The Bible: Commentary and Controversy

Lastly, in Judges 19, we again encounter the story of the Levite and his concubine, which we referred to in another article. Let’s review. A Levite from Ephraim has a concubine who is unfaithful to him. Wow, what a shock. Anyway, she returns to her home, Bethlehem, and the Levite goes and gets her. (In case you are wondering, as I was, what a concubine actually was in those days, the Oxford dictionary describes it this way: in polygamous societies, a woman who lives with a man but has lower status than his wife or wives. In other words, a second or third or even lower class wife. Wow, no wonder she ran back to her parents.)

The Levite retrieves her, and on the way back to his home they stop for the night in Gibeah with an old man who offers them a place to sleep. While they are eating supper, the “wicked men of the city” start pounding on the door, demanding of the old man: “Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him.” (Strikingly similar to the Lot and the visiting angels story, but maybe this happened all the time in those days.) The old man cautions them not to do this wicked thing, and offers both his virgin daughter and the Levite’s concubine to satisfy their lust. But they wouldn’t listen. So the Levite grabs his concubine and shoves her out the door, whereupon the wicked men grab her and rape and abuse her all night. In the morning she manages to crawl back to the old man’s house and die on the front porch. When the Levite found her there he picked her up, put her on one of his donkeys, and carried her to his home.

Having arrived there, he did what any normal person would do: cut her into twelve parts and sent the pieces “into all areas of Israel.” I assume there was a message attached. After receiving the gory remains, “all Israel gathered before the Lord in Mizpah,” including 400,000 men armed with swords. The Levite tells the assembly his story, but lies about it, saying the wicked men had come to kill him, and took his concubine instead, raping and abusing her until she died. Nothing about him handing her to the gang to save himself.

Anyway, they decide to teach Gibeah a lesson, and seek the support of the Benjamites, who, however, decide instead to fight against their fellow Israelites, perhaps because of provincialism; they lived in towns in and around Gibeah. An imposing crew they were, too: “twenty-six thousand swordsmen from their towns, in addition to seven hundred able young men from those living in Gibeah. Among all these soldiers there were seven hundred select troops who were left-handed, each of whom could sling a stone at a hair and not miss.”

Well, somehow this small but expert group manages to kill 22,000 Israelites and send the rest running. So the Israelites ask the Lord if they should go again, and the Lord anwers “Go up against them,” which they do, and lose another 18,000 men. So they regroup and ask again if they should go again against the Benjamins, their fellow Israelites, and the Lord says “Go, for tomorrow I will give them into your hands.”

This time the Israelites set a trap and are able to kill 25,100 Benjamites, all armed with swords, at which point the Benjamites knew they were beaten. (An easy conclusion to come to, since they only had 1,900 men left, and the Israelites still had more than 350,000.) Then the Israelites went into the towns and put everyone to the sword, including the animals, and burned all the towns down except for 600 Benjamites who ran away and hid in a cave.

After all that, the Israelites assembled, mourning the loss of one of their tribes (the Benjamins), but vowing that no Israelite would ever give a daughter in marriage to a member of that tribe. Even though that tribe basically didn’t exist anymore. Then, counting those who had fought with them, they realized no one from Jabesh Gilead had joined them in their fight. Which angered them. So they sent 12,000 troops there and killed every man, woman, child, and animal, except for “every woman who has never slept with a man.”

Then the Israelites sent a peace offering to the remaining Benjamites, who came down from their cave and were given the 400 virgins who had been captured at Jabesh Gilead. But the 400 were not enough for the 600, and the Israelites could not supply any more because of their vow. So they came up with a plan. The Benjamites would hide in the vineyards surrounding Shiloh, and when the young women came to the annual festival of the Lord they would jump out, kidnap them, and carry them away. Which they did. Each man caught one while she was dancing and carried her off to be his wife.

