocrites. They go on and on about how Jesus loved the poor and healed the sick, and they say if we really wanted a Christian government, then we would want that government to help them. They even say that's what our Savior himself would have done! Where do they get this stuff?

Even worse, these pretenders in Christ have taken to quoting scripture, using the Bible--OUR Bible--against us. They're getting that hypocrite stuff right out of the Gospels, using Jesus' own words to call us "false prophets" and "wolves in sheep's clothing." The nerve of some people! 

Just the other day I saw people using these verses from Matthew against us:

 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ 44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ 45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

Now, we all know Jesus wasn't really taking up for a bunch of ragged takers looking for handouts. It might seem like he was, but that's a misinterpretation. Some parts of the Bible should be taken literally and some shouldn't. The parts about God creating the Earth in six days, the snake that talked, Noah living 950 years; those are literally true. That's just common sense. 
But some passages require a more subtle interpretation. 

Those words from Matthew are those of Christ himself, and we all know he spoke in parables. He didn't literally mean to give food to hungry people, or invite dirty, half-dressed strangers into our houses and places of worship. I mean really, is that how our Savior would have acted? It's a parable, like the mustard seed or the camel passing through the eye of the needle.

You knew that one would come up didn't you? They love to use that part of Matthew against us. You know the one, where the rich man asks Jesus what he should do to get into heaven:

21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” 22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. 23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Those verses always have been troublesome, haven't they? Personally, I don't think Christ could have really said them. Sell your possessions and give to the poor? That's practically communist! It doesn't fit in with our gospel of prosperity at all. And that stuff about how hard it is for the rich to get into heaven...what is that about? That young man was a job creator!

No, Jesus just wouldn't have said that, and he certainly wouldn't have said it twice for emphasis, like that passage implies. Of all his lessons, why would he pick that one to emphasize? Why not the evils of homosexuality, the dangers of evolution, or the importance of keeping "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance? It just doesn't make sense.

Brothers and sisters, there's only one thing to do: We've got to change those verses. That's the only way to keep people from reading them in inconvenient ways. The ones I've been quoting make Jesus out to be some kind of bleeding heart who loved everybody unconditionally. And we can't have that. 

So let me show you what I have in mind. Take the first pairs of “Blessings and Woes” in Luke. We could change those in several different ways to reflect their one true meaning, but here are my suggestions:

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God rich, for you are the job creators, and yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you who hunger now,  for you will be satisfied are well fed now, for that proves you are hard workers. Or at least rich, and therefore blessed (see above).

But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort poor, for you have already received your handouts. 

Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry who hunger now, for we cut your food stamps.

See how easy that is? And speaking of blessings, we can leave "blessed are the peacemakers" alone. That was clearly a prophecy foretelling the coming of the Colt Peacemaker; the gun that would win the west. When Jesus comes back, I'm betting that's the sidearm he'll carry. Try taking that one away, gun-grabbers!

I could do this all day, but I think you get the idea. Give it a try! Grab the Sermon on the Mount and a red pen and get busy. It's time we bring the Bible in line with our actual practices. If we start talking like we've been walking, how can anyone accuse us of being hyp...the H word?

Now, I know some of you will have qualms at first. But what are our other options? As long as we say we want a Christian government, people are going to say, "Well, then, why don't you want it to help the sick and poor?" We could cave in and let them keep church and state separate, but then we'd be taking mandatory prayer out of the schools, teaching unexpurgated science, letting homosexuals marry, and opening liquor stores on Sunday. And we can't have all that. 

The other option is to keep calling for a Christian government, and start following all that stuff about helping the poor, healing the sick, loving our enemies, being merciful, blah blah blah...  I don't know about you, but that one doesn't sound good to me either. 

No, if people keep using the H word on us, there's only one way to have our cake and eat it too, and that's editing the Holy Scriptures themselves. I know it may seem shocking. But if you think about it, we on the far right have been editing Jesus for a long time with our words and deeds. All I'm doing is pointing it out; spelling out what's usually unspoken. What should be shocking is for Christians to act in direct opposition to Jesus' words.

