Category Archives: Moral Authority?

New series! Idiotic stuff Jesus said!

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This one’s gonna run and run!

EyesYou hear the one about the blind Christian bloke with only one hand and no balls? And he did it all to himself! Cut off his hand, gouged out his eyes and castrated himself. When asked why he’d done it the man explained, ‘I’m a follower of Jesus and when he tells me to do something, I do it. My self-mutilation is my witness to what a great guy he is. He wouldn’t steer me wrong.’

Sure enough, the normal people who heard him were incredulous, until one of them looked in the Bible and found the very instructions to which the eyeless, testicle-free, one-handed believer referred.

In Matthew’s gospel chapter 5, Jesus is talking about lusting after a woman, which in his eyes (he still had both of his) is as bad as having sex with her. Course it isn’t, not by a long way, but he tells his followers, ‘If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell’ (Matthew 5.29).

A bit drastic perhaps, but there it is; the Son of God is clear about how to avoid the sin of checking out a member of the opposite sex. That’s why you see so many one-eyed Christians around the place because they all take his admonition very seriously.

Except… you don’t. Either Christians ignore him entirely on this one or they never look at the opposite sex with an eye to sexual congress. We all know they’re like the rest of us in this respect – some, as Jimmy Carter once famously did, are honest enough to admit it – and some even act on it; the divorce rate among Christians is not the same as it is for everyone else just because they get tired of being married.

Perhaps though Jesus is being metaphorical when he proposes that gouging out one’s eyes is the best way to deal with lust. Not surprisingly, Christians prefer this possibility. In The Method and Message of Jesus’ Teachings, Robert Stein argues that:

what Jesus was seeking to convey to his listeners by this use of overstatement was the need to remove from their lives anything that might cause them to sin… Jesus is saying in effect, “Tear out anything in your life that is causing you to sin and keeping you from God”.

If that was his intention, Jesus might have actually used these words. If he wants to say ‘in effect’ that the believer should jettison anything from his life that causes him to sin then why doesn’t he?

But eyes are not enough. You gotta get rid of that wanking* hand too (the context of Jesus’ comments is specifically sexual and entirely male orientated throughout these verses): ‘And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell’ (Matthew 5.30). This must be why we see so many one-handed Christians…

The difficulty with interpreting these and other verses metaphorically is that Christians want to claim that the Bible is the literal ‘word of God’ and then want select parts of it to be metaphorical – and guess who they think should do the selecting. But they can’t have it both ways. Even if they could, how would they know which parts to interpret literally and which symbolically? Perhaps the Holy Spirit tells them, or maybe, and more likely, it’s just their personal preferences. After all, who wants to lose eyes and hands just for being human?

If that’s not enough, Jesus encourages other mutilations for the sake of his Kingdom when he reveals in Matthew 19.12 that ‘there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can’. No Christians today seem able to ‘accept’ this recommendation, either; what a truly feeble bunch they are, putting their testicles before the Kingdom!

It seems likely that, given he believed the end of the age was fast approaching, Jesus actually meant what he said, counting on the probability (as he saw it) that anyone who followed his ridiculous suggestions would not be eyeless or handless for long. They would, at the resurrection, be fully restored to live in the Kingdom where, according to Matthew 22.30, they would not be troubled by either impure thoughts or marriage itself (and so wouldn’t need those testicles anyway).

Whichever way you cut it (off) – literally or metaphorically – Jesus words in these verses are remarkably idiotic. Throughout history there have been some individuals, like the dude we started with, who have indeed made themselves eunuchs for the cause. But the vast majority of male Christians have always dismissed this advice or have decided JC was only speaking metaphorically (as he always is when they don’t like what he’s telling them to do).**

So next time True Believers start thundering on about the evils of same-sex marriage and gay sex, tell them to get their own house in order first. A little amputation is all that the Lord requires.

 

* ‘Jerking off’, for any Americans reading.

**Read more in my (five star reviewed!) book Why Christians Don’t Do What Jesus Tells Them To …And What They Believe Instead, available from Amazon.

 

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 24: We stand for biblical truth!

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Judge

Christian commentator Tony Perkins demands that Christians defend ‘biblical truth without compromise.’ What he really means – because he only ever uses it in this specific context – is that Christians should use the bible to condemn gay people.

He’s not so hot on standing up for the ‘biblical truths’ that say you should turn the other cheek. Or go the extra mile. Or that you should sell all you have and give the proceeds to the poor. No sir. Those are biblical truths that demand something of Christians themselves so of course they feel perfectly at liberty to disregard them.