Pretty cool story. Unfaithfulness, rape, abuse, murder, dismemberment, millions of men and women slaughtered, towns burned to the ground, and mass kidnappings with, obviously, hundreds more rapes to follow. All condoned, nay, motivated by the Lord. Problem is this is one of those stories in the bible that actually could have happened the way it’s told, since no heavenly miracles were involved. Although 27,000 troops soundly defeating 400,000 not once but twice is stretching my credulity a little.

I am, however, shocked that we encourage everyone to read this kind of thing, even our young children, because I see no redeeming virtue in it.

Years pass, a few minor leaders follow, and then “Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, so the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.” And along came Samson.

And, of course, another great story. A man named Manoah had a wife who was unable to give birth. One day the angel of the Lord appeared to her and told her she would give birth to a son whose head is never to be touched by a razor “because the boy is to be a Nazirite, dedicated to God from the womb. He will take the lead in delivering Israel from the hands of the Philistines.” He also told her pretty much what doctors tell pregnant women today, that she must not “eat anything that comes from the grapevine, nor drink any wine or other fermented drink nor eat anything unclean.”

The angel then made the man and his wife believers by shooting up to heaven in a tower of flame, That would certainly have done it for me. So the woman gave birth to a boy they called Samson. He grew and the Lord blessed him, and began to stir in him.

After a few years Samson went down to Timnah, where he saw and admired a young Philistine woman who, when he returned home, he told his parents he wanted to marry. They were against it, but of course they didn’t know the Lord was making it happen, wanting an occasion to confront the Philistines, who were then ruling over the Israelites. On the way back to Timnah, Samson was attacked by a young lion, which he tore apart with his bare hands, then went into Timnah, talked to the young woman, and liked her.

Some time later, on his way to Timnah to marry her, he stopped to see the lion’s carcass, and saw in it a swarm of bees and some honey, which he scooped out with his hands and ate as he went along. When the people saw him at the pre-wedding feast, they chose thirty men to be his companions, and Samson told them if they answered a riddle within the seven days of the feast he would give them thirty linen garments and thirty sets of clothes, but if they couldn’t answer it, they must do the same for him.

This was the riddle: “Out of the eater came forth meat, And out of the strong came forth sweetness.” (Youngs) Well, no one could answer that riddle without help, and Samson’s wife helped, haranguing him until he finally told her the answer, which she passed on to the companions. So on the seventh day the companions answered the riddle, saying What [is] sweeter than honey? And what stronger than a lion? (YLT)

Infuriated, Samson said to them “If you had not ploughed my heifer, you could not have answered my riddle.” And filled with the Lord he went to the Philistine town of Ashkelon, struck down thirty of their men, stripped them of everything and gave their clothes to those who had explained the riddle. Burning with anger, he returned to his father’s home.” (NLT)

Samson’s wife was then given to one of his companions who had attended him at the feast, which angered him so that he plotted an revenge to do them great harm. So he caught three hundred foxes and tied them tail to tail in pairs, fastening a torch to every pair. Then he lit the torches and turned them loose in the Philistines’ standing grain, burning the shocks, the standing grain, the vineyards and the olive groves.

When the Philistines asked why Samson had done it, they were told it was because his bride to be was given to someone else. So the Philistines burned the girl and her father to death, whereupon Samson vowed more revenge, slaughtered many of them, and went to dwell in a cave in the rock of Elam. Judah, with three thousand men, went to take Samson prisoner. Samson agreed to be bound and handed over if the Israelites promised they themselves wouldn’t kill him. So the Israelites bound him and took him to the Philistines. But the Spirit of the Lord came upon him; he burst his bonds, picked up the jawbone of an ass, and slayed a thousand Philistines. Then he complained to the Lord of his great thirst, whereupon He opened up “a hollow place in Lehi, and water came out of it.”

