ICE and Hell

Sticks. Image source.

While the Israelites were in the wilderness, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the Lord commanded Moses.

Numbers 15:32-36

What do you do with this passage, if you're a good Christian who believes in biblical inerrancy?

The first time reading it, there's a shock, your conscience jumps up and says NO, this is not fair. But you know you can't listen to your conscience, if it says the bible is wrong about something, if it says God was wrong about something. No, you are a good Christian who believes the bible. So, you have to find a way to believe that it was right that this man was executed for the "crime" of gathering wood on the Sabbath.

The apologetics arguments get trotted out. You see, God's laws were very serious, and people DID deserve to die for breaking them. You see, this man was blatantly disrespecting God, acting like he knew better than God. You see, this was around the time period when the Israelites had just come out of Egypt and were establishing themselves as a new nation, setting up their laws to say what kind of nation they would be- and so it was very important to their national identity that everyone got the message that those laws were serious.

There are 2 choices here. You could continue to assert that this was not fair- the bible is wrong about this, God was wrong about this. You would need to change your whole religion. You would need to change your whole perspective on what the bible is, and what kind of God you follow. You would need to ask uncomfortable questions about why the good Christian role models in your church believe in that kind of a God. Or, the second option, you can just make yourself believe everything is fine. That Sabbath-breaker really did deserve to die. The moral of this bible story is, don't gather sticks on the Sabbath if God said not to. Don't break any of God's laws, no matter how minor, because then you'll deserve to die too. Then it will be right for God to order your execution.

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Most Christians don't know this bible story, about the man who was executed for gathering sticks on the Sabbath. Evangelicals talk a big game about how the bible is so important and special and inerrant and we have to devote ourselves to reading it every day, memorizing it, every single verse is inspired by God and authoritative over our lives. They always talk about that, but very very few actually do it. Very very few have read the whole bible. I was one of the nerds who actually did.

You go to any Sunday school class and ask people what they think about the story of the man who was executed for gathering wood on the Sabbath, and the overwhelming majority will have no idea what you're talking about.

In a way, it's the truly devoted bible nerds who have it the hardest- the way we have to kill our consciences. Sure, churches are full of people saying "we believe the bible" but they don't even know what they're saying. The apologetics nerds know. The apologetics nerds know that we have signed on to worship a God who ordered a man to be executed for gathering wood on the Sabbath. We know. We have done the work of killing our consciences so we can continue to be good Christians who worship this God.

Especially the bible nerds who are children. Adults all around them, telling them "wow it's so great that you're reading the bible all the time." Adults who perhaps don't know what's in the bible- and the kids don't know that the adults don't know. The kids hear "it's so great that you're reading the bible" and understand it to mean "yes, we all believe it was right that this man was executed for gathering wood on the Sabbath, and you need to believe that too, to be a good kid."

But even though most evangelicals don't know this bible story, here are some things they do openly preach: Every sin is an infinite offense against a holy God. All of us deserve to go to hell, because we are all sinners. 

Yes, really. When I was a child, I was taught that since I had committed some average sins that children commit, like hitting my sister, that meant I deserved to die and go to hell. But, they said, the good news is, Jesus came and died on the cross to take our sins away- if we believe in Jesus, we can get out of the punishment we deserve, and go to heaven instead.

(Very interesting that when telling this "good news," you don't need to mention anything about the Resurrection...)

How does this make sense? How can someone deserve to be tortured forever in hell because of some little mistakes they made? Well, according to this ideology, "every sin is an infinite offense against a holy God." In other words, because God is so perfect, even if your sin is just a little bit wrong, it is magnified to be this huge, disgusting, horrific crime, when you look at it in comparison to the holiness of God. God is so perfect, and that's why we all deserve to go to hell.

We all deserve to go to hell. But, fortunately, we can believe in Jesus, to get out of it. But there was always the feeling that it was in some sense wrong that we could escape hell in this way. *We* don't deserve it- it's Jesus covering us, covering up who we really are, to sneak us into heaven. Evangelicals literally say that if you believe in Jesus, "when God looks at you, he doesn't see your sin, he sees Jesus' sinlessness covering you."

Sometimes I happen across non-Christians who seem to assume that Christianity is meant to be about helping people and making the world better, and it's always a bit jarring to me because, where did they get that idea, that is very much NOT what I was taught Christianity is about, in the evangelical church. Or I happen across Christians who were raised in progressive churches, who believe Christianity is about helping people and making the world better, and talk about it like it's the most natural thing- this also shocks me. 

(See: Nothing about the Good News Club shocks me)

Because, yes, I'm still a Christian but I'm not evangelical any more; yes, now I do believe Christianity should be about helping people and making the world better. As Jesus taught us to pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." But damn, how hard I had to fight to get here. When I was evangelical, I believed that the main point of Christianity is that we're all sinners who deserve to go to hell, but Jesus died to save us, and we need to spread the good news, to help people escape hell. That stuff about helping people and making the world better, sure, that's nice, we should also do that, but not too much- we don't want it to be a distraction that takes our focus away from the main point, preaching about sin and hell and Jesus' death that saves us. 

Wouldn't it be terrible if we helped people have a better life on earth, but then they went to hell for eternity?

Actually, having compassion for "sinners"/ victims of tragedies might be a bad thing, because it might make us lose sight of how serious God's law is, how BAD sin is- any little tiny sin means that people deserve to go to hell. Kill your conscience before it deceives you into believing there's something wrong with God's justice.

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Sometime around 2014, the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum, and revealed how common it is that unarmed Black people are killed by police. Frequently when this happens, the police and/or random people on the internet come up with all kinds of justifications for why the Black victim deserved to die. Oh, he was a suspect in a robbery. Oh, he didn't comply with the police officer's commands. Oh, he was arrested for using drugs, one time, years ago. Oh, he was wearing a hoodie. Oh, we pored over all his social media and found a photo he posted where he kinda looks like a gang member.

Your conscience jumps up and tells you NO, this is not fair, but then society's anti-black racism supplies you with all these stories you can tell yourself, to get your conscience to calm down and accept everything is okay. Just like with the man in the bible who gathered wood on the Sabbath, wouldn't it be easier to just believe he deserved it? 

Christians who believe in biblical inerrancy have been trained to accept these flimsy justifications for why someone deserved to die for some kind of minor "sin."

(And also, the reason the slogan "Black Lives Matter" is used is to very intentionally NOT make the argument "this specific victim didn't deserve to die, because they were a good person and did things right." To NOT get dragged into arguments about whatever minor things a victim may have done wrong, but instead to say that NOBODY deserves to get shot in the street.)

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When I was in college and really "on fire for God," I had it all figured out. You see, the reason that sometimes bad things happen is that we all deserve to go to hell anyway- this is God's justice. And the reason good things happen is God's mercy- God loves us and wants to give us good things, even though we don't deserve them.

This is actually a pretty Calvinist way of thinking- some evangelicals are Calvinist and some are not- and it's quite a tidy answer to the Problem of Evil. Maybe it's the only answer I've ever heard that holds together logically (besides just not believing in God at all). 

Why do tragic things happen? Why do people die in earthquakes? Why is there child abuse? Well, actually, we all deserve to have those things happen. Actually, we deserve worse- we all deserve to go to hell. So really, you can't complain about this stuff- you deserve worse. 

It's logical, but it's monstrous.

Better to not have an answer to the Problem of Evil, than to believe in this.

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The story about the man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath comes from the Old Testament, around the time that God was giving the Law to Moses. In the New Testament, Jesus came along and did things a little differently. He treated people with kindness and love, rather than judging them for their sins. People criticized him for spending time with tax collectors and prostitutes and other "sinners."

Evangelicals believe we should follow Jesus' example. We should also show love to sinners (ie, everyone), rather than being mean to them about it. 

But there's always a sense that there was something a little bit... wrong about what Jesus did. That in reality, these people really were sinners, and they really did deserve to go to hell, and Jesus sort of offered them a temporary oasis of acceptance that wasn't really *right*, from the perspective of God's justice. And when we follow Jesus' example, and we love "sinners", we hope that this convinces them to believe in Jesus and get saved- otherwise yeah they'll go to hell, and they'll deserve it.