And what about ‘judge not that you be not judged’? Christians will tell you that this doesn’t mean they shouldn’t judge others, just that they should do it according to those same ‘biblical truths’.

This is not what Jesus is saying here though. He clearly means ‘do not judge others unless you’re prepared to be judged yourself’, which, we can only conclude, Christians are happy to have happen to them. They judge others and in so doing open themselves up to judgement; Jesus is very fond of this kind of yin and yang, measure-for-measure arrangement:

Judge not that you be not judged. For with the judgement you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you will get (Matthew 7.1-2).

It could also be the case that Jesus is referring here to God’s ultimate judgement as well, in which case those condemnatory Christians who believe that being ‘saved’ allows them to escape the final judgement are in for quite a shock. Still, they can always use the ‘I was only defending biblical truths’ excuse.

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 23: Jesus shows us how to live

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Doctor

Was JC a great moral teacher?

No, the best things he said – do unto others, love your neighbour – had already been said eons before he came along. Some of the other stuff he came out with was ridiculously impractical – give away all you have; live only for today; turn the other cheek – that his followers have been unable to do from day one.

Did what he said about God turn out to be right?

No. He said God would establish his Kingdom on Earth while the disciples were still alive.

Did he commit himself to long-term responsibility for others and their needs?

Another no.

Did he experience the infirmities and difficulties of old age?

Nope.

Did he suffer from any of the serious illnesses we mere mortals are prone to?

Apparently not.

Did he give over his entire life to raising children or taking care of elderly relatives?

Not that we know of.

Did he have to work each day to earn a living?

No. He sponged off gullible female fans (Luke 8.1-3).

Did he have any understanding of science and of how the world works?

Erm, no. He thought people became ill because of sin and demon possession and that Heaven was in the sky.

Was he interested in anything but his own futile ‘mission’?

Yet another no.

Apart from his last few days did he know suffering, the everyday frustrations of life or the daily struggle to make ends meet?

Not so’s you’d notice.

Did he, in short, know anything of the life as it was lived and is lived by ordinary people?

Emphatically not.

There was nothing marvellous about Jesus. He was out of touch with ordinary people and at loggerheads with those cleverer than he was. He was a failed prophet who was turned into a supernatural being by those who came along afterwards – mainly Paul, who’d never met him – and is worshipped today by those who ignore most of what he said.

 

 

Stephen Green is Gay

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Green2

Stephen always got his inspiration from the Lord…

Stephen Green of Christian Voice is unhappy. Gay Marriage, he insists, is a Very Bad Thing.

Green has had a lot to say about gay relationships and gay sex over the last few years. In fact, he’s obsessed with the subject. His latest ejaculation, called ‘Gay Marriage is a Farce’, helpfully informs us:

‘Gay’ relationships (are) built on perversion.

Homosexual desires are described as vile affections in the Bible.

‘Gay marriage’ is a massive step towards the social economy of Sodom.

We don’t say homosexuals are perverts because of what they are, but because of what they do.

Homosexual activity… is either dirty or abusive or both.

Homosexuals, frustrated by their inability to engage in true sexual intercourse, have to resort to activities which are abusive or dirty.

Homosexual acts fall a long way short of the God-ordained conjugal act.

Personally, I now use the word gay mostly in its modern sense of substandard (as in, ‘that coat’s gay’).

Never self-identify as ‘gay’. Never let someone else identify you as ‘gay’.

Green is himself ‘gay’. In the ‘modern sense’, of course. He preaches that marriage is between one man and one woman for life, yet is divorced and now with his second wife-for-life. He trashes charities that help young LGBT people and makes unwarranted personal attacks on gay celebrities, recently suggesting that Stephen Fry has a ‘porcine ancestor… not that we do evolution here’ and adding derisory inverted commas around the ‘Sir’ in Ian McKellen’s name. How big and clever is that?

Even though Jesus has more to say about poverty and homelessness than homosexuality (about which he says precisely nothing), Green never mentions them. He consistently avoids talking about his saviour’s commands to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile and avoid judging others. These, it would seem, don’t matter.

While he occasionally rants about evolution and complains Christians are persecuted, it is to homosexuality he constantly returns. Always with inverted commas around ‘gay’, to ward off the voodoo.

But Green is insecure in his beliefs and faith; he rarely publishes comments that dissent from his ‘biblical’ position and when he does, responds to those who make them with an uncharitable smugness that borders on abuse. There is no sense of any Christian charity in either his comments or on his site as a whole.