Some years later he fell in love with a woman named Delilah. The rulers of the Philistines came to her and said they’d each give her 1100 shekels of silver if she would find out and tell them the secret of Samson’s strength. (At today’s silver price of $17 an ounce that would be about $50,000. However, basing the value on what it would buy in the time of Samson, some historians calculate each shekel would be worth $400 – $500. Meaning Delilah was being offered at least two million dollars relative to today’s dollar.)

Captivated by the thought of so much money, Delilah began to harangue Samson for his secret. He lied to her three times, then admitted if his hair were to be cut, his strength would leave him. So Delilah promptly managed to cut off his hair, making him weak enough for the Philistines to capture him. They then gouged out his eyes and put him to work grinding grain in the prison. How long he was there the bible doesn’t say, but during that time his hair grew. Why the Philistines didn’t barber him every month is beyond me, but they didn’t.

One day the Philistines shouted for Samson to be brought out to entertain them. He was taken to a temple where thousands were waiting to see him humiliated. Samson asked the servant who had led him out to “’Put me where I can feel the pillars that support the temple, so that I may lean against them.’” Now the temple was crowded with men and women; all the rulers of the Philistines were there, and on the roof were about three thousand men and women watching Samson perform. Then Samson prayed to the Lord, “’Sovereign Lord, remember me. Please, God, strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.’” Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood. Bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other, Samson said, “’Let me die with the Philistines!’” Then he pushed with all his might, and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it. Thus he killed many more when he died than while he lived.”(NLT)

An amazing story, one that – at least to me – smacks of the storyteller’s creativity. But as someone once said, “God works in strange ways His wonders to perform,” of which Sampson’s story is certainly an excellent example.

Now comes something a bit different. Gideon’s son, Abimelek, tells his mother’s brothers to ask the citizens of Shechem (Israelites), whether they would want him as the ruler, or Gideon’s seventy other sons. The citizens were inclined to follow Abimelek, and gave him seventy silver shekels, which Abimelek swiftly uses to hire a bunch of thugs. He goes with them to his father’s house and there murders his seventy brothers, the sons of Gideon, except for Jotham, who escapes and runs aways. After Abimelek rules over Israel for the ensuing three years, the Lord, wanting revenge for the murder of Gideon’s sons, stirs up animosity in the citizens of Shechem, who then post themselves on the hilltops to ambush and rob anyone who passes by.

So Gael, son of Ebad, moves into town with his clan, and starts badmouthing Abimelek, saying he would like to take his army and destroy him. So he calls his troops together and plans an attack, but Abimelek defeats him, slays his army, then kills everyone in the town of Shechem and salts the ground so nothing will grow there. However, there are still some citizens in the city’s towers. So Abimelek builds a fire around one of the towers, killing about a thousand citizens. He approaches the other tower to do the same, but a woman drops a millstone from high in the tower, which hits Abimelek and cracks his skull. Whereupon he commands his armor bearer to kill him, so it can’t be said that a woman killed him.

“Thus God repaid the wickedness that Abimelek had done to his father by murdering his seventy brothers. God also made the people of Shechem pay for all their wickedness. The curse of Jotham son of Jerub-Baal came on them.” (New International Version)

Again, after about 45 years of peace, “the Israelites do evil in the eyes of the Lord,” come under the thumb of a tyrant, beg the Lord to save them, and the Lord chooses Jephthah to set things straight. Jephthah, a mighty warrior and son of Gilead’s union with a prostitute, had been driven away by Gilead’s other sons, to save their inheritance. But later, when the Ammonites were attacking them, the elders of the province of Gilead came to Jephthah and asked him to be their leader, saying they would make him head over all those who live in Gilead.

He eventually agreed, and made a promise to the Lord: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.” An unfortunate vow, and a pretty nearsighted one, as he should have known that whatever came out of the door first was likely to be someone he dearly loved. But that goes back to our discussion of sacrifice, I guess. The more it hurts to give it up, the more the sacrifice means.

