Recently, atheist students at a Texas university offered porn in exchange for Bibles arguing, "same diff." Inflammatory, to be sure, but are they right? The Bible is indeed full of racy material, from its very first book on. Robert Crumb's Genesis in graphic novel form warns on the cover that adult supervision is recommended. The Song of Solomon's highly suggestive erotic poetry is inspiration for a line of Christian sex toys that you can buy at Book22.com (in one Christian ordering of the books, the Song of Solomon is the twenty-second book). In the New Testament, Paul explicitly lists some of the ways that people "got off" in the ancient Greco-Roman world. Revelation, the final book of Christian canon, describes in gory (albeit symbolic) detail the whoring of Babylon. And that's just a wee sampling of the sex. But pornography isn't just about sex, is it? There's something more that makes it what it is ... and so difficult to define. There's something of the forbidden and shameful about it. There's the debasing and humiliating, the using and abusing of others for a temporary pleasure that drives porn. Violence and the horrors that lay a person out raw, which we watch hungrily, disaffected and complicit. Isn't that combination - the repulsive and our inability to tear our eyes away from it - porn, too?
Wouldn't it be nice to say that the Bible includes no such narratives, images, and invitations? But it does. Saul is castigated for showing mercy to a vanquished king, so we watch smugly as he carries out the righteous act of butchering Agag. We watch as a nameless woman, gang-raped and left for dead, is cut into eleven pieces to rally the Israelite tribes against their own. The prophet Ezekiel likens the capital cities of Samaria and Jerusalem to two young women and proceeds to subject them to graphic humiliations and abuse. We watch comfortably, even titillated, knowing that "they deserved it." Doesn't Jesus's crucifixion - an innocent submitting to a twisted power of the state, of hatred and fear, brutally humiliated and strung up in bloody torture ... and accepted as somehow right and good - meet the criteria for porn? Paul's stern rebukes (whether they came from him or became attributed to him) of women thinking, acting, and speaking with equal humanity as men, and the ways in which those texts have denied women their fullest expressions of humanity ... is that porn? When biblical texts serve the purposes of the powerful to circumscribe individual growth and even to dehumanize the other ... well, a case could be made.
Finally, though, the Bible is not the same as the porn those university students are handing out. It is far more rich and nuanced. It is also full of the very things that lead us to push back against the arrogance of brutality and to cringe and to cry out in sympathy and compassion for the oppressed and abused. Even while it throws into our faces the ugliness of hatred and fear, violence and humiliation, it invites us to challenge (demands that we do!) whatever is life-denying to the least of these, the poorest, and most vulnerable. For that's finally what each of us is, what we all are. Hannah's song becomes Mary's Magnificat. Power is overturned and the weak become the strong. Expectations and assumptions are derailed and reborn in compassion and joy.
If we loose our grip on what the Bible can and cannot do, on what we allow that the Bible says and doesn't say, and if we are intentional about bringing our full humanity to the demanding (and unavoidable) task of interpretation, then maybe we'll witness, even participate in the Bible's transforming that potential for porn into a mandate for the fully realized life of all beings in a family at home on this breathing earth.
Follow Kristin M. Swenson, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kristinswenson
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www.mwillett.org/atheism/scat.htm
Most definately Fanned.
Carried it with me to school. Shared it with my friends.
Brought it home and opened it at night.
And I've been an atheist since my teens.
I think you touch on something interesting here:
"The prophet Ezekiel likens the capital cities of Samaria and Jerusalem to two young women and proceeds to subject them to graphic humiliations and abuse. We watch comfortably, even titillated, knowing that "they deserved it."
Christians do like to fantasize about non-believers getting their comeuppance, and they act this out toward those who don't believe as they do. It's a major cause of trouble.
There's a section in Slaughterhouse Five where Kurt Vonnegut talks about why Christians find it so easy to be cruel, while touting a Gospel that speaks of mercy. It goes like this:
The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn't look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought...:
Oh, boy - they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time!
And that thought had a brother: "There are right people to lynch." Who? People not well connected. So it goes.
Hmm, why is it I find your choice of words in this context mildly amusing?
Do you really think the Bishops couldn't figure out who they needed to pander to? That they didn't realize the politics involved? That there was no horse-trading going on? And that Constantine sat back like a good boy and let the Council decide without his input?
PAH-LEEZE!
The vivid sexual content in the Bible shows us that the sexual struggles of man are nothing new. What is being done today sexually, has been done sexually before. One thing is certain though - the Bible does place a high value on celebrating sex as a sacred gift from God, so anything done to mar the sacredness of sex is condemned (rape, incest, adultery, and so on).
And the penalty for raping a married woman is that they should kill the woman, because evidently its a sin to be raped. And they should kill the rapist, too, though, as the Bible is clear, it's not because of what he did to the woman, but because he violated his male neighbor's property..
As for prohibitions against incest, it's evidently not an overly important prohibition. Lot gets drunk and commits incest when he gets drunk and sleeps with his daughters. Yet the bible calls him "righteous".
Adultery? Yes, it's condemned in word. But Solomon had several hundred wives, not to mention hundreds of concubines. King David cheated (and killed). Abraham cheated. Yet all "rigthteous" heroes according to the Bible.
I'll also point out that the Bible has no prohibition agains child molestation either.
Where does the Bible condemn rape? Deuteronomy 22:25-27:
" 25But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die.
26But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter:
27For he found her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her. "
1 Timothy 3:1-6:
"1This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
2For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3WITHOUT NATURAL AFFECTION, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, FIERCE, despisers of those that are good.......
6For of this sort are they which CREEP INTO HOUSES, and lead CAPTIVE silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts."
"28If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;
29Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days."
The penalty for casual sex is payment of the bride price and marriage! If the father of the virgin however refuses to give his daughter into marriage, the seducer must still pay the bride price as 'damages' for ruining this woman's virginity, and hence value. Below is the paralell passage found in Exodus 22:16-17.
"16And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife.
17If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins."
They did. It was offered for all "holy" books.
Something that is often missed by the :"persecuted christians", atheists draw no special distinction between them.
Satan and his demons will be tormenting the lost.
God is love.
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In time, the Bible corrects all of the false, incomplete, and unbalanced interpretations of its content...."
Huh? the Bible fallible? why, then is it held up as a standard of righteousness? Many of the horror stories of torture, death, and destruction is God-inspired. And exactly why didn't God make it clear up front? God corrects himself?
1Co 2:13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
Being skilled at the Word = being skilled at finding gullible students.