And that's why we have to change those words! Sure, people will give us a hard time at first, even that foolish majority of Christians who think Jesus meant what he said about this stuff. But if we keep repeating the new versions, they'll eventually forget the old ones. Americans have a short attention span these days. Besides, if we finally take over this country, then we'll be the ones calling the shots about how the Bible is read.

Yours in Christ,

Rick Bachabee

What's Really Shocking

It's 6:00 in the morning. I don't go to work until 9 most days, so I'm not usually up this early. But I couldn't sleep well. The thing is, I saw people expressing opinions yesterday that are weighing on my mind. First, I saw a picture of a sign in front of a pizza joint in my home state of Arkansas. It said "Leviticus 20:13. Why don't we listen?" Now, here's what that verse actually says.

If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."

Well, that seems clear enough. This pizza place, called Heavenly Pizza Pies, seems to be calling for the killing of gay people, or at least gay men.* When there was an outcry, they took the sign down and claimed they were saying no such thing. Maybe they didn't mean it that way. I don't know. Here's the response that they posted on Facebook:

We as a company don't support same sex marriage, but we still care for everyone and would do anything to help. We posted a Bold Verse out of God's word, something that as a nation we have forgotten. As a nation we have taken God out of schools, we have taken prayer out of school and the work place, and now we take another one of God's law and throw it away. We will stand bold in honoring God's word in and out of the work place. If you were upset with this verse, remember its God's word, we will all stand before him in judgement.

What are we to make of people posting a sign like that? Honestly, I doubt they really want to see gay people killed, but you never know with some people. One thing we can conclude with confidence is that they're being extremely selective about which parts of Leviticus to take seriously. I mean, this is a pizza place--I'm pretty sure they put sausage, pepperoni, and ham on their pizzas, and all those things are made from pork. Leviticus 11:7-8 clearly says pigs are unclean and not to be eaten. Their carcasses aren't even to be touched, which, it has been often pointed out, would seem to rule out playing football with an actual pigskin.

When questioned, people say such dietary restrictions are part of the Old Covenant, and that the New Covenant makes them unnecessary. But those same people point to the verses about homosexuality in Leviticus and say they still hold. Why? What are their criteria for deciding which parts of the Bible are still valid and which are no longer applicable? I ask this question all the time, because I would really like to know, but I never get a clear answer. Usually I get no answer at all, even though I think I usually succeed in asking nicely. Apparently the question is gauche.

Seeing the picture of this sign in my home state disturbed me enough, though I can't say it surprised me. But what continued to disturb me were other things I saw people saying on the same topic, or in response to it. One woman, in a thread unrelated to the pizza joint sign, also mentioned the parts of the Old Testament that talk about killing gays. She wasn't exactly stating her approval, but she was mentioning it in support of her contention that the Bible says homosexuality is wrong. In a thread about the sign, a guy told me that homosexuality is clearly wrong according to the Bible, and cited Genesis 2:18, where God decides to create women:

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.

This guy was apparently thinking of a different translation, and used the word "worker" instead of helper. Yes, worker. So, here's someone defending the idea that homosexuality is bad, by citing a verse saying women were created almost as an afterthought, to be "workers" for men. I'll admit, I found this kind of upsetting. What made it worse is that he seemed to be a decent guy, who honestly seemed to be trying to do what is right, based on his religion (he thought the pizza place sign was a bad thing, for example).

So I pointed out that he's deciding to how to judge one fraction of the human race (homosexuals), based on his interpretation of a text that says half the human race were created as helpers for the other half. Deciding how to treat that large a percentage of humankind is a pretty serious step to take, morally speaking. And he's doing it based on Genesis, the same book that tells us a snake talked, that people lived hundreds of years, and that Noah got two of every species on earth onto a boat (did he go to the Andes to get llamas? What about plants?).

