The Bible: Commentary and Controversy

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.