I was baptized for the first time on June 17, 2012. By my father in law (that I had asked if he would do the honor and he accepted), in front of my wife, two of my four children (the other two weren’t born yet), my wife’s side of the family, my mom and dad, and a full congregation of people cheering as I was pulled up out of the water and declared an adopted child of God.
It was a special moment in my life. One that I don’t think I’ll ever forget (I plan to write about the contrast between becoming a Christian, and losing my faith in a future blog, so look forward to that).
Most ex-Christians, that I’ve talked to, tell me about how they were raised up in a Christian home, and had it not been for their indoctrination they probably wouldn’t have ever been religious. Others say that, while they were raised in a religious home, they never really bought into the crap, they just kind of faked it until they were old enough to move out on their own and be who they truly were.
These two scenarios are very different from my experience. I was 28 years old and didn’t grow up religious. If you missed my first three blog posts you can read more about my experience here.
I didn’t actually start reading the Bible (from the beginning to end) until after I was already a baptized Christian. I suspect it’s a fairly common theme for the majority of religious people, especially among those that (I assume) were raised in it, not to read their holy scriptures until after they already accepted them as true. Today, I wonder how many people would become a Christian, at or beyond the age of reason, if they read the Bible before they accepted Jesus into their heart. My guess is, not many.
There’s some seriously messed up stuff in that book! Have you read it?
I’m not just talking about the silly (and quite impossible) stuff you heard as a kid, such as talking animals and parting of seas. No, I’m talking about things like a prophet calling down a curse “in the name of the Lord” on forty-two boys by having two bears come out of the woods and maul them to death—because they called him bald 2 Kings 2:23-24! And while that’s a really fucked strange story, it’s not even the worst thing in the book! Not by a long shot!
He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.
2 Kings (2:24)
I do remember reading The Book of Revelation in high school. Talk about strange! I hadn’t done psychedelics up to that point in my life, but I’d imagined if I were to try it, I’d see some similar things as was described in there!
I’m still not entirely sure why I read it. I think it’s because I heard it was supposed to be about the End Times and I think it was just fascinating to me at the time. It’s been awhile since I’ve subjected myself to reading it, but I do remember some things such as seven-headed dragons; Revelation 12:3, the Serpent; Revelation 20:2, and the Beast; Revelation 13:2 , and things of that nature. I also remember something about how in the end of days, people will be forced to take the Mark of the Beast on their hand or their forehead?
Ya, that’s in there…Revelation 13:16
By the way, the Mark of the Beast concept played a role in a future plunge into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, that I will be talking about later. But I digress.
Reading the Bible was very difficult. And not just because of the begets (I imagine most of us that have read the Bible mostly skipped over those, right?). It wasn’t difficult just because much of it seems redundant, or even because a lot of it is simply straight up boring, it was difficult because so much of it seemed so downright disgusting and immoral. Much of which was not only seemingly condoned by the God that allegedly inspired the books—from Genesis to Revelation, but was commanded by that very God.
“Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.”
Exodus (21:20-21)
Slavery is one that, as a Christian, I was confronted with head on. And one that, for a long time, I tried to rationalize a moral justification for—as so many Christians do. I said things like, “yeah but slavery back then wasn’t like modern American slavery, it was more like indentured servitude, and they weren’t treated as harsh.” For some instances, that’s true. But in those instances, it was only the (male) Hebrew slaves that got special rights and temporary servitude. But even for male Hebrew slaves there were sneaky tricks to get them to stay on as life long servants. If a male Hebrew was already married, he could take his wife after his time was up. However, if his master gave him a wife, he could not take her when he leaves, nor any children that they had. If the man wanted to keep his wife and children, he had to stay and become a life long servant Exodus 21:2-6.
If a man sold his (Hebrew) daughter into slavery, there were much different laws for her. So as long as she pleased her new master, she isn’t to go out free after a time, as male slaves do. If she doesn’t please her master, she is to be returned like a defective product and he can not sell her to a foreign land. If he takes her for a son, he must treat her as a daughter. The only way she can go out free, like a male Hebrew, is if the man takes another wife and doesn’t take care of her needs Exodus 21:7-11.