The message that evangelicals preach is "God loves you even though you are a sinner who deserves to go to hell." Yes, really, literally, they really say this- this isn't me rephrasing it to make it sound worse- they literally put it this way, and they think it's good news. 

I have also literally heard evangelicals say we need to "love the unlovable." Show kindness toward everyone, but always remember they don't deserve it. But that doesn't mean we're better than other people- remember, we also don't deserve anything good.

The message is not "you deserve God's love." LOL! Oh my goodness, LOLOLOLOL! Of course not! HA!

No, the message is: you deserve to go to hell, but fortunately God is doing something that's a little bit wrong, in a certain sense- to let Jesus' suffering count as payment for your sins, so you don't have to go to hell. Be thankful that Jesus lets you sneak in through this loophole, because you sure as hell don't deserve it.

(The Slacktivist has written [here's one link, but if you know of additional links from his blog, please help me out and leave a comment, I remember he has written other posts about this] about how this is sort of contradictory- how evangelicals believe that people deserve to go to hell, but at the same time, we need to warn them about hell, and tell them the good news about Jesus, so they can avoid hell- and if you're too scared to "share the gospel" with your friends, you should feel bad, it's partly your fault if your friends go to hell. So, it's right for God to send people to hell, but also, we should try to prevent it. What?)

But now, I'm not evangelical, and now, I believe people deserve God's love, simply because we are people. We deserve happiness. We all deserve the opportunity to live a good life. Damn, how hard I had to work to get here.

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Right now, we're seeing a lot of news articles about ICE deporting undocumented immigrants in the US. And what I fear is, evangelicals will say, well, it's fine, they were here illegally, so, they deserve it, right? 

For any small sin we commit, we deserve to die and go to hell. So how can you be upset if someone commits the "sin" of being undocumented, and then they get their whole life uprooted and get deported because of it?

We all deserve to go to hell. We all deserve to go to a prison in El Salvador.

---

But you may have noticed, isn't there a double standard? Isn't the president literally a felon- why does he get to be president, while other people's minor "crimes" mean they get deported?

And we see this in the bible too- there are bible characters who were killed by God for some minor "sin," while other bible characters who commit worse sins are held up as heroes and role models. King David raped Bathsheba and murdered her husband, and at the same time, King David is called "a man after God's own heart" and seen as a great follower of God, whose example we should learn from.

I would explain the logic like this: Yes, people deserve to die for their minor sins. If you read about this happening in the bible, and you are sad for the victims and you think it's unfair, well, you're challenging God. How dare you. But at the same time, yeah, God loves us and doesn't want to give us the punishment we deserve. Isn't it great, when we see people not getting the punishment they deserve? Isn't it great that David, though he was a sinner like we are, still got to be the king and was loved by God?

So basically what it shakes out to is: When bad things happen to some strangers far away, it's best if you can convince yourself to not care. Wouldn't it be easier to find some minor thing they did wrong, and to believe they deserved what happened to them? But when something bad happens to someone we can relate to, we care about them and we want to fight for them and help them. And we say, isn't it wonderful that God is merciful and forgiving?

(Hmm, this seems like it might be a little bit racist.)

(And, to clarify, I'm not saying *every* time something bad happens far away, evangelicals believe it's fine. I'm saying evangelicals believe it's fine when they have an incentive to believe that those who did it are "the good guys"- ie, God, the US government, etc.)

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As I've said before, the belief that "we all deserve to go to hell" ruins anything good about Christianity. It can be used to excuse any kind of atrocity. I worry about what's going on right now with immigrants being deported. I worry because I know that evangelicals- who believe in the bible and believe in hell- have been trained not to care.

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Related:

I Deserve God's Love 

Everyone Else's Nadab and Abihu Fanfics 

"Sodom and Gomorrah" is a story about living in a "bad neighborhood" 

"Christians Aren't Perfect" When It's Convenient

John Piper Said "There Are No Innocent Children" and I am Not the Least Bit Surprised 

Yes, I Want Justice (A post about white evangelicals and #BlackLivesMatter)

What if the 10 spies were right, and God was wrong?

Artwork showing 2 people carrying a huge cluster of grapes on a stick. Image source.

I was so fascinated by this post from Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg: Spy vs. Spy. It's about the bible story in Numbers 13-14 where Moses sends 12 spies to go look at the Promised Land, in preparation for the Israelites invading it and driving out the people who live there. (Ruttenberg's post repeatedly emphasizes that this conquest did not really happen, and that this story has been used to justify all kinds of terrible atrocities throughout history- but it's in the bible so Jews and Christians shouldn't just ignore it.) The spies come back and 10 of them say the people of the land are too strong, and the Israelites won't be able to defeat them. The other 2 spies (Joshua and Caleb) say God will help us, so let's go do it.

Most of the Israelites are convinced by the 10 spies, and they don't want to try to enter the Promised Land. God is mad about this and declares that the Israelites should wander in the desert for 40 years, until the whole generation has died, and the next generation will be the one to enter the Promised Land.

I'm very familiar with this story. Heard it many times, starting when I was a little kid in Sunday school. The point of the story, I always heard Christians say, is that the Israelites should have trusted God, instead of being too scared to enter the Promised Land. Yes, it was a horrible sin for them to not trust God, so God was right to punish them, to make them all wander in the desert until they died.

That's what I always heard about this story. I never heard any other interpretation. Which is why I'm so fascinated by Ruttenberg's post, and I'm sharing it here. 

She lists several different interpretations. The first one is the one I had always heard:

As can all tales in Torah, this can be a message about obedience. It, for better or worse, can deliver an authoritarian model of Judaism (or Christianity, I reckon)– one in which failure to follow God (and, presumably, your religious leader, God's emissary here on Earth), engenders fatal consequences:

"People didn't trust God enough to go along with God's plan even when they were scared so they were punished."

Implied: You must follow my instructions if you would like to be Good, Safe.

There's also this "trauma-informed" reading of the story:

There is the reading that tries for a trauma-informed lens, that seeks a more compassionate rationale for such a harsh divine decree. Something like:

"After their whole lives enslaved, the generation that participated in the Exodus– which was traumatic enough, jeez– wasn't emotionally ready to do the next step of setting up a new, just society. They regarded themselves as inferior to others– it was their low self-esteem that caused them to regard themselves as 'like grasshoppers' rather than as empowered as full people. They couldn't have handled the responsibility of creating something new in the Promised Land. God finally recognized that and realized that only people who had grown up knowing freedom could best set up the future." (2)

Ruttenberg is not sold on this interpretation; she points out that it implies "Only healed people can be leaders." She says there are plenty of important leaders from history who experienced trauma before becoming leaders and doing great things.

I am also not a fan of this "trauma-informed" reading because, how do I put this, I think it's just silly. The way the story is written, God is telling them to enter the Promised Land, the Israelites refuse, and then God punishes them by making them wait 40 years. (Moses manages to talk God down from just smiting all the people right then and there.) To turn it into a cutesy little "oh God was just concerned about if they were emotionally ready or not... God was really doing what was best for them by giving them time to heal from the trauma of slavery rather than making them enter into a fight for the Promised Land"... come on.

God is not compassionately taking a realistic view of what the people are emotionally ready for. God is mad as hell in this story. In Numbers 14:36-38, the 10 spies who didn't trust God were "struck down and died of a plague before the Lord." Does that sound like God was just really concerned about being careful and understanding of trauma?

(I guess you could argue that the way the biblical writer wrote the story completely misrepresented what actually happened, and actually God told them to wander in the desert for 40 years for trauma-informed reasons, but then the biblical writer put a MASSIVE SPIN on it. I guess you could say that. But, why tho.)

Ruttenberg mentions another interpretation, which says the issue was how Moses asked binary questions- "Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? Is the country in which they dwell good or bad? Are the towns they live in open or fortified? Is the soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or not?" Maybe more open-ended questions would have helped the spies think about the situation differently.

I'm also unimpressed with this interpretation- I mean, sure, there's a point you could make about how leaders have a responsibility for how they frame the tasks they give to their followers, and how binary questions can limit how people understand a situation, okay, sure. I just don't really think that interpretation is central to The Point Of The Story.