So Jephthah destroys the Ammonites, and returns home, and wouldn’t you know it, out of the front door comes his only child, dancing to meet him. I have another small problem with this. Everyone of any note so far has had flocks and flocks of children – from wives, concubines, slaves, whatever. But Jephthah has only one? Pity. He gives her two months to prepare herself, then sets her on fire, fulfilling his vow. Other battles ensue, primarily one against the Ephraimite forces, which Jephthah and his army win, killing 42,000 Ephraimites.

“Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord.” That’s pretty much the story of Judges. Israel misbehaves, comes under the thumb of an enemy, begs the Lord to save them, and the Lord raises someone up to facilitate killing the enemy and setting them  free again. Pretty messy way of doing it, however. Ehud, for instance, sticks a sword into the obese Eglon so deeply he can’t pull it out again, and runs away.

After Ehud “the Israelites do evil in the eyes of the Lord,” come under the thumb of a tyrant, and beg the Lord to save them.  Deborah then becomes at least the moral leader of the Israelites against Jabin’s army, also saying Sisera, the commander of that army, will be delivered into the hands of a woman. Shortly thereafter, Jael drives a stake through Sisera’s head and kills him. Then peace reigns for 40 or so years.

Then “the Israelites do evil in the eyes of the Lord,” come under the thumb of a tyrant, beg the Lord to save them, and along comes Gideon. It takes three miracles to convince him it’s really the Lord who is choosing him, but he finally accedes. The Lord then tells him to reduce the size of his army, because if he beats the Midianites with 10,000 men it won’t properly glorify Him. So Gideon eventually pares his army down to 300 men. Then, “at the beginning of the middle watch” Gideon put trumpets and jars with torches inside into the hands of his 300 men. They attacked, blowing the trumpets and smashing the jars, and the Midianites were afraid. The Lord then caused the Midianites to be confused and turn their swords on each other, killing a great part of their army.

Gideon then sent part of his army out to finish the job and capture the Midianite leaders, Oreb and Zeeb, and bring him their heads, which they do. So Gideon then goes to Sukkoth and Peniel and asks for food for his army, but they rebuff him. By this time the Midianite army has been reduced from 135,000 swordsmen to just 15,000. Still, you would think, a formidable for against Gideon’s 300, but he pursues them and captures their entire army.

Then, for rebuffing him, Gideon punishes the elders of Sukkoth with desert thorns and briers, as he had promised to do. He then pulls down the towers of Peniel and kills the men of the town. Then he kills Zebah and Zalmunna, commanders of the Midianites. Gideon then refuses to accept the throne of Israel, but asks the Israelites to give him all their gold, so he can make an ephod. It’s unclear what an ephod is, but Gideon makes one and places it in Ophrah, “his town.”

This happens with some frequency in the old testament – taking gold jewelry and making a calf, or an ephod, or something similar with it. But if you think about it, that’s quite a task – somehow managing to build a fire that will burn at just under 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, a bucket that will withstand that kind of heat in which to melt the gold, building a form in the shape in which the gold will be cast – a form that will also withstand temperatures of close to 2000 degrees – in fact, it would be impossible without the right materials and tools. Much like in the modern telling of Games of Thrones, when Khal Drogo melts gold in a cookpot and pours it over Visery’s head. Not possible, but makes a good story.

No. I am not lawyering for the devil. I’m not even sure there is such a thing as the devil, as you already know if you read “If there is a God…” on this  site. Neither were the Jews. So where did Satan, the Devil, Beelzebub, the Evil One, the Prince of Darkness, etc., come from?

Sit down, grasshopper. This may be a tough lesson.

According to biblical scholars such as Lucas Sweeney, there really wasn’t any “devil” in Jewish tradition, and therefore in the old testament, until the Persian period, from 300-500 years before the birth of Christ. Woops. What? Then where did all that evil come from? And what about the snake in Paradise? Truth is, God was believed to be in charge of everything up until that time, the cause of all good and all evil.

