God’s Kind of Like Dexter on Shotime, Only Without the Hot Girlfriend
So I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but the god of the Old Testament is pretty bloodthirsty. On one page he’s telling the Israelites to murder the women and children of all the neighboring tribes, and on the next page it’s the Israelites who are having their salads tossed by the neighboring barbarians. He even executes innocent bystanders like Moses’s brother Aaron.
The fact that god is treating death as a punishment is very telling, because it implies that dying sucks. But, if there’s an afterlife that’s going to last a brazillion million years, we need to ask ourselves: death, so what?
The Torah never actually talks about the afterlife, but Judaism has an understanding of it (developed elsewhere) that is different from Christianity. In Christianity, a loving god throws non-believers into Hellfire for ever and ever because they made a few mistakes in life. In Judaism, almost everyone gets to spend eternity with god, although you might need a period of purification first. People like Hitler probably don’t get to join god in pleasure.
Constantly throughout both testaments, death is treated as a punishment in and of itself. For example, Moses is killed before he can enter the Promised Land. Or, the prophets of Baal (from I Kings) are put to death by Elijah. Or Ananias and his wife (Acts) are executed on the spot for keeping some money back from the apostles after they sold off their belongings. Or, god murders all the innocent first-born children of Egypt because Pharaoh won’t let the Israelites leave. Or, god has the Israelites kill all the Amalekites (including innocent infants and children) in 1 Samuel.
Now that we’ve established death as a punishment, let’s consider what happens at this exact moment. Here I am, a precocious little 10-year-old Amalekite girl. I’ve never hurt anyone. One day, my baby brother and I are playing Mario Kart on our Wii and Saul and his Israelite army roll into town. One of the soldiers approaches me and says that Jehovah has ordained my death, and then proceeds to stab me in the belly with a sword. He puts the sword through the face of my baby brother next. I fall to the ground and painfully bleed out, pissed off that Bowser keeps shooting my now driverless video game character with red turtles. I’m also distraught beyond belief that my innocent child brother whom I love dearly has a new sword hole in his face. He’s not dead yet, and will slowly die of thirst and blood loss over the next few days because me and my parents are only a few minutes from death.
At some point, I die. I now wake up in the spirit realm, and god says “what’s up” and gives me a new Wii and a Wii Fit. Two questions come to mind: first, how was my death a punishment? Even if I was a semi-bad person, I just need to work my way through Judaism’s “rooms” of atonement, and then it’s the Garden of Eden for eternity.
Second, what was the point of running me through with a damn rusty sword? I was a freaking innocent child!!!! Plus, I end up in relatively the same place no matter when I die, whether it’s at 10 or 80. So why all the sweaty man action of having an Israeli warrior stab me in the pancreas? Keeping me alive another 70 years will have no bearing whatsoever on the final destination of anyone alive, so a “punishment” death is just as irrelevant as an old age death. Another example: why throw rocks at adulterers? There is no permanent punishment for them in eternity as a result of their adultery, so why the needlessly painful ending to the human life? It’s almost as if people are being rewarded for their sins, because they get to go to Heaven sooner!
In the end, all this anger and warfare and a giant flood to kill all of mankind is completely and utterly unnecessary! So are the 10 commandments for that matter, as you can pretty much ignore them and still get to the same place! All death does is move you from one plane of existence to the next, so what’s the big deal? Essentially, god has an anger problem, and the only cure is to kill someone, preferably by some violent means like a sword to the chest or drowning. The dick thing about it though is that 8 seconds later he has to be all happy again and welcome you to eternal bliss. Personally, I’d be pretty pissed about all the theatrics and needless pain, and might consider giving god a right-cross to the family jewels. Take that, testicle Jesus!
I cannot imagine for a second that the most perfect being to ever exist would have such a retarded system of meting out punishment. Why all the hand wringing over sin only to have that sin and its capital punishment be rendered completely moot about 1 minute later?
P.S. Am I the first person to coin “testicle Jesus?” ‘Cause if so, that’s a pretty sweet name for my imaginary band.
Your name doesn’t make sense. “Testicle” appears to be a modifier for “Jesus”, so you have a testicle type of Jesus, not a testicle owned or sported by Jesus. But, yes, Testicle Jesus would be a cool band name—even better if you pretend that that’s your name, and the band is named after you.
This whole god stuff only makes sense if one remembers that societies initially came up with these things to explain things over which they had no control, or which needed to be justified. That’s pretty powerful, by the way. If religion still worked that way and people still bought it, the US could invade whoever the hell we wanted and it’d all be happening because god decreed it. Oh wait…
Comment by Dave — 23 April, 2009 @ 13:12
‘Testicle’ is a modifier for Jesus, as in, if I was a Jew living in OT times, Jesus hadn’t been “born” yet when I died and got to Heaven. Ergo, he’s still in god’s testicles, so if I punch god in the jewels, I’m punching future Jesus, or “testicle Jesus.” I know, it’s offensive and a looong stretch, but that doesn’t usually stop me.
Regarding the “directive” thing: I’ve long suspected that mainstream Judaism is more or less an atheistic religion, but one that continues to go through the motions because of a sense of tradition and community. If they truly believed that the Torah and supporting books were the law, they should be stoning adulterers and killing those that don’t obey the sabbath. And, they should probably be warring with the Philistines. Instead, modern Israel adheres to a fairly Western ideal of justice and ignores many of the old tenants. There are still a lot of aggressively Orthodox Jews around though that believe the old ways still apply. This is a source of some good tension in Israel when it comes to settlements and the Palestinians. Insofar as they’re concerned, they should be taking over more land and driving out the evil-doers.
But, this just puts us back to square one: if they take over all the land and kill people, those people get to go to Heaven sooner than the Jews do. Although this isn’t my opinion, this belief system suggest that it pays to be an enemy of the Jews, because you get your reward first!
Comment by jake — 23 April, 2009 @ 15:56
Ohhhhhh!!! Now I get it. You weren’t punching Jesus’s testicles: you were punching god’s testicles! Well done, Sir. Well done.
I believe when we die we’re transported to a Kafka novel. Everyone’s first instinct is to go back and tell everyone what happens when you die, but when they try, they’re informed by a minor official that doing so is simply out of the question, and furthermore, that they hadn’t filled out the appropriate form to inhabit that area of the afterlife. When you ask for the form, the official replies that, of course, he’s not the official in charge of forms, and that in order to set up a meeting with the official in charge of forms, you first have to get a permit from the office of the Secretary of Interdepartmental Relations. You ask where his office is, and the official rolls his eyes, saying that no one is admitted to the office of the Secretary of Interdepartmental Relations; that you must wait to be admitted to the waiting room, but that the line is very, very long…
Comment by Dave — 23 April, 2009 @ 18:21
“One day, my baby brother and I are playing Mario Kart on our Wii and Saul and his Israelite army roll into town.” I think you should make it your personal duty to bring back the word “roll” as a verb meaning to come or go. I havent heard it used this way since the late 90s.
Comment by ania — 27 April, 2009 @ 14:05