Anyway, I asked to consider the possibility that the Bible is a book written by members of an ancient tribe living in a violent, sexist, superstitious time. Yes, it does say homosexuality is wrong, that homosexuals should be killed (along with suspected witches and children who curse their parents), and it also says that women were created to be "helpers". And when it does, it's wrong. And when people base their behavior toward women, gays, and others based on a literal interpretation of those verses, they are wrong, and perpetuate the unbelievable injustice that's characterized most of human history--millions of lives lost and wasted, for thousands of years, based on parts of the Bible that are mostly myth or myth-based ritual.

This suggestion was apparently out of bounds. Though I tried hard to be civil, I was the bad guy for saying such things. The man I was debating got mad, and a woman chimed in to say she felt sorry for me and would pray for me. Neither of them seemed at all shocked by Bible verses talking about killing gays, or describing women as "helpers" by design, even though one of them was a woman. Yet they were shocked by me saying those passages should be rejected as the writings of an ancient people who believed the earth was flat.

What kind of world are we living in when a large percentage of people still look at Iron Age documents about killing people, or treating women as second class citizens (because of a story involving their creation from a man's rib) and they aren't shocked by them? Not only are they not shocked, but they believe them and live their lives by them. What they do find shocking is someone questioning those verses. That strikes me as very, very twisted, especially since many of them really are trying to do the right thing. It's just that they're basing their judgement of what's right on very questionable, hard to interpret sources.

Please don't get me wrong. This may be a screed, but it's not an anti-Christian screed--many of the people I admire most are Christians. It's a screed against discrimination based on Biblical literalism. Taking these writings as straightforward guides to behavior is very, very hurtful. The guy I was debating claimed that the Bible verse about killing gays should be interpreted to mean they would be suffer "eternal death" (Hell) not earthly death. That's also hurtful, but I also think he's wrong about the interpretation. I think that verse means exactly what it says, and that it's surely caused untold numbers of violent deaths. Who knows how many people were stoned to death because of that verse, or others like it? It says what it says, and it's wrong.

Obviously, I have a big problem with this kind of fundamentalism. But I have a far bigger problem when its practitioners try to write their Old Testament views of morality into law. If people want to believe these things, that's their right. I think they're wrong and hurtful beliefs, but I'm not going to try to force them to change. That's not the kind of country we live in. But I am going to keep telling them they don't get to force that view of morality on me or anyone else. They were allowed to do so for millennia, and that needs to end. Soon.

Does that mean laws should never enforce moral codes of any kind? Certainly not. Justice Antonin Scalia once asked, if he shouldn't say homosexuality should be illegal, whether he could still say murder should be illegal. Of course he should! Murder clearly hurts people, and you don't need to appeal to any religious text or supernatural entity to see that. Murder, rape, theft, perjury, and dozens of other things are clearly hurtful for obvious, real-world reasons, and should of course be illegal. But ideas about what is wrong based on religion or the supernatural are very debatable, and therefore shouldn't be written into law, especially if not everyone in the country subscribes to that religion. If you want to follow additional moral rules, based on religion and beyond the proper scope of law, that's your prerogative. But I don't see why you should be able to force anyone else to. If you want to tell gays they don't get to have the same right--to love and marry another adult--that you have, you need to realize that you are denying them something most people consider an essential part of a happy life. You'd better have ironclad proof that homosexuality is wrong and damaging, and for reasons that don't appeal to the supernatural. I've never seen any such proof.

And if you want to go on thinking that homosexuality is bad, or that women are "helpers", then that's your right. If you want to quote Bible verses saying homosexuals should be killed, I guess that's your right too, as much as it makes my lip curl to hear it. But please, please ask yourself this: Which is more shocking? People questioning Bible verses that promote such ideas, or the verses themselves?

______________________________________________________________

* I hate that I feel like I need to mention this, but since I'm 41 and single, people will wonder, and that will distract from the point I'm trying to make. I'm straight. I'm not the bravest guy, but I like to think that if I were gay I would have had the guts to come out years ago. This issue is important to me because I have a lot of gay friends I love, and I hate seeing injustice, especially when it's justified with such dubious reasoning.