Consider Isaiah 45:7, in which God says: “I form light, and create darkness, I make weal and create woe: I the Lord do all these things.” Or according to Youngs: “Forming light, and preparing darkness, Making peace, and preparing evil, I [am] Jehovah, doing all these things.” That makes it pretty clear, except to an ambitious public defender, who would argue “No, God doesn’t do evil; he just prepares it.” But it still presented a problem. Why would a god who created the world and all of its creatures, who gave Adam and Eve Paradise, who was responsible for countless good acts, also be responsible for all the evil in the world? Remember, God described Himself as a loving and forgiving God, slow to anger and quick to show mercy. But how could God be good and loving and evil and hateful all at once? Was a puzzlement.

Enter Zoroaster, a Persian religious philosopher who lived about 600 years before the birth of Christ, and the concept of Dualism, which is belief in the existence of two supreme opposed powers (gods), or sets of divine or demonic beings, that caused the world to exist. One good, one bad, don’t you see. This concept put the uncomfortable Jewish minds at ease – God does all the good stuff; that other Being does all the bad stuff. Yay! And over time, the name that came to be most associated with “that other Being” was “Satan.”

True, the word “satan” was used with some frequency in the old testament, but it had a much different meaning – that of “adversary,” “obstacle,” or “opponent.” David himself is called by that term at least twice in the book of Samuel, but the word never has the meaning of “an immortal evil being.”

In many translations, however, “Satan” is blamed for everything from tricking Adam and Eve to tempting Christ, thousands (or maybe billions) of years later. In Job 1:6, for example: “One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them” (New International Version). But Young’s translation reads: “And the day is, that sons of God come in to station themselves by Jehovah, and there doth come also the Adversary in their midst to station himself by Jehovah.”

Is this a distinction without a difference? Not really. If you accept that the bible is the word of God, then you must believe that God is the cause of both good and evil, happiness and suffering, life and death, as He said He was. And Satan, by whatever name you want to call him/her, is nothing more than an “adversary,” or, as in the story of Balaam and the Angel in Numbers 22:22, a being of some kind who only acts as a messenger or servant of God. This latter definition might shed some light on the story of Job, in which “Satan,” or the “adversary” is sent by God to wreak havoc on Job and his family. As a test, of course. This all-knowing being seems to be always testing his creatures to make sure they love him and only him. Which a modern psychiatrist might suggest stems from an insecurity complex. Or narcissism. But that’s stuff for another article.

During the past 60 years or so, I’ve read parts of the bible, heard parts of it read in church, on TV, and on the radio.  But I never really read it. Now that I have, I am appalled. Appalled at the god of the old testament, who kills those who don’t believe in him, and those who displease him.

The flood is a great example. God doesn’t like what the beings he created are doing, so he wipes them all out – men, women, children, dogs, whatever.  Because he’s unhappy with them, he drowns millions of his creation, saving only Noah and his family, plus two of every “clean” animal.

Jericho, Sodom and Gomorrah, Gibeon, the plagues, etc. Shechem rapes Dinah, you’ll remember, certainly an atrocious act, but in retribution Jacob and his sons kill all the males and plunder the city, taking all the livestock, all the women and children, and anything else worth carrying off.

It feels like this god is an amalgam of a prototypical father figure painted by the authors: their idea of what a father should be. Stern, uncompromising, demanding obedience and allegiance, relentless, quick with punishment, unable to accept any other “fathers.”

Their idea, not mine. And it seems their intent was not only to prove the existence of, and power of, god, but to set an example for fathers and families everywhere.

The deeper I get into the old testament, the less able I am to accept the god defined therein. Things might have been different if I were a Jew a few thousand years before Christ. But I’m not.

I cannot condone or accept a god who mercilessly kills millions of souls just because they don’t worship him and him alone. That’s narcissism at its worst. It’s happened countless times in real life, with Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse-Tsung, and others. Don’t like my way of doing business? Off with your head.