Here's another interpretation Ruttenberg mentions in her post, and this one is blowing my mind:

And what if the ten scouts were offering an accurate account of their experience? And what if they were being told by authority figures to ignore their take on the situation, because it didn't conform to the agenda of those in power?

And again, we over here at Life is a Sacred Text Inc. are open to looking at God, in these stories, as a literary figure with whom we can engage with curiosity-- and assume that doing so doesn't necessarily validate or disprove or anything about anyone's experiences of the living divine, or even about how Torah can engage with those experiences. Theology, and God, can be big enough to hold all of it.

What if we were willing to question all of our assumptions about who's right and who's wrong, just to see what might happen if we opened the story from the other side?

What if God and Moses were ready to launch Project Promised Land but their folks on the ground told them that it was, in fact, unsafe?

And if there were a couple of people willing to say what those with power wanted to hear, but the majority of voices– those warning against taking action were speaking not from warped perception, but actual concern?

How many times have experts warned that an outcome is not right, and been steamrolled or ignored, because a little truth happens to be inconvenient at the moment?

How often have those most impacted warned that an organization is not safe, to no avail? How often have people with some power– but lesser power– tried to speak out, and been punished for doing so?

And then derided as the narrative is fixed to paint them as the cowards or the troublemakers, not the brave heroes willing to comply with power's agenda?

It happens all the time.

What if we assume that the spies aren't working in bad faith? We could even posit that Promised Land 1.0 didn't, in fact, release at that time, so we will never know how it would have gone– and it's possible that it would have been a disaster, just as those ten spies warned us that it would have been?

What if God– or whoever was writing this story after the fact– even recognized this and used this 40 years "punishment" as a cover, so that time could be bought without making authority look bad?

Implied: History is written by the victors, and we must ask why the stories we have are written the way they are– including who is blamed, and why.

!!!!

Oh my goodness, this is huge.

What if the spies were actually right? What if "trust God" wasn't the right thing to do in this story?

I LOVE THIS. I love this because it's something that never in a million years would occur to anyone when you're inside an evangelical "biblical inerrancy" ideology. This is something I'm super-interested in- taking the bible stories about "bad" people who disobeyed God, and reframing them to show why those people were actually heroes. (See, for example, my bible fanfic Strange Fire.)

In Sunday school, it was always so obvious: Trusting God is the right thing to do. These spies- who didn't believe God would really be able to win battles- were wrong and sinful and bad and deserved to be punished. We never ever questioned that. (We asked ourselves, would we be able to trust God, if we were in this situation? Would we be able to ignore our own instincts, and have faith and rush in when God said to, even though it might feel like a terrible idea? We hoped we would be good enough Christians to do so.)

This is blowing my mind- what if the Israelites actually wouldn't have won, if they had invaded at this time? (I mean, this whole story didn't really happen, but I'm just thinking about this hypothetical within the universe of the story.) And, as Ruttenberg says, this biblical writer "used this 40 years 'punishment' as a cover"? This is incredible.

Here, take a look at this, from Numbers 14:39-45,

When Moses reported this to all the Israelites, they mourned bitterly. Early the next morning they set out for the highest point in the hill country, saying, “Now we are ready to go up to the land the Lord promised. Surely we have sinned!”

But Moses said, “Why are you disobeying the Lord’s command? This will not succeed! Do not go up, because the Lord is not with you. You will be defeated by your enemies, for the Amalekites and the Canaanites will face you there. Because you have turned away from the Lord, he will not be with you and you will fall by the sword.”

Nevertheless, in their presumption they went up toward the highest point in the hill country, though neither Moses nor the ark of the Lord’s covenant moved from the camp. Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in that hill country came down and attacked them and beat them down all the way to Hormah.

Omg, how was I so naive? I always read this as "no, they missed their chance, God told them not to go into the Promised Land, and now they're sinfully going in anyway instead of listening to God- see, it didn't work, because God wasn't with them."

I'm just marveling at how well Christians have spun this passage (and/or the entire bible), such that it never even occurred to me to think of this: Oh, this shows the 10 spies (who all suddenly died under mysterious circumstances?!!!) were actually right, and the Israelites actually weren't able to defeat the inhabitants of the land at this time.

Seriously. Every time I read this when I was evangelical, my thoughts were "ugh there they go again, not listening to God, of course it's not going to work, come on you guys, why can't you just obey God?"

I always imagined that, during the time of the bible, everything was so simple- you just follow God's rules, and then everything is perfect. Not at all like our world now, where it doesn't really seem like God is close, where you do your best to obey God but it's not really clear if it's working or not. But what if the reason they wrote these things was to get people to believe- because their reality did not feel like everything was this simple and straightforward. What if it was hard to believe back then, just like it was for us, and that's why the biblical writers wrote all these things?

Imagine what it would feel like for you, if you were a spy checking out the Promised Land, and it just feels so unbelievable that your people will really be able to defeat the people living there. What you can see with your own eyes, vs a promise from a God who may or may not actually have this kind of power.

Why were we always so sure it was right to trust in that God? Sure, he brought them out of Egypt and parted the Red Sea, but invading the Promised Land is a totally different situation. Why *should* they believe he had that kind of power?

Why were we so sure they deserved to die for not believing that?

And there's one more interpretation that Ruttenberg mentions in her post, about how this story was a way to explain the geography of the land at a later date when the story was actually written. Also very interesting!

Wow, I'm fascinated by this. Evangelicals have this idea that bible stories are all meant to teach us something about how to obey God, and I'm seeing now how that's so incredibly limiting. The stories mean so much more than that. They can be read in so many ways that go beyond that. And I'm most fascinated by an interpretation where God is wrong.

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Related:

No One Can Take The Bible From Me 

Womanist Midrash 

What Would Abraham Do? (a bible fanfic)

Don't Protect God

Image text: "If anyone says, 'I love God,' but hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. - 1 John 4:20" Image source.

Last week I published this post, The Second-Worst Bible Story, which is about Numbers 25. I have one more thing to say about this story:

This bible story demonstrates how dangerous it is when people believe they need to protect God. 

If you believe the bible is true, you will come away from this story with the message that sometimes it's right to do violence on people who are minding their own business in a way your God considers "sinful." I do not believe the bible is true. And I believe this message is very harmful. So my message is this: Don't protect God.

In Numbers 25, Israelite men have relationships with Moabite and Midianite women (I always assumed this meant casual sex; Wilda Gafney, author of "Womanist Midrash" says it means all kinds of relationships, including cross-cultural marriage). In response, God tells Moses that those who are involved in this must be executed. And then Phinehas the priest takes his spear and follows a couple into their tent and stabs them to death.

The Lord said to Moses, “Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, has turned my anger away from the Israelites. Since he was as zealous for my honor among them as I am, I did not put an end to them in my zeal. Therefore tell him I am making my covenant of peace with him. He and his descendants will have a covenant of a lasting priesthood, because he was zealous for the honor of his God and made atonement for the Israelites.”

God is saying that Phinehas's actions were right because Phinehas was protecting God's "honor." Back when I was evangelical, I believed that people's sin hurts God, and if we really love God, we will want to stop people from sinning, in order to help God feel better.

That's how this story earned its spot as The Second-Worst Bible Story. The idea that we should protect God.

This idea of "if we truly love God and don't want him to be hurt, we should burst into other people's lives and force them to stop sinning by any means necessary, even violence" is definitely NOT a normal evangelical belief. Probably most evangelicals would be horrified by it. And yet, Numbers 25 makes a case for it. 

And the seeds of it are definitely present, in evangelical ideology.

Yeah, here's what I was taught about sin: God loves all people so much, and desperately wants to have a personal relationship with each person. He's just so broken-hearted at all the people who don't believe in him, or don't follow his rules. He's very sad. He created the world, so everyone *should* obey him, but they don't. And, every sin is an infinite offense against a holy God. God is so perfect, and therefore every little sin hurts him so bad.

Usually, we didn't talk about this idea that "God is constantly so heartbroken about all the people not doing what he says," but it was there, in the background, when we talked about how much God loves everyone, personally, loves them SO MUCH, and how people *should* submit their lives to God and have a personal relationship with God, and how wrong it is that most people don't. 