"Unnatural Acts" and the Sins of Sodom: Some Bad Arguments against Homosexuality

In the last few days, I've run into people using two of the most common arguments against homosexuality: saying it's unnatural, and pointing to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Both arguments are still quite common, and a whole bunch of people think they give them a license to tell others who they can love and marry. It seems to me that an argument better be pretty good if you're going to use it to tell other people how they can live their life. And neither of these arguments come close.

First, the "unnatural" claim (I'm going to leave aside the obvious point that homosexuality might not be unnatural). Religious and non-religious people are always using the "Natural = Good/Unnatural = Bad" argument, sometimes called the Appeal to Nature argument, to divide the world between good things and bad things. Up to a point, this makes some sense. For example, we evolved to eat a certain kind of food, which is derived almost exclusively from other living things. That means it would be unnatural to try to eat, say, a handful of asbestos fibers. In this case, unnatural is bad, because our bodies aren't equipped to eat asbestos. So, what's natural/unnatural often correlates with what's good/bad. But the correlation is far from perfect. What's natural isn't necessarily good, and what's unnatural isn't necessarily bad. Arsenic, bubonic plague, tornadoes, and brain-eating amoebas are all perfectly natural. Come to think of it, so is asbestos. Some common, natural animal behaviors include infanticide, forced copulation, internal parasitism, and eating prey while it is still alive and kicking. Unnatural things include running water, electrical appliances, C-sections that save the lives of mothers and babies, and--older male readers take note--Viagra.

People are right to admire nature's beauty and harmony, because it has both of those things in spades. And since we evolved to live in a certain kind of natural world, we disregard what is natural for us at some peril. But nature also has an enormous amount of death, strife, and pain. So it's also perilous to assume that what is natural is good, and what is unnatural is bad. Whether something is natural or not should be one of many considerations in deciding what is good or bad, and not an absolute one. That's because it's not the main point, when it comes to most moral arguments. Our main concern is not whether something is natural or unnatural, but whether it is good or bad. And what that really means, I think, is: does it improve the welfare of conscious beings, or decrease it?

The real question when deciding whether something like homosexuality is immoral is: "Does it do harm?" I don't think it does. Sure, gay people often don't reproduce, but in a world that went from 6 to 7 billion people in 13 years, I don't think that's a bad thing. There's no shortage of people on this planet. Even if you could clearly show that homosexuality caused harm in some way, well, heterosexuality causes quite a few problems itself. Besides, it would have to be something pretty harmful to justify telling people that they have to abstain from sex and love--which most people consider among the most important things in life--or try to force themselves to be heterosexual. I don't know about you, but can't imagine changing my sexual orientation through sheer force of will. Maybe some of my fellow heterosexuals can (that would explain how so many of them can claim homosexuality is a choice, I guess). In any case, my point is that you can't say homosexuality is wrong simply by saying it's unnatural. What's unnatural isn't necessarily wrong, and what's natural isn't necessarily right.

Now, over to Sodom and Gomorrah. Obviously, the word "sodomy" comes from Sodom, one of the Biblical "Cities on the Plain" that may have existed along the Jordan River plain, north of the Dead Sea (archaeologists argue about whether it ever existed or not). In the book of Genesis, Abraham and his nephew Lot part ways amiably, because their herds have grown too large for the land to support both of them. Lot goes to Sodom, a city whose people were said to be "wicked, great sinners against the Lord". God soon tells Abraham that he intends to destroy Sodom for its sinfulness. Abraham begs him to spare it if he can find 50 righteous men in the city. God agrees, and then Abraham talks him down to ten. But apparently there aren't ten righteous men in Sodom, because God sends two "men" (usually interpreted as angels) to destroy it. The angels meet Lot, who invites them into his home.

That's when things turn nasty. The men of Sodom gather around outside Lot's house and demand that he hand over the angels so that they may "know" them (presumably in the Biblical sense). Lot refuses, and instead offers his two virgin daughters to the mob, to "do to them as you please". The mob refuses and tries to force their way in, and the angels strike them blind. Then they tell Lot to flee the city with his family, and not look back. But his wife does look back, and is turned into a pillar of salt (the area has naturally occurring pillars of salt, which is probably the basis for this part of the story). Then the Lord rains fire and brimstone down on Sodom, Gomorrah, and most of the other cities on the plain. Later, Lot's daughters get him drunk and have sex with him, and have his children.