This short piece was written, as you might imagine, well after I began submersing myself in the old testament. Raised a Catholic, I always thought of god as an all-powerful father figure – one I would have liked my father to emulate. An intense reading of the old testament turned me completely around.

I no longer think of god as Charlton Heston or H.B. Warner — a white-haired old man standing on a mountaintop in voluminous robes holding the ten commandments. But I do believe in a god of some sort. I can’t picture, describe, or accurately define my “god,” but I have what I consider to be incontrovertible proof that my god exists and is concerned about my welfare. I find that to be so improbable I waver often from “there is a god” to “acknowledging the existence of any god is insane.” Yet still I believe. But not in the god painted by the authors of the old testament; that god is totally unacceptable to me.

This admission may cause you to throw this little book across the room, or into a bonfire, cursing it and me in terms acceptable to the god of the old testament. Okay. I guess it depends on the depth and details of your faith. For some, any inference that the bible is not the divine word of God, or that the god in the old testament is not Godly, is anathema, and I understand that.

I am not trying to debunk the bible, or suggest that your faith is specious, or claim my god, whoever or whatever that god is, superior to yours; I am only describing my thoughts as I work my way through this book from another millennium.

Everyone dances to his or her own tune. And as time goes by, and new information is processed, that tune can change, and so, obviously will the dance. It happened to me. I am in a different place than I was when I started this project. Where will I be when I begin my study of the New Testament? I’m eager to find out.

But first… Let’s start at the beginning.

As you may or may not know by now, I’m sort of slowly working my way through the bible, trying to discover what it means – at least to me. And it occurs to me that the bible as we know it is not really The Bible, as we would like for it to be, and as many teach that it is. Because of what it really is. And knowing what it really is answers many of my questions about it. Like why did God change from the old testament version to the new testament version after – according to the begats, etc. – more than 5,000 years of appearing to people, and killing whole bunches of people, and generally acting like one of the “pagan” gods of Rome, Greece, Egypt, etc.

The answer that occurred to me is pretty simple, and I’m sure obvious to more capable brains than mine. God is not God in the bible. Instead, the God of the bible is man’s idea of God. God anthropomorphized. Does that mean the bible is not a sacred work, or is just a bunch of fables? No. I have no idea whether it’s all true, or part true, or all untrue. And that’s not my point.

My point is the folks who passed the bible down from generation to generation verbally, and then later with the written word, made God act the way they thought a god should act. Sodom and Gomorrah, for example. Terrible, promiscuous, God-ignoring people who needed to be taught a lesson. So God wiped them out. “The LORD rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah — from the LORD out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities.” Wow. He only took pity on Lot and his family, because they were good, God-fearing people. Except, of course, Lot’s wife and the pillar of salt thing, but that was really her own fault, right?

Makes a great story, teaches a great lesson. True? Archeologists say such a place might have been destroyed by a rain of meteorites. There is also a theory that subterranean deposits of petroleum-based bitumen, common in the region South of the Dead Sea, could have been released by an earthquake through a fault line, and somehow been ignited by a spark or surface fire. It would then fall to earth as a fiery mass. In fact, it was only after this theory was formulated that Sodom and Gomorrah were found – modern-day Bab edh-Dhra, thought to be Sodom, and Numeira, thought to be Gomorrah.

So suppose I’m an elder, or a “keeper of the faith,” and I run across the story of a city that was destroyed by fire. Pretty good opportunity to teach a lesson, I’m thinking. Noah and the flood is another obvious example. The beings He created aren’t behaving, so he wipes them out. I don’t want to appear irreverent, but that doesn’t seem very Godly to me.

Am I saying those things didn’t happen? Absolutely not. I’m saying if they did happen – whether God was involved or not – they were great grist for the mill of the religious. The truth is, the Judeo-Christian God presented in the bible isn’t so very different from all those other gods already mentioned, who were petty, tyrannical, and unreliable. Because they all have been humanized by the storytellers and writers. Does this refute the credo that every single word of the bible is divinely inspired? Of course not. Divinely inspired, however, is several miles from “divinely written.”