See how Numbers 25 says that this couple (Zimri and Kozbi) needed to die because of their sin- that from God's perspective, their sin of having a forbidden relationship was so bad that it completely overshadowed anything else about them. It was the only thing that mattered to God, apparently. He couldn't see them as people. The most important thing was that the sin needed to be stopped, and the easiest way to do that was to just kill them. That's the fastest way to help God feel better. In some sense, it was "right" to kill them; it was "right" that they should die, because if they lived, they would continue to hurt God with their sin. Usually, though, God lets people live, and they continue to sin and hurt him, and it hurts him so bad- but because of his great love, he's willing to be hurt like that. It's not fair to him, but he allows it because he loves people so much. (I was taught that this is what "mercy" means.)

That is what evangelicals teach about sin. Every person sins sometimes, and is therefore so incredibly disgusting to God that God can't even bear to look at them. God should just send all of us to hell. God can't pay attention to anything about who you are as a person. Fortunately, Jesus comes and covers our sin, if we believe in him. Then God can tolerate us.

(I submit to you that this is not "good news"; this is not the gospel.)

When I left evangelicalism, and I began to believe "people are good", that was a such a huge change for me. Seems like such a simple, obvious thing- "people are good"- but as an evangelical I very explicitly did NOT believe that.

Anyway, don't protect God. Don't hurt people in the name of faithfulness to God. 

Jesus said the greatest commandment is "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." And, he said, "the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’" I do not read these as 2 separate commandments (though when I was evangelical, of course I did). We love God by loving people. I do not read this as, "We should love God first, and people second- and if they're ever in conflict, God takes priority." No. If they're ever in conflict, you're doing something wrong. The apostle John said, "Whoever does not love their brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen." 

Jesus said "the second is like it" and I believe that.

The place where this idea of "protecting God" would come up in real life is, typically, as it relates to other people's sex lives. Other people just minding their own business and not hurting anyone, but *you* believe that they are hurting God by having unmarried sex/ being queer/ etc. (And, in this ideology, it's not true that people are "just minding their own business"- in this ideology, everything belongs to God, everyone's sex life belongs to God, and it's not okay for people to make their own choices.)

You can use this kind of belief to justify anything. If you believe that some behavior is "sinful" even though there's no actual real-world evidence that it's harmful- you believe it's sinful just because "God said", and no real-world reason is necessary- well, what's to stop you from claiming that about anything at all? "We need to stop people from doing xyz because it's a sin" - xyz can be anything. And yes, when I was evangelical, I did believe that there were things God commands us to do or not do which our limited human minds can't make any sense of, but we need to obey anyway. This kind of thinking is so dangerous; it can justify literally anything at all. It justified Phinehas's murder of Zimri and Kozbi.

So don't separate "loving God" and "loving your neighbor." Loving God is loving your neighbor.

Somewhat related to this is Christians claiming that God caused hurricanes or whatever as punishment for the US giving rights to gay people. You have to wonder, do they agree with God on this? Or are they saying it's awful that we need to submit to the violent whims of this God, we have to hate the people that he hates, or else we'll be next... In that case, it's not about policing other people's behavior because we love God so much and don't want him to be hurt by their sin; it's about policing other people's behavior because we fear that when God punishes them, the punishment will come on us too.

Okay, I know that evangelicals would argue with what I'm saying here, and say "hey that's not what we believe." I mean, they believe everyone is a sinner who deserves to go to hell, but some of these other things, they would disagree with. Like the idea that we should try to force people to stop sinning. Or that God sends hurricanes as punishment for a society's acceptance of gay people. Okay, I'll give them the second one- when I was evangelical, I regarded Pat Robertson as a crackpot and definitely wouldn't want to be lumped in with him.

For the first one- the idea that if we really love God, we should try to forcibly stop other people from "sinning" because their sin hurts God: Yeah, most evangelicals would recognize this idea as horrifying, and argue against it by saying "it's not our role to invade people's personal lives and stop them from sinning- our role is just to love people" or "even if we try to force people to stop sinning, it won't work because sin is in the heart- they still *want* to sin, and that also hurts God."

Sure, yeah, those are great arguments. But then, what do you do with Numbers 25? If you believe the bible is the authority over our lives, then you have to believe that Numbers 25 teaches there do exist some circumstances (rare as they may be) where we should butt into people's personal lives, even though they are not hurting anyone, and stop them from "sinning"- and maybe even go as far as murdering them, if that's what it takes.

I mean, that's horrifying, but what else can you say about Numbers 25, if you believe the bible? That's why this is The Second-Worst Bible Story. (If you're wondering which is the worst, it's 2 Samuel 21.)

So don't protect God from "sinners." Don't love God in opposition to loving people. Numbers 25 got it wrong.

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Related:

The Second-Worst Bible Story

The Worst Bible Story

Dr. Strange's Ways Are Higher Than Our Ways 

God of Bad Snaps 

I knew Desiring God ideology is spiritual abuse, but wow.

The Second-Worst Bible Story

Ancient Jewish wedding. Image source.

In 2015, I wrote a post called The Worst Bible Story, which also included my pick for the second-worst bible story, Numbers 25. Right now I'm reading Wilda Gafney's book "Womanist Midrash," which has a section discussing Numbers 25. So let's talk about it.

The book discusses these 3 women or groups of women in connection with this story:

1. Women of Moab (Numbers 25)
2. Cozbi, daughter of Tzur (Numbers 25)
3. Women of Midian (Numbers 25 and 31)

Here's what Gafney says in the book, and my thoughts on it:

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Lumping together Moab and Midian

Numbers 25:1-2 says the Israelites committed "sexual immorality" with Moabite women, and also participated in the worship of the Moabite gods. ("Sexual immorality" is how the NIV translates it; Gafney does her own translations and puts it as "unsanctioned-intimate-relationships." She says this word can mean prostitution or promiscuity or worshiping other gods.) God and Moses order the Israelites involved to be executed.

Then, Cozbi (also translated as Kozbi), a Midianite women, is publicly killed by Phinehas the priest. And then Moses leads the Israelites into battle to get "vengeance" on the Midianites.

So, Gafney points out, wait a minute. The Moabites were the ones who "seduced" the Israelites, so why are we suddenly talking about Midianites? Why are the Israelites fighting the Midianites in retaliation for this? Gafney says (page 143):

The Moabite women, their God, and the Israelite women and men who joined their community sharing kinship ties and worship have been forgotten. This Midianite woman and her people become the focus of the saga. The Moabites and Midianites are interchangeable; they are all foreigners-- never mind that Israel is migrating through inhabited lands to a settled one, uninvited.

Years and years ago, when I was evangelical and spent my time arguing with atheists over whether the bible has contradictions, I would have reacted to someone pointing out this Moab/Midian issue like this: well, whatever, they were probably the same, right? Why do you want so badly to discredit the bible that you fixate on these little details?

And if I were reading the bible by myself, back then, I wouldn't have even noticed this switch from talking about Moab to talking about Midian. I read with an apologetics mindset, fully believing that there are no errors in the bible, and therefore with blinders on, subconsciously smoothing things over and filling in gaps so I wouldn't notice any errors. Moab and Midian, they're basically the same, right?

For me as a white Christian, this kind of thing would be simply be a philosophical argument over whether the bible is inerrant or not. But people of color have the experience of being lumped in together, even being victims of "mistargeted" racism. For example, someone hates Japan, so they bully a Chinese-American person, as if that's the same thing.

(I mean, all racism is like that though. Taking one bad example and believing it is true of a whole race. It's not like regular racism makes more sense than "mistargeted" racism.)

To believe in inerrancy, you have to racist-ly lump together the Moabites and Midianites, as if they're the same. So of course that's what I did, back then. As a white person you can just do that. But for people of color it's not so simple, because they themselves have been victims of that exact kind of racism.