For over two thousand years, up to this day, this story has been interpreted as a cautionary tale about the evils of homosexuality and the destruction that the Lord will visit on societies that allow it. But wait a just a minute here. Here we have a story where the main character, Lot, is held up as one of the only righteous men in the wicked city. A man who offers his daughters to an angry mob, to be raped, and later on bears children with those same daughters. Should we really look to this tale as a guide to morality? Nobody looks very moral in this story to me. Even God seems needlessly harsh (as he often does in the Old Testament). Did Lot's wife really deserve to be turned to salt? What kind of moral lesson is this tale, anyway?

Still, it's clear that the inhabitants of Sodom were being pretty awful. If there is such a thing as angels, I think we can all agree that gang-raping them is a bad thing. But it's strange that what people remember as being bad in the story is the homosexuality, not the coercion and attempted rape. Those things, unlike homosexuality, are clearly bad because they hurt people. Homosexuality is very different. Homosexual relationships between consenting adults don't seem to hurt people (or they wouldn't if others wouldn't freak out so much about them). What kind of skewed sense of morality causes people to read this story, and remember homosexuality as the worst behavior in it?

Now, there are going to be people reading this who think, "Well, maybe homosexuality isn't as bad as the other stuff in the story, but it's still bad, and that's one point of the story". Maybe that's one way the author of the story intended it.  I wouldn't be surprised, but then, he was a member of a violent, sexist, and superstitious society. Why should we put so much stock in his opinion? Haven't we learned anything about morality in the last 2500 years or so? Maybe this is one of those things in the Bible that nobody should take seriously as a guide to morality. You can't deny that there are such passages, and I don't care how religious you are. Unless, for example, you're prepared to agree that if someone rapes your daughter, the right thing to do is marry her to him, as Deuteronomy 22:25 commands. I'm pretty sure you aren't going to go for that, even if you claim to believe the Bible is literally true and inerrant. It's a bad rule. Similarly, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is simply a bad moral lesson.

But there are always people who love to denounce others, especially if they think they might be enjoying themselves. I don't understand this impulse. It seems to me that people make a terrible mistake when they think of morality in negative terms, as a list of  "THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT DO". Morality isn't about keeping people from enjoying life, or it shouldn't be. In fact, the whole point of morality, as far as I'm concerned, is to make life worth living for as many people as possible. Morality is about making life better, not worse. But, let me be clear. I'm not advocating the kind of simplistic utilitarianism that prescribes doing whatever causes the most total benefit, on average. I don't think, for example, that it's right to kill and harvest one person's organs to save the lives of 5 others.  Individual rights are important. But rights aren't important in and of themselves. They're important because respecting people's rights will make life better in the long run.

Some religious people might think morality is about doing what God wants us to do, regardless of our happiness. But wouldn't a good God want us to do what makes life good (if not in this life, at least in the next one?). I suppose you could say we are a part of God's big plan, and that plan may not include our individual happiness. To which I would respond: prove it. If you want to base your morality on arguable theological ideas, that's your prerogative, but I don't think it gives you the right to impose it on others. The only certain criteria for a morally bad act--certain enough that the act should be outlawed--is that it clearly hurts people.

I'm writing this because I have a lot of gay friends, and I hate seeing them hurt by discriminatory laws and attitudes based on shaky ideas of morality, like simple-minded appeals to nature or morally questionable Bible stories. If you want to impose your morals on other people, to the detriment of their happiness, you better be able to make an airtight argument that meddling in their lives is morally justified. When it comes to homosexuality, I've never seen an argument that comes close. My larger point, however, is about the whole reason for having morals. A moral code that doesn't actually make life better is a moral code that makes no sense (alas, it's also a moral code that's extremely common). What makes something bad is not that it's unnatural, or that it violates some arbitrary rule from God, but that it causes harm and makes life worse. If it doesn't do those things, then I just can't see how it's bad.