God obviously didn’t write the bible. It was written by men to record certain events, many of which contain reference to or the actual presence of God. And as a writer, I can’t imagine sharing those events, either vocally or in writing, without embellishing them at least somewhat. And I think it perfectly plausible that actual events would be attributed to Him and His power to make Him more awesome, more memorable, and more frightening.

Because that’s what writers – and good teachers – do.

Did God create it? Or did it just kind of happen?

I’ve read several of Stephen Hawking’s lectures about the beginning of the universe, and studied other hypotheses rather desultorily, but none of them answer my question. Is it because the question is irrelevant? Dumb? Probably. I’m certainly no cosmologist, or scientist, or time theorist. I’m not even in the same neighborhood with those guys.

But my question makes sense to me; it just doesn’t seem to make sense to anyone else. Anyone who counts, anyway. So here’s the question. If there was a big bang, and the universe was created in trillisecond, what was it created out of? Hawking says asking that question is like asking what’s South of the South Pole. Irrelevant and meaningless, because there’s nothing South of the South Pole. And he talks about the theory of relativity, and quantum physics, and how the universe was “created,” but not what it was created from. That’s bad grammar for emphasis.

In my little pea-sized mind, you/we can’t create something from nothing. If I want to create a bookcase, I need wood. If I want to create an ice-cream soda, I need ice cream. If I want to create a universe, I need universe material. Lots of it. That’s just me, of course. Someone who barely understands the basics of why gravity works.

The only two logical hypotheses for me are 1) there was a whole bunch of universe material available some time, and it got all squinched up and became a singularity and boom, the universe, or 2) somehow the universe was created out of nothing. So this narrow range of possibilities, I guess, accounts for a bunch of other theories: the string theory, the parallel universe theory, the space/time continuum theory that time is basically a circle, and probably a dozen or so others.

Of course, if something was created out of nothing, someone or something had to create it. Which opens up the God door. And raises the question: where did God come from? See how difficult this is for a poor little pea brain like mine?

In Catholic school, they taught me that the answer to the question: Had God a beginning? was No; He always was and always will be. That’s obviously one of the Great Mysteries. But the truth is, hard as it is to believe, I lean toward that theory rather than the theory that the universe just popped into being from out of nowhere.

It’s interesting to me that atheists and many (if not most) scientists can believe the something out of nothing theory instead of the God theory by creating all kinds of unprovable exotic ways it could have happened that way. On Tuesday of next week, or 50 years from now, will one of those theories be proved? Beats me. But right now I’m not getting on that boat.

The truth is there are mysteries out there that can’t be solved by experimentation. To come up with a solution you have to take a leap of faith – be born again, in a way. Put aside logic and convention and believe. In string theory, parallel universes, God, whatever. And do that without provable evidence.

But if I tell you the universe was created by no one from nothing, or that time is a continuum and this sort of thing happens every 100 billion years or so, or that God did it, you really can’t refute it – no matter how implausible it might seem — as long as the hypothesis answers the available facts. Which to me shows what rude, close minded jamokes Bill Maher and others like him are who make fun of someone else’s belief in God. Until something’s proved either way, if something ever is, one theory’s just as good as another.

I believe in “God.” Not Charlton Heston or some other old white guy in robes, not Morgan Freeman, not Groucho Marx or Whoopi Goldberg or George Burns, but a God whose shape and form are unknown to me. I believe because in my life I’ve experienced what I choose to call proof. I believe, as Jesus said, that God is good, and that good is God. And that God is interested in our well being. I don’t know why that should be true, but I believe it is. Perhaps God is simply a consciousness that exists in the universe. Perhaps God only created the circumstances in which we could be created, and we happened, and now God feels responsible. Beats me.