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The wedding of Cozbi and Zimri

I was shocked that Gafney reads this part as a wedding. Here's how the NIV version of the bible puts it:

[content note for graphic violence]

Then an Israelite man brought into the camp a Midianite woman right before the eyes of Moses and the whole assembly of Israel while they were weeping at the entrance to the tent of meeting. When Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw this, he left the assembly, took a spear in his hand and followed the Israelite into the tent. He drove the spear into both of them, right through the Israelite man and into the woman’s stomach. Then the plague against the Israelites was stopped ...

The name of the Israelite who was killed with the Midianite woman was Zimri son of Salu, the leader of a Simeonite family. And the name of the Midianite woman who was put to death was Kozbi daughter of Zur, a tribal chief of a Midianite family.

Here's Gafney's translation of the same passage:

Suddenly, a man from the women and men of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his kinfolk, in the sight of Moshe (Moses) and in the sight of the whole congregation of the women and men of Israel, and they were weeping at the entrance of the tent of meeting! Then Pinchas (Phinehas) ben El'azar (Eleazar) ben Aharon (Aaron) the priest saw; he rose from the midst of the congregation and took a spear in his hand. He went after the Israelite man into the tent-chamber, and he stabbed the two of them, the Israelite man and the woman, through her inner-chamber, and the plague was stopped among the people of Israel... The name of the slain Israelite man who was killed with the Midianite woman was Zimri ben Salu, leader of an ancestral house belonging to the Simeonites. The name of the Midianite woman who was killed was Cozbi bat Tzur; Tzur was the head of peoples, of an ancestral house in Midian.

Gafney describes this as a wedding where the 2 newlyweds were publicly murdered. Where is she getting that this was a wedding? I never ever read it that way (and you know I've thought about this story a lot, it's my "second-worst bible story").

Here are the parts that lend evidence to the idea that this was a wedding:

1. Verse 6- "brought a Midianite woman to his kinfolk." This is very different from the NIV translation which just says "brought into the camp." I checked this website which has a bunch of different bible translations, and many of them include something along the lines of "to his relatives"/"to his brethren". It's like we might say "bringing a girl home to meet your family." In our culture that's a big relationship milestone. It means you're in a long-term, committed relationship, and likely to get married. And in ancient times, they had the idea of the woman leaving her family and "marrying into" her husband's family. So I suppose it does make sense that this would mean they are getting married.
2. Verse 8 mentions a "tent" or "tent-chamber." Gafney says, "instead of an Israelite wedding canopy, a chuppah, there is a foreign wedding tent, a qubbah" and "the foreign word occurs only this once in the Scriptures" and has "uncertain meaning."

So, was this a wedding?

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How I always read the story

Here's how I always read this story:

The Israelites were passing through land where other nations lived, and those sneaky foreign women came and started to seduce the easily-distracted Israelite men. Like, come on guys, focus, why can't you just do what God says? It's not that hard! They were having casual sex (gross! God says sex is only supposed to be in marriage) and starting to worship those foreign gods. This is really bad! God ordered those involved to be executed. Kinda sad for them, but they're gross and sexual and God says they deserve to die, so that's that.

Anyway, when the Israelite leaders are openly weeping because of how bad the people's sin is, some Israelite guy literally comes in right then with some slut he picked up. He walks her right past the front of the camp, to his tent where they are gonna have sex. Come on dude, read the room! What's wrong with this guy? He seriously can't keep it in his pants, even after God has spoken and said this is such a serious sin that people need to be executed for it.

And then, finally, someone does something about it. Finally, someone loves God enough to take action and stop this horrible disobedience against God. Phinehas the priest followed them into the tent where they were having dirty dirty sex and stabbed his spear right through the both of them, and killed them. Wow, that's graphic and violent, but it was the right thing to do. Phinehas is the only one in this story who actually takes sin seriously, like we're supposed to. Wish we could be as courageous and faithful to God as Phinehas.

I read this story, back then, as a good evangelical girl, and it seemed to be about 2 things: casual sex, and worshipping other gods, both of which I knew were obviously bad, and which I couldn't relate to at all. People who committed such sins were one-dimensional caricatures, mustache-twirling villains who were ungrateful to God. Maybe it's a bit extreme to say they deserve to die for that, but, sin is sin, so I felt that God was within his rights to say they deserved to die. Plus, I knew I wasn't going to commit those sins, so it doesn't affect me. (Apologetics seared my conscience with a hot iron.)

Gafney reads this as a wedding, though. And the "worshipping other gods" bit she reads as hospitality from the foreign women, inviting the Israelites to their religious feasts. More on that later.

Rather than being about "hookup culture" with those slutty slutty foreign women, she reads this passage as being about relationships of all kinds. (Another cool thing is the book says this passage is "queer" because it talks about the foreign women having relationships with Israelite men and women.) Living in the same area, getting to know each other. Some even falling in love and getting married.

So Phinehas sprang into action and murdered Cozbi and Zimri because they were an international couple, not because of their dirty dirty casual sex.

That's ... that's horrifying, and my first thought was that if I had read it that way, back when I was a good evangelical teenager, I would have been horrified.

But...

---

If it's about casual sex, or if it's about interracial marriage, how different is that, really?

I looked up some other translations and bible commentaries, to see if Christian scholars read this passage like I had always read it, or if they read it as a wedding, like Gafney does. Yeah, I found many of them using words like "blatant" and "parading"... those are words you would use for casual sex, right? Some guy just can't keep it in his pants, and he wants all the random passersby to know about it, eww.

But wait... in the bible, God forbids the Israelites from marrying people of other nations. Some guy falls in love with a foreign woman, and wants to let the world see his love, wants to marry her... Wouldn't that have been seen as disgusting, in their culture? Wouldn't that have been seen as "blatantly" "parading" his sin in front of everyone? Wouldn't it be seen as something you shouldn't do in polite society?

What we're circling around here is, this is about interracial marriage. Not *exactly* interracial marriage, because they didn't conceptualize race the same way we do today, but if you think about the history of interracial marriage in US society, well, it's the same as what we see in Numbers 25. Black men were lynched for the "crime" of dating a white woman. In "Womanist Midrash," Gafney says Zimri would have been seen as a "race traitor." She says this is a lynching. (She's right.)

"But," you may say, "surely not. Surely if they were just a nice couple, in love, getting married, who happened to be from different nations, the Israelite leaders wouldn't have been so upset about it. Surely people wouldn't have made such a big deal about it, even going so far to say it was good when they were killed. Surely not. Surely it must have been about some worse sin, like casual sex."

Did you, uh, totally miss all the culture wars over same-sex marriage, or what? 

Making a big deal about how someone else's marriage which does not affect you is such a horrible sin and they are "blatantly" "parading" it in front of us just by existing... that's pretty much evangelicals' whole schtick.

When I was a good little evangelical teenager, and read this passage... see, here's another horrifying thing. Imagine I had read, in the bible, that this was about a couple being murdered on their wedding day, for the crime of being from different nations and/or religions. ("Womanist Midrash" discusses this passage like that's obviously what it's saying, but I'm not convinced. But imagine if it was more obvious in the biblical text that that's what happened.) What would I have thought?

Good little evangelical Perfect Number would have thought it was sad, but it must have been right for Phinehas to kill them, because the bible says God approved of what Phinehas did, and the bible is always right.

No, not even newlyweds being murdered would have shaken me from my belief in biblical inerrancy. I was a good evangelical. I was an apologetics nerd.

And unfortunately, I have evidence to back that up: Good little evangelical Perfect Number read the book of Ezra, back then. In Ezra 9 and 10, the prophet Ezra finds out that many Israelite men had married foreign women, and he makes a huge big deal about it, sitting around weeping because of other people's families, other people's love, other people's mixed-race children. Then the leaders come together and decide they need to right this wrong; they need to send away these foreign women and mixed children. So that's what they do. Mass divorce and abandonment of their children.

And I read that back then and thought "well, yeah, God clearly told them not to intermarry with the other nations, so, that's what they had to do." I couldn't view it any other way; I couldn't say "wait a minute, this is wrong!" I was a good evangelical.

Years later, I read the Slacktivist's posts on this mass divorce in the book of Ezra. (Links here.) Blew my mind. Why is no one else talking about how the prophet Ezra was a racist bigot who tore families apart? Why is the Slacktivist the only one?

