This piece is going to be extremely uncomfortable for a lot of people. But I think it’s time we have an honest conversation about the despicable things we’re all taught about GOD – things that you were convinced are acceptable simply because it’s written in the bible.
Perhaps you’ve never considered the gravity of what you believe – that it’s okay to murder children. That there’s something spiritually beneficial to genocide, rape, slaughter and slavery simply because it was supposedly done at the behest of the god in the bible. For me there’s no distinction between a modern despot murdering an entire population of people and a number of biblical figures who supposedly visited the same horror on people in the name of God – simply because they either believed differently or didn’t share the same cultural and social worldview of their murderer(s).
Today’s turmoil in the so-called Middle East and other parts of the world is reflective of this insanity. It’s time for GOD to be absolved of murder. It’s time to strip blame away from the CREATOR and place it squarely at the feet of humanity.
I INVITE YOU TO CONSIDER JUST A FEW PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE:
*”Now go and attack Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not: but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling…” 1 Samuel 15:3
*”And we utterly destroyed them as we did unto Sihon King of Hesbon, utterly destroying the men, women and children, of every city.” Deuteronomy 3:6.
*”Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.” Psalm 137:9
Once you peel back the layers of hermeneutics, exegesis, biblical interpretation and weekly sermons, what you’re actually reading is sanctioned murder. Forget for a moment the notion of “context” to somehow explain this insanity, murder is murder! Genocide is genocide! Killing defenseless babies, infants, children and women is despicable and evil. But if context is wholly important, the biblical god’s wrath in the instance of Amalek is directed at his descendants – 300 years later.
So apart from the wholesale annihilation of an entire population of people, which in today’s world would be considered genocide – we see the god of the bible directing the slaughter of defenseless babies, infants and children who had nothing to do with the grievous acts of their predecessors.
To suggest our CREATOR is the malevolent, vengeful and sadistic murderer in scripture – who time after time orders the Israelites to wholesale slaughter defenseless babies, children and women is blasphemous. The notion that GOD would sanction virgin girls to be raped by Israelite soldiers or sends bears out of the forest to maul and kill 42 children because they teased a man about his bald head is absurd. Do you honestly believe the CREATOR has to resort to cruelty and murder to prove a point? The god depicted in the bible, especially the Old Testament, is repugnant, cruel and despotic; mired in bipolar tendencies and the malignant characteristics of Man. The god of the bible is wholly antithetical to the loving GOD of Creation.
I admonish you to put aside the nicely wrapped sermon and convoluted hermeneutics that rationalizes genocide and murder. Take for example the god of scripture having 70,000 people killed because of David’s Census as found in 1 Chronicles 21. Consider the destruction of 60 cities and the murder of those populations for the sole purpose of Israel’s encroachment and theft of those lands as found in Deuteronomy 6. Not only are men, women, the young and old murdered for the god of scripture as found in Joshua 6, every living creature – including oxen, sheep and donkeys are brutally slaughtered.
It’s stunning that in Judges 21, the god of scripture orders the wholesale killing of ALL the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead. And to add insult to injury, the only exception to be made in this mass killing are virgin girls who were to be taken, forcibly raped and married. And get this, if Israel’s blood thirsty band of killers desired more virgins, the god of scripture instructs them to hide on the road and pick off a virgin of their choosing to be raped and subsequently married.
We’re told that the insecure god of scripture is so jealous of other gods that in 2 Kings 10:18-27, he orders another mass murder of worshipers of a different god – in their place of worship! The number of people murdered in this instance is nearly 400,000 – with orders to kill nearly 2 million more people. To believe this about our CREATOR is insane! To endorse these murdering rampages is equally crazy.
Has it ever occurred to you that the people Israel were allegedly directed to kill may have had their own story? Try for a moment to imagine being a Canaanite child as the Israelites marched over the hills to inflict the most brutal of attacks – to see on the horizon an approaching army that would eventually kill your neighbors, family and friends – infants slaughtered at the behest of another nation’s “god.”
Why would a loving and just God, who allegedly is “no respecter of persons” use Israel to murder and slaughter infants and women to reveal himself to foreign nations? Why instruct Moses to take the severed heads of Baal worshipers and hang them before the “Lord” in the sun? Couldn’t the god of scripture just reveal himself to Canaan? It seems implausible, at least to me, that a loving God would reject compassionate methods of revealing himself to a nation of (we’re told) idol worshipers. We’re suggesting that a God who can create all this majesty and wonder in our Universe is restricted to absolute brutality as a form of revelation?