Worst of all, he washes his hands, Pontius Pilate like, of the harm his negative, destructive comments cause LGBT people. The real bullies, he says, are not Christians with poisonous views like his but rather:

homosexual activists who persuade young boys and girls that adolescent same-sex attraction indicates a permanent ‘orientation’ and who go around talking homosexuality up and giving bullies a weapon to use against shy boys and tomboyish girls. People like ‘Sir’ Ian McKellen, Elly Barnes, Jake Dyos and the rest of the low-life at ‘School’s Out’.

So now you know. Stephen Green, who calls ‘gay’ people perverts with ‘vile affections’, whose relationships and love-making are, he says, founded on dirt, disease and abuse, is in no way a bully whose views contribute to any ill-feeling towards gay people.

No, the vilification to be found on Christian Voice is actually Christian love™. The gospel according to Stephen Green: it’s so substandard.

A Story From The Bible…

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Luke 10.29-37 accurately translated from the original Greek

 Jerry&Sam

…And so Jesus told them a story to explain what he meant:

“There was,” he said, “a young man called Jerry Cohen who was making his way across the city late at night when he was set upon by some yobs. They kicked him to the ground, stole his wallet and phone and left him for dead. He lay in the doorway of a shop, blood seeping from the deep cut to the back of his head and pooling into the shadowed corner. With his teeth broken and ribs cracked, Jerry slipped into unconsciousness.

By chance, a group of people from a local church were out that night witnessing to the young people partying in the bars and pubs of the district and for whom, let’s be honest, this was an unwelcome intrusion. Some of these well-meaning church-folk noticed Jerry lying in the doorway as his life ebbed away, but as they couldn’t see all the blood they simply assumed he had passed out from an excess of alcohol. They decided to leave him where he was to sober up. ‘Let’s give him the Good News to read when he does,’ said one, tucking a tract called Salvation through the Redemptive Power of the Cross into his top pocket. 

Minutes later, an evangelist happened to pass Jerry, still curled foetally on the floor, and noticed that the premises next to where he was seemed to be one of dubious repute. Its lights blazed even at this late hour and there were over-sized, suggestive pictures of athletic-looking young men in the windows. He didn’t want to look too closely because he didn’t want the taint of sin to cling to him but it seemed obvious that if the shop was what he thought it was, then the boy next to it could only be a homosexualist, hell bent on foisting his perverted lifestyle on everyone and destroying traditional marriage in the process. And so he walked swiftly on, quietly quoting Romans 1.27 to himself: Men commit shameful acts with other men, and receive in themselves the due penalty for their error. ‘If ever there was a sign that the end times have arrived,’ he thought to himself, ‘it’s the likes of that degenerate individual over there.’ As he crossed the road, he failed to see another young man approaching in the opposite direction.

Sam Harrington wasn’t a homosexualist either – because really there’s no such thing – but he was a homosexual. He’d had been working late and was eager to get home so he too was taking a short cut through the centre of the town. He spotted Jerry in the doorway and before he could even think what he was doing, he had pulled his phone out of his pocket and had dialled the emergency number. While he waited for the ambulance to arrive, he cradled Jerry’s head in his lap, holding closed the gash to stop further blood loss and helping it start to heal. When the ambulance arrived, Sam went with Jerry to the hospital where he sat anxiously in Accident and Emergency for  two hours, waiting to hear how he was. When, finally, a nurse came to tell him that now the young man’s jaw had been wired together and his head stitched there was every chance he would pull through, Sam wept unashamedly.

With the last bus long gone, he began his long walk home. He didn’t have enough money for a cab and he didn’t like ringing his partner in the early hours of the morning to ask for a lift.”

“So tell me,” Jesus said finally, “which of the three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the yobs? Who showed him real love?”

His followers looked around blankly at each other, for surely this was a question that was impossible to answer.    

What’s this ‘Biblical morality’ we keep hearing about?

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Is it feeding the hungry? Helping the poor? Visiting the sick and the imprisoned? Opposing injustice? Fighting against oppression? Giving away your possessions? Going the extra mile? Turning the other cheek? Respecting others? Loving your neighbour? Loving your enemies?

Or is just about sex? To read Christian web-sites and blogs, you’d think so. Jesus’ followers today are obsessed with it, which is why the God they make in their image is too. Sex that other people might be having, before marriage, during it; sex when it makes babies and when it doesn’t; sex with yourself; sex in the head, on the screen and in different positions; sex with too many partners, with the wrong partners and with partners of the same sex (the worst sin of all, apparently). They write about little else, because you see, what other people do in bed together is of great concern to God. It’s more important to him – or his self-appointed representatives on Earth, anyway – than hunger, oppression, slavery, injustice and genocide combined.

