Cliff-notes Jesus

Back when I went to church, our preacher would talk about this dude named Jesus. You may have heard about him. Jesus was an amazing man, who came into our world to save us all. He knew from the beginning he would die, but he preached love and compassion. He was kind, and even helped people that his peers regarded as lesser people. In allowing himself to be executed, he took on our sins and forgave them, because he loved us so much he wanted us to get to heaven.

We had bibles in my house growing up, but most of what we had were the “devotional” type bibles, where they pick a verse and then talk about it. And of course, we had the bible picture books, which glorified god and his plan to save us from sin. Every Sunday, the priest would read a few readings and talk about them- a different few each week. I sorta assumed that even though I’d actually never read the bible, I pretty much knew what was in it.

Wow, was I wrong. Years later, already not what you would call faithful, I was having a discussion with a preacher that told me I was taking bible references out of context. So, I set it upon myself to read it. I was shocked. I hadn’t heard the whole bible, or a lot of it, or even a bunch of it. I had heard, over the course of 17 years of churchgoing, a loop of a few cherry-picked verses repeated over and over. And what I learned I was missing was crazy.

Old Testament god is just a complete asshole. Far from being a loving, all knowing planner of the universe, it is clear that he is constantly bungling everything up and getting pissed at people for almost nothing. He not only admits that he’s jealous, he says his NAME is jealous. Of what? He’s god! Who could he possibly be so insecure toward? Turns out, he’s jealous of damned near every other god in the region at the time. He is in competition with them. If god made the whole world and was a loving god, why would he fear competition? It’s the opposite of what I was told. He makes a plan and it goes wrong so he kills people, he gives confusing advice and leaves for a couple hundred years and then comes back and kills some people…. he likes killing people I guess.

God also has a really f***ed up concept of morality. Think about the story of Lot escaping Sodom and Gomorrah. In my picture bible as a child, Lot was the only good person in the city, so god warned him with angels, and he escaped. His wife, who liked the wicked cities, looked back despite being warned, and was turned to salt. It’s already a fairly odd story in the first place, and in retrospect I wonder why god didn’t just decide to spend more time with his creation so they could love him, instead of turning to other gods. Imagine for a second how absent you have to be as a parent if your child pretends a pillow or something is you. Damn, go play catch with the kid sometime!

But what I realized when I read the real bible was that wasn’t the whole story. The picture book bible people condensed the bible down a bit, sort of a “cliff notes version”, but conveniently left all the stuff out about god being a complete dick. You see, the angels making their way through town to Lot’s door had attracted a crowd of men that wanted to have homosexual sex with them. Lot, the supposed pillar of virtue, stopped the crowd from demanding sex with the angels by OFFERING HIS DAUGHTERS to get gang-raped. This apparently was totally cool with god, but looking back at the burning city was the big no-go? And if you think that part of the story is horrible, what happens next is just sick.

Since Lot’s wife is now table seasoning, it’s just him and his two daughters (the ones he offered for the gang-rape) living in a cave. Since women know they’re only value is in having babies, (good parenting, Lot) they decide they need to get pregnant. So they get Lot really drunk (they must have thought to pack a few bottles of wine while escaping genocide) and the one daughter screws Lot, who is apparently so drunk he doesn’t realize he’s screwing his daughter, but amazingly still sober enough to get a woody. The next night, the other daughter also gets Lot so drunk he can’t see (but still gets a boner) and screws her dad as well. They of course both get pregnant, because women are just fields that get seed planted in them and don’t have a reproductive cycle or anything.

Yes, the man that offered his daughters up for a gang-rape party and was at least sober enough to screw his daughters is the man god decided was the “good egg” that should be saved.

One thing is perfectly clear, the writers of the cliff-notes version of god are either completely dishonest, or higher than Snoop Dog at 4:20 on April 20. They edited the story so things seemed all nice and cheery! And I’m here to inform you, if your idea of god is from preachers and Christian social media posts, you are wrong.

Remember how god told Abraham to kill his son, and then at the last minute stopped him? God would never allow him to do that, we are told. Cool story, bro. Try telling that to Jephthah. God liked Jephthah, but instead of just letting him go out and win battles with some godly assistance, god instead gets Jephthah to make a stupid bet that ends up with a sacrificed daughter. God didn’t stop the hand of the faithful this time.

And just in case the Christians reading this are doing the traditional “OT doesn’t count” dance, bible Jesus makes cliff-notes Jesus look like a wimp. Bible Jesus tells his disciples that he isn’t here to save anyone but the Israelis. Bible Jesus curses and kills a fig tree because it was out of season and he was hungry. Bible Jesus tells his followers that it’s better to break apart a family then not follow him. Bible Jesus curses entire cities. Bible Jesus says disobedient children should be stoned. Bible Jesus advocates beating slaves.

I could write a biography of Hitler and make it sound good if I cut out all the rage, jealousy, genocide, racism, and useless war. But that’s exactly what cliff-notes god is. We cut out the rage, jealousy, genocide, racism, and useless war. Only once the flock is thoroughly indoctrinated to believe that this magic Hitler is actually good, do they start to allow some of them to read about the evil shit, and then only slowly and with plenty of excuses. This is the point of bible studies.

Newsflash. If your deity is full of rage, jealousy, genocidal tendencies, racism, loves killing people, and you have to hide or make up additional excuses to cover his evil actions, he’s not a deity worth worshiping.

The Spartan Atheist