I left this video in here because originally, I was going to do a post about the Book of Isaiah. I’ll save it for next week, and just leave the video here anyway.

Three crucial moments in my understanding of the Old Testament:

                As a sophomore in college, I got into a serious relationship with a young woman who was religious. At the time, I was not. But I would occasionally attend church with her.

                One service, the pastor spoke about a moment from the Book of Samuel. The prophet Samuel orders King Saul to slaughter the Amalekites, and not to spare any man, woman or child. In fact, Samuel orders Saul to kill all the livestock, too. Saul makes war on the Amalekites and kills them all (so we are told; Amalekites do appear later in the Bible, so make of that what you will) but Saul takes the cattle for a spoil.

                The prophet then gets angry at King Saul: because Saul didn’t execute the genocide to the letter. The pastor then said, “A lot of people have asked if God was right to order this action. But if God ordered it, the action was right. Anything God commands is right by definition.”

                I was horrified. Especially as a veteran who has seen bloodshed—including the accidental killing of civilians. I can tell you that war is abhorrent, and there is no dignity in a violent death. I imagined a large-scale slaughter of the kind this pastor was defending, not with guns, but with sword and spear, and not just of armed men, but of MANY defenseless human beings and dumb animals. The brutality of it revolted me—not only for the victims, but also for the perpetrators. And people came up to me after the sermon and asked me what I thought of it!

                I understand the fear of religion: clearly, otherwise rational human beings will defend bronze-age terrorism if they think God condoned it. I will say that I think this is more an indictment of the tribalism and small-mindedness of humans than an indictment of religion, but I’m sensitive to the reverse argument: I’ve made it myself.

                And when I asked my Christian friends, how do you reconcile verses like these? one person told me, Context, context, context. Which, I will tell you, is both true, and a cop-out. Often if a Christian defends something scriptural on the basis of context, they don’t actually know the context.

                When I undertook my Genesis-to-Maps reading project, part of my goal was to gain that context, precisely so I would be prepared if I ever attended church, heard an abominable sermon, and then was asked my opinion on what I had heard. (I had other motivations too, but argument-preparedness was a big one.)

                As I read the Bible, I found it to be laughably contradictory—not just between Old and New Testaments, not just across books, but sometimes on the very same page the Bible would contradict itself, of give differing versions of an event. There were three key moments, however, in my reading of the Bible that made me take it seriously as a document. The first was my reading of Deuteronomy.

                Yes, that’s right, Deuteronomy. As a child, I used to hear how boring Deuteronomy was: “And this one begat that one, and this one begat that one….” But that isn’t from Deuteronomy at all. Most of the “begats” are in Chronicles—and verily, genealogies are among the most difficult parts of the Bible to read.

                Deuteronomy, in fact, is the sermon Moses delivers just before the Israelite conquest of Canaan. It is a summing-up of the Exodus, the wilderness wanderings, and the laws of Leviticus. Deuteronomion, in ancient Greek, means “Second Law.” I found it readable for strangeness alone, but what moved me was the epic poem at the end. Moses delivers a two-sided prophecy of all the good things that will happen if the Israelites obey Yahweh, and all the bad things that will happen if they disobey.

                The two halves of the poem are almost like mirror images, and they are disturbing, beautiful, and powerful. Moses’s final sermon is just explosive. Moses also delivers this warning as though it is guaranteed to happen: Israel will enjoy feast, then famine. Sure, the Hebrew writers had the benefit of hindsight. But I took it as a prediction of the blessings and curses that will occur in every human life, and I was floored.

                The second moment my understanding of the Bible was disturbed was in the Book of Samuel. The same one I referenced above. And to tell you the truth, by the time I read about the slaughter of the Amalekites, I had become numb to the violence of the Bible. Joshua, Judges, and Numbers are full of similar genocidal accounts. I was so used to being infuriated by what I read, the slaughter of the Amalekites didn’t faze me.

                But all this violence does something interesting for the character of King David. David is introduced during the reign of King Saul, and he immediately becomes someone who it is difficult not to root for. The narrative pits him against King Saul, who has basically gone crazy. (It’s hard not to read Saul as the victim of Yahweh and Samuel’s gaslighting.) Saul is suspicious that David is more popular than he—which is true—and so David’s life is constantly in danger from Saul’s revenge.

                The standards that other Biblical characters have set thus far make David seem practically saint-like, even as he is killing Goliath and collecting a bounty of Philistine foreskins. Again, there is a degree of numbness that comes from reading the Old Testament; nevertheless, David is an extremely winning character. With the exception of David’s own great-grandmother Ruth, David is the first figure in the Bible I became emotionally invested in.