If only we all had sex like the Christian experts say we should (because it’s in the Bible) then we’d all be so much better off; civilisation wouldn’t be slipping into the abyss, God wouldn’t be so upset with us and we wouldn’t all be destined for hell.

End

But morality isn’t just about sex. In fact, it has little to do with who we sleep with and when. Rather, morality is about how we treat others, as Jesus said (Luke 6.31). Of course, how we treat others in a sexual context is important, but it’s no more important than how we treat them in other contexts. That’s because morality is, or should be, all embracing. It’s long past time Christians stopped banging on about it as if it was the only concern of morality. Instead they could start treating those who do sex differently from them as they themselves would like to be treated. That, if there really is such a thing, would be true Biblical morality.

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 16: Christians treat others as they themselves would like to be treated (Luke 6.31).

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Gun

Jesus promised his followers, back when he was alive, that they would take over the world when God’s new Kingdom arrived: ‘Blessed are the meek,’ he’s reported as saying in Matthew 5.5, ‘for they shall inherit the earth.’ He failed to tell them that this inheriting wouldn’t be any time soon, even though he himself thought it would be (Mark 13.26-30). Even so, Christians today fully expect JC to return any day now to vindicate them and turn the world over to them. Then, the meek – assuming that Jesus meant ‘Christians’ when (and if) he used the term – will inherit the Earth, whatever that actually means.

Back in the early 1980’s, when I was a Christian myself, I campaigned, in a very small way, for persecuted believers in the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union. Together with others in my church, I spoke out against the clampdown of Christian worship, restrictions on the availability of the Bible and the harsh punishments meted out for exercising faith. Certainly believers in Russia were meek and humble then, because they had no other choice.

How things have changed in the intervening thirty years. Now in Russia, under Putin, faith is supported and encouraged and formerly persecuted Christians have the upper hand. They have the ear of the Kremlin and are influential in deciding policy especially in so far as it relates to ‘morals’.

And do those Christians, having known the scourge of persecution, say, ‘we cannot support the persecution of others; we disliked it when it was done to us and, in the words of our saviour, we recognise we should treat others as we ourselves would wish to be treated’ (Luke 6.31)?

What do you think? You think the meek, having found acceptance themselves and inherited positions of respectability and influence, use their new prominence to defend other minorities who are now being persecuted?

Of course not. The church in Russia endorses, supports and influences the policies of state that have lead to the persecution of people who have ‘non-traditional’ relationships; LGBT people and those who support them. Watch the Channel 4 Dispatches programme ‘Hunted’ (on 4 On Demand, with clips on YouTube) to see how gay people in Russia are hunted, tortured and humiliated. Witness a so-called Christian proudly relate how he shot a young gay man in the face with a ‘non-lethal weapon’ because he was carrying a rainbow flag. See Father Sergei Rybko from the Russian Orthodox Church demonstrate true Christian love when he says:

Even cattle don’t engage in this (homosexuality). I just consider them spiritually and morally ill. Something is not right here (in their heads)… they’ve started to plant the idea in young people’s minds that this is normal, that they are just a bit different… Well excuse me, paedophiles and sex offenders are just different too. Murderers and thieves are just different – so we should also give them freedom to do what they want? Where gays are allowed, paedophilia will soon flourish. Permitted evil gives rise to more evil. Paedophiles, gays and people like this are basically serving the Devil.

Church condoned persecution of homosexuals is what we can expect when God’s Gentle People inherit the Earth. We know this because it’s happened before, many times in history. When Christians get the upper hand, others suffer, whether they’re Jews, women, children accused of witchcraft or LGBT people.

Mercifully, Jesus was wrong, as he was about so much, when he promised the meek would inherit the Earth: they will never hold sway over the entire globe and for that, we should all be eternally grateful.

One rule for the church, another for everyone else

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PopeSays

Which of the following is the odd one out?

Bill Roache

Dave Lee Travis

Rolf Harris

400 Catholic priests

Yup, you got it. It’s the 400 Catholic priests. The other three are celebrities currently facing trial for alleged sexual misdemeanours in the 1960s and ’70s because, unlike the USA, there’s no statute of limitations in the UK. The priests, however, all of whom molested children, haven’t had to stand trial and have got away scot free. All that happened to them was that former Pope Benedict XVI defrocked them during 2011 and 2012, while he was still in office. And that, as they say, was that. USA Today explains:

 The maximum penalty for a priest convicted by a church tribunal is essentially losing his job: being defrocked, or removed from the clerical state. There are no jail terms and nothing to prevent an offender from raping again.