(See also: my Ezra fanfic Love Wins, and related post This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now)

So yeah, you may naively assume that if good evangelicals read this story in Numbers 25 as being about international marriage and a murder at a wedding, rather than about casual sex, they would be more horrified and ready to throw away their belief in biblical inerrancy, but, no. Unfortunately, no.

---

Hospitality

"Womanist Midrash" talks about the hospitality of the Moabite women. This was very surprising to me- "hospitality" is such a positive word, and I had always read the Moabite women's invitations to their religious feasts as a conniving evil scheme. "Mwahahaha, let's entice those people away from their god, and snare them in our evil religious rituals, worshipping our evil gods, mwahahaha."

But the way "Womanist Midrash" describes it, it was like this: The Israelites lived in the same area as the Moabites, and so naturally they began to interact with each other, and get to know each other, and develop close relationships. (Some of them even married each other.) And it was very kind and hospitable for the Moabite women to invite the Israelites to the Moabite religious festivals. Maybe from the Israelites' perspective, the Moabite religious practices weren't that different from their own, so they didn't view it as a big huge "we're abandoning our god" thing.

---

Consensual marriage vs slavery

In the bible, God commands the Israelites to not marry foreign people. But, the Israelites are allowed to marry foreign captive women taken in war (see Deuteronomy 21:10-14). (And Gafney calls this "rape marriage" because honestly this isn't a romantic vision of how love can bloom in the most unlikely of places- no, it's "she's your slave and you can do whatever you want to her" and the bible uses the word "marriage" to describe that.)

So the issue here, the reason Zimri and Cozbi were judged as bad bad sinners whose murder was justified, was because their marriage was consensual. Because they chose each other. If an Israelite man takes a captive woman and enslaves her, makes her give up her culture, rapes her, and calls it "marriage", that is apparently fine. "Do not intermarry with them" just meant you can't have a consensual marriage.

It's horrifying, but at the same time, I can imagine myself as an evangelical, understanding the logic of this. Back then, of course I believed that we must not marry people from other religions, because there would be conflict as a result of each spouse's different beliefs, and the good Christian spouse wouldn't be able to win every single time, and would be influenced away from their correct Christian beliefs. But, isn't that only a problem if you go into marriage with the expectation that you are equals? What if you weren't equals? What if from the very start, the person with the correct religious beliefs dominated, and forced the other to give up their own religion and culture?

That would avoid all those "being influenced by those bad religions" problems, right?

I always heard Christians talk about mixed-faith marriage with this metaphor: The Christian is standing on a chair, and the non-Christian is standing on the ground, and the Christian is trying to pull the non-Christian spouse up, but isn't it so much easier for the non-Christian to pull them down? And that's why it's a bad idea to marry a non-Christian- you think you're going to influence them positively, but in reality, the more likely outcome is they're going to influence you negatively.

What on earth? Christians conceptualizing themselves as higher than everyone else, more moral than everyone else. Like there's nothing we can learn from each other; the Christian is already right about everything, and their non-Christian partner can only sabotage that. What on earth?

You can see how, if you're coming at it from that perspective, maybe it sort of makes sense than "rape marriage" is less bad than consensual mixed-faith marriage.

(Please note, I am a Christian and my husband is not- and I'm glad he's not a Christian.)

---

Did Moses divorce Zipporah?

Cozbi is a Midianite, and after she is killed, Moses leads the Israelites in battle against the Midianites, to avenge... [checks notes] the way the Moabite women were hospitable to the Israelites?

Gafney points out that Moses's wife Zipporah is a Midianite. Or, rather, she says that Zipporah was Moses's wife, and then Moses divorced her (Exodus 18:2) and married another woman. The other woman is apparently mentioned in Numbers 12:1, "he had married a Cushite." I don't totally buy Gafney's interpretation here- I always thought it meant that Zipporah was both a Midianite and a Cushite, and Numbers 12:1 was referring to her. I certainly never was aware of the idea that Moses had divorced Zipporah. 

But, at the same time, the bible definitely says that Zipporah and her family are Midianites. (See Exodus 2.) And in Numbers 31, the Israelites go to battle against the Midianites, take the women and children as captives, and Moses is very angry that they allowed the Midianite women to live. He commands that they kill all non-virgin Midianite women, and all the Midianite boys, and "save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." (Which turns out to be exactly as creepy as it sounds, my god.)

So, uh, what? Isn't Moses's wife a Midianite? Isn't Moses's wife a non-virgin Midianite woman? (Gafney points out that apparently Moses is unhappy with Midianite women monogamously having sex with their own husbands, what on EARTH.) Aren't Moses's in-laws all Midianites? Whether or not you believe that Moses divorced Zipporah, you still have the big problem of how it could possibly make sense that Moses is so bent out of shape by the Israelites intermarrying with Midian, when he himself did that.

"Womanist Midrash" points out that the bible is inconsistent on the issue of marrying foreigners. There are passages like this one, about how it was such a bad thing that Israelites married Moabite and Midianite women, and then there are plenty of bible heroes who married foreign women and the bible is apparently fine with that. Judah, Joseph, Moses, etc.

And one more thing: Moses commands that the Israelites kill all the boys among the Midianite captives. "Womanist Midrash" draws a connection between this passage and Moses's own escape from being killed as a baby, when the Pharaoh commanded that all the Israelite baby boys should be killed, and Moses's mother hid him and then eventually laid him in a basket in the river where he was rescued by Pharaoh's daughter. This is a beloved bible story; all the kids in Sunday school know about baby Moses in the basket. (Exodus 2:1-10)

Moses, who escaped the "kill all the baby boys" decree, is now saying "kill all the baby boys."

Why do we not talk about this in church?

When Moses's mother saves her baby and puts him in a basket, that's a wonderful tale of courage and heroism which we teach to our children. When Moses commands the Midianite boys to be executed, that's a footnote in an apologetics book, only mentioned in the context of "how do we respond to atheists who say the bible condones violence?" Oh, they had to kill the Midianite boys because [reasons], so, it's fine, move along, nothing to see here.

But these are the same story, Moses's story. When we tell one part without the other, we're spinning the story in a misleading way. We're not being faithful to the bible.

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Reading the Pentateuch (with a "biblical inerrancy" mindset) is an exercise in maintaining hierarchy

All of this is bringing me back to when I was a good evangelical teenager, working on reading through the whole bible. As I read through the laws that God gave Moses, my thoughts were as follows:

bible: "don't do xyz"

me: "well, yeah, xyz is a sin, they shouldn't do it"

bible: "if anyone does xyz, they must be put to death"

me: "well, maybe that feels a bit harsh, but, really, I'm wrong to feel that way- this is a sin and therefore it *does* deserve to be punished with the death penalty. So, that's fine, keep reading."

Looking back on it now, I feel that the way I read the bible back then was all about brutally maintaining rules and hierarchy. The bible says that people who do this or that bad thing are so bad they deserve to die, and I had to make myself believe it. Make myself believe that was a just law, and that those people were so different from me, I would never do something like that, so I'm safe.

It's very much the opposite of a "black lives matter" mindset. I've seen plenty of hot takes on the internet, white people making arguments about how a black victim of police brutality deserved to die because they weren't perfectly polite, or might have committed some minor nonviolent crime, or used to do drugs, and I think of the way I forced myself to believe it was right when God commanded a man should be executed for gathering sticks on the Sabbath.

Gafney is coming from a very different perspective, focusing on the victims of these laws, those who were oppressed and excluded and punished by the laws given by God and/or Moses.

I wonder if the "inerrant" reading of the bible (ie, you have to believe that all the laws given by God are good) is less of an option for marginalized people who have seen how our society's laws are used as a justification for violence against them and "keeping them in their place."

Thinking about myself, when I was a teenager, reading the last few chapters of Deuteronomy. After Moses finishes giving all the laws to the people, there are a few chapters about the blessings they will receive if they obey, and curses if they disobey. I remember thinking that this section of the bible was kind of repetitive, just hammering on the same points over and over- I felt like "yeah we get it, we should obey God, obviously, this is not that complicated, you don't need to keep saying it over and over."

Just follow these rules. Just repress yourself. Just exclude the people God wants you to exclude. It's not that complicated, why don't people get it?