That does, however, lead me to evolution. Which is just about the craziest idea I ever heard of. Survival of the fittest works, obviously, but I have a hard time believing that a rat developed wings in response to its current circumstances, so it could survive in the future. Please. I can see it developing longer, faster legs. Bigger teeth. Whatever. But wings?

I lean much more toward the chaos theory of evolution.

My life has been blessed. Not perfect, but blessed. Maybe that describes yours, too. You may not yet be what you dreamed of someday being. You may have not yet accomplished all you hope to accomplish. Today is not the day to dwell on those things. Today is the day to celebrate.

“Count your blessings, Angus,” someone once said to my father, who thought for a minute, then counted “One, two.” Of course he was being funny (or thought he was.) How many do you have? It’s hard to know, because it’s hard to categorize all the things that have happened to you in your life. The good things are easy. But could the “bad” things somehow be blessings, too? They’ve helped in their way to make you who you are.

And today I say to you, “This is the day to take a moment and count yours. No, it’s not a competition. We won’t be comparing scores.

The first Thanksgiving. In 1623, Plymouth was in such a severe drought that (according to William Bradford) “they set apart a solemn day of humiliation, to seek the Lord by humble and fervent prayer, in this great distress.” That same evening it began “to rain with such sweet and gentle showers as gave them cause of rejoicing and blessing God, and caused them to set apart a day of thanksgiving.”

Here’s my message for today.

Like a car, your life has a forward, a reverse, and a neutral gear. Today’s the day we use them all. Put it in reverse for a minute, and be thankful for all the good things that have happened in your life to make you who and what and where you are today. Then stick it into forward for a bit and be thankful for all the things you still have time and will to accomplish.  Then slip it into neutral, and don’t think about anything but enjoying the day. You’re welcome.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Okay, not all atheists. Just those militant ones that put up the crass signs. The ones like Bill Maher who equate belief in God to belief in the Tooth Fairy. They can’t just let you live your life as a believer. And the question always bothered me. Why? Why are they so hostile, so aggressive? Why do they want to destroy Christmas, and Easter, and trash the bible, and spit on Jesus, and yell and scream if anyone mentions the ten commandments or tries to say a prayer in public? And a couple of days ago the answer came to me.

They’re not trying to save us from the folly of our belief, perhaps the only acceptable reason for their actions. They are trying to take the place of God. Not in the heavens, but here on earth. It’s all a matter of control. If we have allegiance to a supreme being, something outside of our physical world, we can never be completely dependent on them (the atheists). Atheism is a narcissistic form of belief by its very definition: I’m the smartest, most wonderful thing in the world; there is no God.

There is no “leap of faith” possible for an atheist, because he/she can have no faith in anything outside of him/herself. I believe in God because I left that possibility open, and experienced events in my life that caused me to be a believer. Atheists won’t ever experience that, because the door is shut; they won’t even open it a crack. But they’ll invent beliefs that are at least as difficult to accept, like one of the latest — the big bang was caused by multiple universes banging into one another. Of course they don’t have a way of explaining where all those other universes came from… yet.

So they really have no other option than to ridicule God and those who believe in Him/Her/It. The Jews believe(d) that pronouncing the name of God was forbidden. Because He was so powerful and holy and awesome? Not exactly. Pronouncing His name, they correctly believed, would give Him form, make Him into a “being,” even a familiar one, instead of this formlessness that pervades every facet of our lives and universe(s).

Jesus gave us something with which to identify: a perfect being performing miracles with powers we all possess, but are too confused to exercise. The son of God, which — as he kept repeating — we all are (daughters, too.) Some atheists believe in the existence of Jesus, but not in his heavenly connection.

This piece began as an explanation of the aggressive atheists’ push to displace God. So I’ll end it that way, too. Atheism, in my view, is a completely narcissistic form of belief, one that refuses to yield control or devotion to any higher being and therefore needs to exterminate any thought in that direction.

I’m just sayin’.