So there you have it. You want to escape the penalty of the law? Then hide behind Jesus and the might of the Catholic church and all will be well, whatever you’ve done – and might do again – to the children in your care.

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 15: The Bible is the ultimate standard for morality

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Plucking

Jesus claimed that his morality came from the only scriptures he knew, those Christians now refer to as the Old Testament. Here’s how he puts it in Matthew 5.18 & 19: 

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of heaven’.

Today’s believers like to pretend that they too derive their morality from the Bible. One Christian web-site tells us that ‘the Bible becomes our source of morality because the Bible is the very Word of God in written form.’ Overlooking the fact, for now, that the Bible is not, for a whole host of reasons, ‘the Word of God’, what sort of moral guidance does it provide us with? Here’s a small sample:

Stone to death anyone who works on the Sabbath. (Exodus 35.2 and Numbers 15.32-36)

A slave is his master’s property; if you beat him so severely that he takes a day or two to die, you won’t be punished. (Exodus 21. 20-21)

Kill publicly children who dishonour their father or mother. (Leviticus 20.9);

Stone to death anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord. (Leviticus 24.16);

Execute a married couple who have sexual intercourse during the woman’s period. (Leviticus 18.19);

Put to death those involved in adultery. (Leviticus 20.10);

Execute any man who lies with another man, as with a woman. (Leviticus 20.13)

Stone to death at her father’s door any woman who is not a virgin on her wedding night. (Deuteronomy 22.13-14 and 20-21).

Cut off ‘without pity’ a woman’s hand if, during a fight, she seeks to rescue her husband by grabbing his opponent’s testicles. (Deuteronomy 25.11-12)

Isn’t this just the kind of ‘morality’ promoted by the Taliban? Well, the good news is Jesus approves! And he’s got some corkers of his own. How about these for great moral teaching?

Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire. (Matthew 18.8 & 9 AV).

So, no, very few Christians today get their morality from the Bible. Their moral sense has evolved, like that of the rest of us, without the Bible’s assistance and without any reference to god. Thank goodness for that, even if there are some who would like to see a return to the kind of moral barbarism the Bible, and Jesus, promote.

Christians – Jesus commands you be perfect. So why are you not?

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Despot

‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ is how he puts it. He even tells you in the verses that precede this one how to go about it: you have to turn the other cheek; give untiringly to anyone who asks (including to those who would sue you); constantly go the extra mile and show only love to your enemies (Matthew 5.38-48).

It is often claimed, even by those who don’t believe in him as their saviour, that Jesus offered great moral teaching. C. S. Lewis though cautions against seeing Jesus as simply ‘a great human teacher’ when, in Lewis’s eyes, he was far more besides. I would, however, invite Christians to consider whether the moral guidance Jesus provides here in Matthew’s gospel – how to be perfect – is in any sense ‘great’. If you think it is, because Jesus is Lord, a perfect being and possibly God himself, then you need to explain why it is never followed by Christians, and never has been. You need to explain why you yourself do not apply it in your life, because as sure as poached eggs is poached eggs, you do not. You do not give to all who ask; you do not invite insult after insult and violence on top of violence; you do not give away valuable and essential possessions when threatened with legal action – you are actually more likely to do the suing. And lest you think I am advocating a far more exacting morality for Christians than I would from anyone else, you will bear in mind, won’t you, that is not I who insists on it, but your Saviour. It’s not unreasonable under the circumstances to expect to see you obeying him.

As it is fairly safe to assume you don’t, I would further invite you to consider whether instead of being ‘great’, Jesus’ teaching is in fact unreasonable, unrealistic and impractical. If you are honest, you will acknowledge that it is all of these things, not great or timeless at all, and that is why you, and all other Christians worldwide, disregard it. Jesus’ moral teaching is no more than a series of reckless suggestions, a formula that applied can lead only to poverty and abuse, not perfection. You are probably wise to ignore it and to spend your time instead opposing gay marriage and judging the rest of us.

Revised from ‘Be Perfect’ in my book, Why Christians Don’t Do What Jesus Tells Them To …And What They Believe Instead, available from Amazon.

Notes: C. S. Lewis on Jesus as ‘great human teacher’: Mere Christianity (1952) William Collins & Sons, Glasgow, p52.