Having been in church virtually all of my life, being taught about the Moabites, Amalekites, Amorites, Hittites, Jebusites and Perizzites was ALWAYS a one-sided affair. In other words, those people never told their story regarding these alleged events. Like many of you reading this piece, I grew up seeing the god of scripture through the eyes and prism of Israel.
So when we read about Israel’s enemies, the contextual implications were that these beastly pagans and idolator’s crime was that from infancy to adulthood, they worshiped the “god(s)” of their culture and land. Interestingly, those pagan god(s) eschewed by Israel happens to be the same god who is the object of their worship. More on that issue further down in this piece.
There’s something sick and twisted about the god of scripture. I mean, being angry at Israel – to the point of destruction – because the expression of love crossed cultural and social bounds with the Amorites, Jebusites and other nations? C’mon!
There is NOTHING in the written record from the aforementioned people/nations that they received and rejected divine revelation from the god of scripture. The scribes and story tellers of a nation that brutally slaughtered innocent babies and children give us THEIR perspective of things.
Again, it’s time to absolve GOD of mass murder. The only way to accomplish this goal is to draw a distinction between the god of scripture, as seen through the eyes and prism of Israel and the CREATOR of our Universe – which I’ve done personally.
Now, some people will argue that the CREATOR and the god of scripture are the same. I believe otherwise and here’s the distinction: When I speak of GOD, I’m referring to the creator of our Universe and the world in which we exist. I’m referring to the creator of the fundamental forces and physics that governs our world and has sustained our Universe for 13.8 billion years.
The GOD to whom I refer keeps our Sun in its fixed location; suspends our planet in the vastness of space – 93 million miles away from our home star; prevents the planets in our solar system from careening into each other; keeps swirling galaxies from colliding into our Milky Way home; and keeps the Universe from collapsing.
The CREATOR isn’t confined to theology, doctrine, dogma or religious systems. There are NO barriers or obstacles obstructing a connection with the CREATOR. Nor does the CREATOR close doors to his presence, restricts his majesty to a select group or so-called chosen people or has a singular path to his grace. For me, there’s a clear DISTINCTION between the GOD to whom I refer and the god of scripture.
Well Ron Holland isn’t the god of the bible responsible for what you’ve just mentioned? No! My friends, some of what I’m about to share is not part of your Wednesday night bible study curriculum or the subject of your Pastor’s weekly sermons. Israel’s “god” and the god of the bible is nothing more than an amalgamation of the Chief Canaanite Deity EL and the post Exodus/Moses deity, Yahweh.
Interestingly, the Canaanite deity was worshiped by Israel’s earlier ancestors, including the Patriarchs and Matriarchs. Yahweh derived from a process of evolution and convergence (from EL to Baal to Yahweh) during a long period of what biblical scholars call, “differentiation” – an economic, generational, religious and theogratic “polemic” which caused a chasm between Israel’s EL & Baal worshipers and the newfangled Yahweh adherents. This process is what gave rise to monotheism. Yahweh didn’t simply “reveal” himself to Moses or other biblical figures, there was an internal struggle that paved the way for the chief deity of the Canaanite pantheon of gods to emerge as Israel’s god.
SO LET ME MAKE THIS CLEAR FOR CHURCH FOLKS: The El Shaddai, El eylon, El Adoni; Elohim, Eloah, that you shout to in church or during praise is the chief Canaanite deity EL. Yes, you’re worshiping a pagan deity! Lest I forget Yahweh or Jehovah, please understand that these names are simply an evolution of the names and characteristics of Canaanite deities and that of other neighboring cultures like the Phoenicians, Hittities, Assyrians, Syrians, and of course the Canaanites.
Additionally, there are striking similarities between Baal and Yahweh. Yes, Baal and Yahweh may be one in the same! Below are some of the interesting similarities between Baal and Yahweh – similarities that speak to converging deities resulting from merging social environments. These similarities can be found in a host of biblical passages, but I draw your attention to just a few from Psalms 29 and Psalms 18:
*Both Baal and Yahweh are riders of the clouds
*Both Baal and Yahweh are Lord of hosts in battle
*Both Baal and Yahweh are in high places
*Both Baal and Yahweh have alters for animal sacrifices
*Both Baal and Yahweh have victories over watery foes
*Both Baal and Yahweh tremble and shake the Earth
AND HERE ARE HYMNS ASCRIBED TO BAAL WHICH ARE STRIKINGLY SIMILAR TO HYMNS ASCRIBED TO YAHWEH:
“The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
*The God of glory thunders,
*The Lord thunders over the mighty waters…
*The voice of the Lord strikes with flashes of lightning.