Not only was slavery different for female Hebrew slaves, it was also very different for non-Hebrew slaves. As I mentioned, male Hebrew slaves, with a few exceptions, were to be set free after an allotted amount of time, but non-Hebrew slaves were in it for the long haul Leviticus 25:44-46.
“‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.
Leviticus (25:44-46)
Even non-Hebrew slaves had some protection, as we see in Exodus 21:20-21. If you beat them with a rod, as long as you just knock out a few teeth, maybe break a leg or two, but they didn’t die after a day or two, that’s fine. You know, because they’re your property. But at least there were laws that encouraged you not to kill them, right?!
God is good, y’all!
At any rate, non-Hebrew, and even non-male Hebrew slavery certainly doesn’t resemble indentured servitude. And I eventually was forced, after much drudgery, to change my mind about that.
My response to these things “in the Old Testament” was usually some excuse about that being a different time and culture, and that slavery was not God’s “perfect plan”. God just used slavery for a higher purpose. But if that were the case, and the New Testament was about what God really wanted, why was it that Jesus never condemned slavery either? In Luke 12:47-48, Jesus even tells his disciples a story about the appropriate force with which to beat a slave—depending on whether or not they were conscious of their master’s will. If Jesus was against slavery, and if it was never God’s intentions, that probably would have been a good time to condemn it.
By what I can tell, from what I’ve read, the God of the Bible didn’t just used slavery for a “higher purpose”, as we could justify using Romans 8:28, but it had always been part of his perfect divine plan. Slavery wasn’t a (temporary) tool he used to achieve the goal, it is the goal.
I could go on and on about slavery, but to be really honest, it wasn’t even the hardest thing to deal with. I mean, there are plenty other atrocities to talk about. Just take your pick. Child sacrifice Judges 11:1-40? How about how rape victims were treated Deuteronomy 22:28-29? Subjugation of women? Again, have you read the Bible? All of which were not only, at some point, condoned by the God of the Bible, but often times, as I mentioned above, commanded by him.
The thing that really shook me was the various accounts of genocide throughout the Bible. Such as in 1 Samuel 15:2-3, Deuteronomy 2:34, Deuteronomy 3:6, and Deuteronomy 20:16-18, where all the men, women, children, and even the animals were to be slaughtered. The common apologetic response? According to GotQuestions.org:
“We do not fully understand why God would command such a thing, but we trust God that He is just – and we recognize that we are incapable of fully understanding a sovereign, infinite, and eternal God.”
It continues on talking about how God’s ways are higher than our ways, and that he knows the future, while talking about how the children likely would have grown up resenting the cruel treatment of their families and would come back and make trouble for the Israelites.
I was satisfied for a time with these simple answers. God’s ways are higher than my ways? Makes sense, I guess. But before long, my mind really started to wonder, and eventually I started looking for better answers. That’s when I found the Book of Enoch.
Much like Revelation, Enoch has some really fantastical imagery. There’s demons, giants, and fallen angels. It talks of angels that had sex with human women as described in Genesis 6:1-2, which produced what was called the Nephilim described in Genesis 6:4, and seemed to give precedence for the Biblical flood. Parts of Enoch are also alluded to in Jude 1:6, “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” Jude also goes on to hint about how these entities had a role in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah Jude 1:7.
Now, I wasn’t, and still am not, a biblical scholar, nor would I ever claim to be. So some of my information here might be really off. But that doesn’t diminish the fact that I was looking for, not only moral justification, but also logical justification for the atrocities in the Bible. Looking back on it all now, I just shake my head and laugh at how ridiculous it all was. But at the time, I thought I had found exactly what I was looking for. Answers. Not only answers, but if these stories of genocide and corruption were true, maybe the God of the Bible really did have reasons unbeknownst to us. Maybe this God wasn’t morally bankrupt, after all.
“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days–and also afterward–when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.”
Genesis 6:4
I’m splitting this blog up into two parts, next week I will get into the conspiracy theories and my stint with some really fringe Christian views. Then, the following week, I will get into my experience in New Age and quantum woo. Yes, it gets much worse before it gets better.
Like always, stay tuned!
Nathan The Skeptic 
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