                But the Hebrew Bible is without mercy. We have to watch as David gets his best friend’s wife, Bathsheba, pregnant. And then we have to watch him plot the murder of said best friend, all because he doesn’t want to get discovered. David really becomes a tyrant, both at home and as a king, and when his son, Absalom, rebels against David, we find ourselves rooting against David just as hard as we rooted for him in the beginning. As a narrative, the story of David is stunning. And it is a credit to the Hebrew writers that they did not sanitize David’s character. They made him a gifted, but deeply flawed human. Forget David—these writers didn’t sanitize anything. Most Christians do not want to dwell on the flaws of characters in the Bible, but it was these flaws that made me take the book seriously.

                The third moment was the book of Job. Now, between Samuel and Job, there is a LOT of difficult reading. Kings and Chronicles tell the story of the rise and fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, but the stories suffer from a sense of sameness—a king rules for a few years, commits idolatry, Yahweh punishes the king’s offspring. A few generations later, another king gets rid of all the idols, but Yahweh still has to punish him… because. Very few of the kings in Kings actually stand out, and our prophets—Elijah and Elisha—also seem to be copies of one another, and both are pretty abhorrent. More on this another time.

                Chronicles is a priestly version of the events of Kings, and it is even more difficult to read. Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther disappointed me as well. People talk about Esther being a great story, and funny, but I’m sorry, those people are wrong. At best, Esther is okay, but historically important, as it suggests a reason why the Jewish people found favor under Persian rule. (The Persians, under Cyrus, eventually allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem—this is historical fact, and it’s an amazing true story.)

                All this is to say, I had felt let down by every book of the Bible since Samuel and frustrated by the way the Hebrew writers attributed the success and failure of the kingdom to cause and effect. All good moments in Israel’s history happened because of correct worship, all bad moments, from incorrect worship. I didn’t like how, no matter what happened, Yahweh was always the good guy, and the humans, inferior by definition, were always evil. If your children are continually fucking up, you don’t blame the children, you blame yourself.

                Then I read Job. People think they know what Job is. He was tested by Satan, right? And he stayed faithful to God no matter what, right? Right.

                BUT WRONG! Job does not passively accept his misery. After his family dies, his estate is destroyed, and his body is covered with nasty boils, Job says, “This is bullshit. Yahweh is punishing me for a sin I didn’t commit. I did nothing wrong. I do not deserve this.”

                And then, three of Job’s friends lecture him. They insist that Job must have committed some sin, because God doesn’t punish people without cause. These three are following the logic that I was just criticizing, the logic that runs through the rest of the Bible—Yahweh is just, therefore all misfortune is punishment for sin. Job does not accept this.

                When his friends urge him to confess his sin, to atone for it, and thus to get relief from his suffering, Job again says he didn’t do anything wrong. Finally, Job sues God. That’s right. He sues God. He does not passively accept the bad things that happen to him. Anyone who suggests such has not read the book. Or if they read it, they do not understand it. Job sues God, and God appears.

                And wow, what an appearance. God, taking no shit, asks a few simple questions. “Can you control the storms? Can you decide whether an animal gives birth or miscarries? Can you tame behemoth or leviathan, the creatures that I made? If you can’t do any of those things, where do you get off questioning why I do the things I do?” I’m paraphrasing. But seriously, God in the book of Job goes harder than a coffin nail. Job finally says, you’re right, I’m sorry for questioning you. But it isn’t because Job is still faithful. It’s because Job is terrified.

                And then we get the most subversive moment of all. God turns to the victim-blaming friends of Job and says, “You all told lies about me. But my servant Job didn’t say anything false about me.”

                This is the point of Job. Good people do not always get what they deserve. Sin does not equal punishment in a one-to-one ratio. You have to obey the will of Yahweh without expectation of material reward—because what good is your faith if its only a means to an end?

                All this sounds extremely frightening. This picture of an apparently ruthless God is not comfortable. And it completely contradicts the logic of the rest of the Bible. But the message of this book touched something that had always disturbed me. The reward of heaven that Christianity promises its followers seems like such a strong incentive that it makes me wonder about the sincerity of Christians. It’s just like Christ says: “Love your enemies. What credit is it to you if you love the people who are good to you?” If you love someone just because they give you something, it isn’t really love. And Christ offers a gift beyond price: if not heaven, at least an intellectual solution to the problem of death. Christ offers comfort. Therefore, loving Christ, especially in the 21^st century in America, is not really a credit to the Christian.

                No, Christians, you are not persecuted because the greeter at Walmart said “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” Living like Christ is hard, but being a Christian is easy. I can’t think of a stronger incentive than the anxiety of death. If you’re strongly incentivized in this way, it makes me wonder about the power of your faith. On the other hand, if you can study and sit with the contradictions of the book of Job, and still have faith, knowing that your faith is not a cosmic free lunch… well that shows true courageous submission to the will of God.