*The voice of the Lord shakes the desert;”
Admittedly, biblical writers take great pains to point out Israel’s rejection of idol worship and the purging of pagan influences on its social order. But shrouding efforts to quell Israel’s penchant for pagan worship is the seemingly duplicitous relationship between King Josiah and his campaign of reform in the late 7th century BC and the retroactive theological agenda of the Deuteronomic scribes who sought to address current social and religious concerns during three crisis moments in Israel’s history – the destruction of Israel by the Assyrians in 722 BC, the fall of Israel’s southern kingdom to the Babylonians in 587 BC and of course the exilic period of the 6th Century BC.
We’re told that Josiah “rediscovered” the law and began instituting reform to bring Israel under the banner of a Yahweh only worship. However, scholars, with a great degree of certainty, believe that the heavily redacted, rewritten and revised work of Deuteronomy wasn’t “found” or “discovered” but was a reworking of traditions to both explain the tragedies that befell Israel and to create a unified theology that would bring the nation into monotheistic social and religious order.
According to Biblical Scholar, Dr. Steven DiMattei, “When the Assyrians came in and annihilated the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC, but left the southern kingdom of Judah untouched (at least for a time being), a theological interpretation of history was needed to make sense of these events. It must be borne in mind that the biblical scribes were not recording historical events per se, but rather creating a powerful historicized theology. And that historicized theology was written by the Deuteronomic scribes of the South. Moreover, the Deuteronomist used this occasion—the fall of Israel—to write an immensely influential piece of propaganda…”
Dr. DiMattei goes on to say that Josiah’s reforms were undergirded by the theological agenda of Deuteronmist scribes and he sought to reconquer the northern territories lost when the “Assyrians retreated from the region.” Dr. DiMattei and a host of other scholars believe Josiah’s aim was to centralize the Yahweh only cult in Jerusalem. So ultimately, what emerged as the god(s) of Israel’s forefathers and later generations are the very pagan deities they rejected.
HERE’S THE POINT: Our faith traditions and how we see GOD is through the eyes and prism of Israel. Unfortunately, Israel’s god and the god of the bible is nothing more than a morphed and amalgamated deity with roots in the very pagan cultures that were on the receiving end of Israel’s blood thirsty rampages. Israel too is said to have suffered under this god’s brutality.
The reason I’ve taken the extraordinary step of establishing a demarcation between our CREATOR and the god of the bible is because first, I believe much of the confusion and violence in our world is attributed to the kind of religious fundamentalism indicative of the schisms, rancor and blood shed reflected in the pages of scripture. Secondly, the CREATOR has shouldered the blame for humanity’s egregious and despicable acts for far too long.
The god of scripture is Man’s creation; fashioned, formulated and shaped by Man’s hands, his warped thinking and scandalous behaviors. And intricately woven into what we hail as the “word of god” is a tragic road map to the kinds of confusion and violence that has gripped our world through the ages.
The genocides and mass murders in the pages of scripture is not the doing of our CREATOR. Contrary to what I was taught and what you believe (based on scripture) our CREATOR doesn’t smite, smote or orders the wholesale murder and slaughter of entire populations of people. If the violent events reflected in the pages of scripture are indeed true, it’s the function of a craven humanity that deserves blame, not GOD!
Many of you will view this writing as a besmirching of the bible. I view it as absolving GOD of mass murder and placing the blame squarely at the feet of humanity. GOD is not a mass murderer as reflected in the bible. And it is time for that antiquated thinking to be tossed into the trash bin of history.
In conclusion, The bible and other religious text has extraordinary value in our lives. There’s an unrivaled moral clarity reflected in many of the pages and passages of scripture. The Book of Proverbs for instance gives us wisdom. The poetry of Psalms gives us hope. The book of Job helps us cope with struggle. And, the words attributed to Jesus forces us to closely examine our individual humanity. Jesus’ words also helps to bolster a desired closeness to our CREATOR. This makes us better people.
When I open the bible for study, I search for passages that provide affirmation and personal morality. It is teeming with stories germane to my spiritual journey. The bible and other religious and philosophical writings are critically important. But these books, pages and passages are the writings of Man and not to be confused with GOD’s authentic word – a subject I’ll save for another time.
To place mass murder, genocide and the despicable acts of violence reflected in scripture on the CREATOR’S shoulders is an affront to his holiness and majesty. Equally offensive is to equate the god of the bible with our CREATOR. They are NOT the same! GOD is NOT a mass murderer!
Ron Holland is the host of the Public Affairs show, ‘COMMUNITY VOICES’ on WOSF – Old School 105.3 and WPZS -100.9, Charlotte. He’s also a Producer and Assistant Production Mgr. with both stations. Any thoughts on this week’s commentary, send Ron an email: ronholland@radio-one.com