For Cozbi and Zimri, it wasn't that they were irresponsible and rebellious and easily distracted from God's commands and God's blessings. No. It was because they found love, and they knew it was so much better than the narrow-minded laws that Moses was trying to use to keep everybody in line. Discovering how good it is to connect with other people, to value people, to share with each other and learn from each other and accept each other.

There's a whole world out there. Love the world. 

And I'm aware that what I'm saying here- about the law of Moses being used to exclude and punish- is also argued in the bible. In the New Testament, Paul says, "The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." He says that the law can only tell you what you did wrong- it can't save you- and that's why we need Jesus. 

But, did we really need to wait for Jesus for that? Didn't Cozbi and Zimri already know that love was better than exclusion, and they were killed for it?

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Conclusion

So. Those are my thoughts on the story of Cozbi and Zimri, which I still maintain is The Second-Worst Bible Story. I was very surprised that Wilda Gafney reads it as a wedding, rather than a story about how bad and wrong it is to have casual sex. I'm fascinated by this interpretation. My own marriage is international, interracial, interreligious. And Christians need to talk about the parts of the bible where the bible "heroes" and/or God do something wrong. The bible is not always right, and we need to talk about that.

---

Posts about the book "Womanist Midrash" by Wilda C. Gafney:

Womanist Midrash 
The Slavery We Ignore in the Book of Exodus 
The Second-Worst Bible Story
Michal wasn't here for David's worship, and now neither am I
Why did I think David was the good guy in the story of Abigail?
David's Womanizing
The Bible and "Purity"

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Follow-up post: Don't Protect God

Related:

This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now 

Everyone Else's Nadab and Abihu Fanfics

The Worst Bible Story

The Slavery We Ignore in the Book of Exodus

Moses, from the movie "The Ten Commandments." Image source.

[content note: slavery, rape]

So I've been reading the book Womanist Midrash [affiliate link], and I got to the part where Gafney talks about Exodus 21:7, "When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the men go out." (This is Gafney's translation; the NIV translates it as "servant.")

Gafney points out that this section, the rules for how it works when you have slaves, is in the book of Exodus. The book of Exodus, you guys. You know, Exodus, which starts out with the epic story of God bringing Their people out of slavery in Egypt. The ten plagues, parting the Red Sea, Passover, all that. The book of Exodus. After God brings Their people out of Egypt, God gives laws to Moses (like the Ten Commandments) and some of those laws are about how to treat your slaves.

The juxtaposition of this is WILD, and is something I never noticed before. Gafney asks readers to imagine the young Israelite women who were enslaved in Egypt, and then God freed them, and then they were again sold into slavery by their fathers, and there was no one to come and free them then. 

Reading this, I'm extremely aware that I'm a white Christian, and Gafney is black, and that's why I never really thought slavery in the bible was a big deal. Gafney, on the other hand, says this:

For me as a black feminist and womanist descended from enslaved Africans in the Americas, biblical slavery is a particularly pernicious and personal issue. Slavery in the Bible represents more than the ubiquity of slavery in the ancient world; it represents the theological bulwark on which the Atlantic slave trade rested.

Well, yeah. And the fact that white American Christians try to just ignore all the slavery in the bible is A SIN.

In my experience growing up in the white evangelical church, first of all we didn't talk about the slavery in the bible. A lot of times the bible translations use the word "servant" instead of "slave." But to the extent that we did talk about slavery in the bible, it was in the context of apologetics. Some atheist comes and says to you that the bible is bad because it condones slavery, and you have to give an argument to defend the bible. The arguments we gave were along these lines:

• Slavery in the bible was totally different than American-style race-based chattel slavery. So even though slavery is bad, it wasn't, like, that bad. (And if anyone defends US slavery using the bible, well they're wrong, so just ignore them.)
• In ancient times, slavery was seen as normal. So even though God doesn't agree with it, he allowed it back then, because it would have been such a huge societal change to abolish slavery. But in the long run God didn't want people to enslave each other.

It was only about giving excuses so that atheists would stop pointing out the slavery in the bible. It was never about me, a Christian, being disturbed by biblical slavery, and asking why my God would allow that. It was never about recognizing the horror of how the bible has been used to support atrocities like slavery. It was never about caring about the enslaved characters in the bible stories.

For black American Christians, though, it can't just be an exercise in apologetics. The biblical passages condoning slavery have done real damage.

So Gafney points out this passage in the book of Exodus, the commands that God gave Moses regarding how slavery works. Right after God dramatically freed Their people from slavery in Egypt. Why is one of these things a well-known bible story, that Cecil B. DeMille made a 3-hour epic movie about, and one of them is "oh just ignore that, that's just how their society was back then"? We should be talking about these two things in connection with each other. God and Moses freed the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, and then turned around and said "so anyway, if you want to sell your daughter as a slave, here's how." Doesn't the story of the Exodus hit different, once you realize that?

If you read the story of the Exodus in the bible, you may notice that Moses did not say to Pharaoh, "Let my people go, because slavery is wrong." Instead it was more like, "Let my people go, because my god can beat up your god." Turns out it was never about "slavery is wrong." The bible *does* record God saying, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering." But did They really mean that? Did They later hear the cry of Israelites who were sold into slavery by other Israelites?

And in this section of "Womanist Midrash," Gafney emphasizes that when the bible talks about "selling your daughter into slavery," this is sex slavery we're talking about. And any time the bible talks about female slaves, this is sex slavery. (The book says it was common for male slaves to be sexually abused too.) Gafney says that the slaves may have done many other non-sexual tasks, but she uses the term "sex slavery" to make it clear that this was a class of people seen as sexually available to their masters.

I did not know that. Probably the reason is... slavery is so much worse than you imagine. American slavery was so much worse than you imagine. (Honestly, American slavery was also sex slavery.) And biblical slavery was so much worse than you imagine.

The picture I get, from reading "Womanist Midrash," is that back then, in the culture where the bible was written, they believed there was a class of people that it was okay to rape. The way they viewed sex was not in terms of "guarding your heart" like I was taught in purity culture. 

I was taught that it's a bad idea to have sex outside of a monogamous marriage because then you'll be heartbroken, you'll be heartbroken about it for your entire life because sex necessarily creates a permanent emotional connection, and later when you're in a relationship with someone else, you'll still be hung up on your ex and unable to fully love your current partner. And these rules were created by God for our own good, God gave us sex as a good gift and this is how he wants us to enjoy it. And the rules are the same for both men and women (even though in practice for some reason people judge women much more harshly for breaking the rules). They said this is the "biblical" view of sex.

But this stuff about sex slavery in the bible... no, it's not that at all. It's like, men are in charge, and it's okay for men to rape women who are slaves. If someone rapes a married woman, well that would be bad because she belongs to her husband. It's about possessiveness, about who has power over whom. Nobody really cares about consent. That's the biblical view of sex. 

(Suddenly it makes a lot more sense, in a horrifying way, why the bible specifies a punishment for a woman who is not a virgin when she gets married, but there's no equivalent punishment for a man. I always thought "well of course they had the same rules for men and women, but they just didn't happen to mention the part about men" but NOPE.)

I remember as a kid, reading the bible, there were some passages where I wasn't sure if it was talking about slavery or marriage. Take a look at Exodus 21:7-11:

“If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.

I remember reading things like this in the bible, starting out with the assumption that it's about someone who works as a servant, ya know, doing farming or whatever, and then partway through the passage being so confused and deciding it's actually about if you marry your servant, apparently? Uh. It's about sex slavery. Also isn't it a little ****ed-up to have a passage in the bible where you can't tell if it's about marriage or slavery?

And another thing: Can we talk about Numbers 31?

In Numbers 31, Moses sends the Israelite army to fight the Midianites. The Israelites win, and bring back a lot of livestock and prisoners. Moses then says, and I quote, 

“Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

I remember reading this, as a kid, and I was like, "what?"

And I've read apologetics books that explain it away like this: "Well, they had to kill the boys, because they would have grown up to become soldiers who would want vengeance. And they had to kill the non-virgin women, because [I don't even remember, some apologetics bullshit]." (The point of apologetics is to sear your conscience with a goddamn hot iron. Become the kind of person who says "here's why genocide is okay sometimes.")

And oh it gets worse:

The Lord said to Moses, “You and Eleazar the priest and the family heads of the community are to count all the people and animals that were captured. Divide the spoils equally between the soldiers who took part in the battle and the rest of the community. From the soldiers who fought in the battle, set apart as tribute for the Lord one out of every five hundred, whether people, cattle, donkeys or sheep. Take this tribute from their half share and give it to Eleazar the priest as the Lord’s part. From the Israelites’ half, select one out of every fifty, whether people, cattle, donkeys, sheep or other animals. Give them to the Levites, who are responsible for the care of the Lord’s tabernacle.” So Moses and Eleazar the priest did as the Lord commanded Moses.

The plunder remaining from the spoils that the soldiers took was 675,000 sheep, 72,000 cattle, 61,000 donkeys and 32,000 women who had never slept with a man.

So *God* is in on this. God wants the Israelites to treat virgin women like livestock to divide up among all the soldiers. WTF.

When I was in college, I remember having a conversation with one of my non-Christian friends (let's call him Bob) about this bible story. Bob was saying that Moses was telling the soldiers they could take these women prisoners and rape them, and I was like, no way. That would be so outlandish, no one would do that! How can you think that about Moses?! I did feel that it was creepy the way the bible kept specifying that these women had never slept with a man, but I assumed it must just be a translation thing, surely the biblical writer didn't mean it to sound that creepy. These were little girls and they were being adopted into Israelite families, right? That would actually make sense, right? That would be a reasonable thing to do for a child who just lost her family in a war, right? Not rape her, what on earth, who would do that?

Yeah turns out Moses did mean they could rape them. Moses. "Let my people go" Moses. That Moses.

"My god can beat up your god" Moses.

And one more thing from "Womanist Midrash" I want to talk about:

In 2 Chronicles 28:8ff, the prophet Oded demands that the Judeans free the Israelite women and men that they have taken captive as spoils of war as shiphchah-slaves and 'avadiym, "male-slaves." The people do so, and the text notes that they clothe those among the slaves who were naked (v. 15) as they heed the prophet. The public nudity of the slaves in that context calls up images of slave markets and the public stripping of slaves intended for sex-work, so that their potential buyers may more easily assess their value.

This is also really surprising to me. I've read this passage before, and when it said they clothed the slaves who were naked, I thought, "well these are prisoners of war, obviously they're all having a really bad day, maybe they lost their clothes somewhere along the way too" and also not thinking it meant literally naked, but just not really having the right clothes that one would want to have in that situation. I never thought of it as a sexual thing.

But, yes, it's good that someone came along and asked, "Wait, why are some of the slaves naked?" Apparently that was how it worked. Apparently it was understood back then that slaves were sex slaves.

White American Christians need to talk about this stuff. The bible condones slavery, and that's bad- we need to be able to admit that the bible is sometimes bad. And our ancestors used the bible as a justification for enslaving black people. We can't just say "well they obviously interpreted the bible wrong" and act like it doesn't matter, because they are like us. We need to learn from that history so that we don't commit the same sins. We need to listen to black theologians and learn about the bible from them.

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Posts about the book "Womanist Midrash" by Wilda C. Gafney:

Womanist Midrash 
The Slavery We Ignore in the Book of Exodus 
The Second-Worst Bible Story
Michal wasn't here for David's worship, and now neither am I
Why did I think David was the good guy in the story of Abigail?
David's Womanizing
The Bible and "Purity"

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Related:

I Wish I Was This Angry About Slavery in the Bible

Honest Lent: Abraham's Slaves 

"Slaves, Women & Homosexuals" (What is this book actually about?)

Reading US History Inerrantly 

Blogaround

1. The CIA Spread Anti-Vaxx COVID Disinformation (June 22) "In the Spring of 2020, when COVID-19 was killing tens of thousands of people every day, the US military launched an anti-vaccine propaganda campaign in Southeast Asia in order to undermine worldwide trust in China." I posted a link about this last time, but here is another article about it because it's just so bad.

2. That UK Report On Healthcare For Trans Kids Just Gets Eviler And Eviler (June 24) [content note: transmisia, suicide] "While the Cass Report would like you to believe that there are no risks associated with denying GIDS [Gender Identity Development Services] to teens and tweens, as wait times grew, suicides shot up dramatically."

3. Tzlofchad's Daughters and the Master's Tools (June 24, via) "Marginalized people working in oppressive systems do this all the time. It's a survival technique. A strategy."

4. How China Conquered the Dark Side of the Moon (June 25) "China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe has made history by returning to Earth with the first samples collected from the far side of the Moon — a groundbreaking feat that marks a new step forward for the country’s space program."

5. A Sudoku Celebration For Pride Month! (June 26) 31-minute sudoku solve video. It's a sudoku colored like the rainbow flag. Love it~ happy Pride!

6. Former Uvalde school police chief, officer indicted in 1st-ever criminal charges over failed response to 2022 mass shooting (June 28) [content note: school shooting]

7. Supreme Court allows Idaho to offer emergency medical abortions (June 27) "The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, in a 6-3 opinion, temporarily allowed abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho."

8. Biden pardons potentially thousands of ex-service members convicted under now-repealed gay sex ban (June 27) "Biden’s action grants a pardon to service members who were convicted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s former Article 125, which criminalized sodomy. The law, which has been on the books since 1951, was rewritten in 2013 to prohibit only forcible acts."

Blogaround

1. Chicago’s “Race-Neutral” Traffic Cameras Ticket Black and Latino Drivers the Most (January) This is really interesting, because a very superficial view of the situation might say "it's actually true that Black and Latino drivers in these areas are running red lights/ breaking the speed limit at higher rates than white drivers, so yes they should get ticketed more; there is no problem here." But actually, the real issue is that the layout of the roads in Black and Latino areas of the city encourages drivers to break traffic laws (which can cause fatal accidents) while the layout of the roads in mostly-white areas naturally causes drivers to slow down/ drive carefully. So it's not just about "you, an individual, shouldn't be speeding"- though yes that's true- but there's more to it than that.

2. Feminism with YIMBY Characteristics (July 7) "But there is another picture here, one visible in the negative space of the above statistics: the people who don’t leave, or who can’t. The ones for whom the threat of homelessness functions as a chain, tying them to their abusers. This is queer kids, but it’s not just queer kids. It’s everyone stuck with a partner they can’t leave because they need to make the mortgage, or because they can’t afford rent alone. It’s everyone stuck in the closet because their partner would show them the door the minute they came out. It’s everyone who settles for patriarchy because we have made freedom unaffordable."

3. The Incarnation or the Resurrection? (December 13) I love this!

4. No, The Bible Does Not Say “Fear Not” 365 Times (December 13) Fact checking. Very important.

Also: The Great Laminin Hoax (2017) "Uhm…Err…uh…yeah. Well, that’s not very cross-like is it?"

5. Gov. Kate Brown commutes sentences of all 17 people on Oregon’s death row (December 13) [content note: the descriptions of the murders that these people on death row committed are pretty horrifying]

6. 12/14 Flashback: Thrice-told tales (December 14) "Now Moses is again being confronted, but not by clan leaders and respected well-known men. He’s being challenged by five sisters. The law, these sisters tell Moses, is not fair. God’s law is not fair."

7. The Repugnant Conclusion (April 18) This is a short story about a character who has vaginismus. (Also I read her as asexual.) Linking it here because I was so surprised to happen upon a story about vaginismus. Those parts of the story feel really spot-on.

8. Why Infinite Coin-Flipping is Bad (December 2) "But that’s very far from true if you’re donating millions or billions. When donating at large scale, you’re structurally changing the organizations you donate to. There aren’t plausibly organizations that will literally sop up a billion dollars just doing more of the exact same thing they were doing earlier."

9. Leopards, faces, etc. (December 17) "I only wanted to stop the indefensible forms of abortion that exist in my head. I didn’t intend for that to have anything to do with ectopic pregnancies, or with forcing responsible married women to carry dead fetuses to term, or with requiring an 11-year-old rape victim to bear a child her body is incapable of bearing safely!"