Why I Hate the Bible...

Yes. At times I hate the Bible--and yes, "hate" is a strong word. A more apt term would be "frustrating," but to make such a word grammatically correct in the phrase, it would hafta end up something like this: Why I Find the Bible Frustrating (at times). For this post, please use this little disclaimer to interpret what I'm saying. Good day and happy reading (if that is what you do when you are here).

So... I hate the Bible. I find it very frustrating at times, and there are moments when I can easily conclude that God wants people to rot in hell. It's frustrating as hell, to be honest. I do declare that had I not become a Christian at an early age, I very much doubt that I would find myself clinging to such a faith-system as Christianity. Why? Well...

Here's the gig. I'm reading through the book of Judges right now & have just passed chapter 6--where Gideon asks God to show him a sign with a fleece. It's a very famous passage (read it here), and often it is used--out of context--as a precedent for asking God to provide signs pointing people in what direction they should go. What irritates the crap out of me is that God actually honours Gideon's requests. Yes requestS. Plural. I mean, what the heck? This guy, this agent of the Lord, refuses to believe that God is calling him to do something, when we read in the chapter previous that God Himself actually talked with Gideon face-to-face!

Let's get the story straight: God comes to Gideon & tells him to do something. Gideon says "not a chance." God says, "Right: not a chance--a certainty." Gideon replies saying that that's impossible, telling God that it can't be done. God tells him again that it'll be done. Gideon asks God for a sign: that when he goes away to prepare a sacrifice, God will be there when he returns. God says sure. Gideon leaves & comes back. God's still there. Then God causes the sacrifice to spontaneously combust & then disappears. That night, God then tells Gideon to destroy the town's idols & altars. Gideon does & then gets threatened to be killed by the townsfolk, but is spared because of his father's cunning.

That very same day, Gideon asks God if he meant what He said (remember, this is less than 24 hours after Gid. saw God and saw Him touch the sacrifice, causing it to burst into flame. Gideon asks God to make a fleece wet, while the ground is dry. God does so. Gideon isn't satisfied, so he tells God to do it again, but in reverse. God does this. Finally Gideon appears to be satisfied with God meaning what He says.


Think about it. Would God do the same thing today? Well, maybe... but you sure the heck don't hear about it. Who's the last person you know or have heard of who's had a face-to-face conversation with the Lord? Huh? Who? Yeah.... thought so. How many times have you heard someone ask God for a sign, and then when God delivers, they ask for another one, and then when He delivers again, they ask for a third (with God throwing in two other signs, just for good measure)? What? Did I hear you say "Never in the history of mankind since the fall of Rome" (correct me if I'm wrong, please)? I thought so.

See, here's my beef with the Bible & why find it frustrating. It's also something that causes me to get a bit unsettled with the Lord (and would cause me to be pissed off with Him, were I not able to personally reconcile such things). Okay, so there's this trend in the Bible from Genesis on through to the last letter in Revelation that goes something like this: God is constantly distancing Himself from humanity. He keeps pulling away & interacting less & less with them. Why? A plethora of conjectures. All I know is that God walked & talked with Adam & Eve. He visited Abraham on multiple occasions, sitting down to dinner with him. He chose to bless Jacob, even though the guy wanted nothing to do with God & only finally started to do God's will after he & the Lord physically fought on a mountainside. Then Moses saw a burning bush talk to him, and refused to do what God told him to do until the Lord convinced him to listen. The all of the sudden, God shows off with the plagues in Egypt, the pillars of fire & cloud, and the resting of His glory on Sinai. (All through this, the nation of Israel decided that God wasn't real or powerful, and chose to worship a metal sculpture of a barnyard animal instead--right when they were parked beside this burning, billowing, smoking mountain where the voice of God bellowed out from. Ironic, no?) So, then during this, Moses talks face-to-face with God & sees His true form, but only God's back. Moses had casual, face-to-face conversations with God for crying out loud! What does he do in response to all of this? When God tells him to speak to the rock for water, Moses hits it instead, because he doesn't think God would do what He said He would. I mean--what the heck?!
Now we skip over Joshua and talk about Gideon, who also speaks to God face-to-face & still doesn't give God the time of day. From here on, God sightings dwindle greatly. Samuel hears God speak audibly & often. David has to use the Urim & Thummim and an ephod to get a reply outta God, or the prophets come & advise him about what God's saying. Elijah hears God whisper while running away from Jezebel because he doesn't think God will save his life. God (apparently) walks with Shad., Mesh. & Abed. in Neb.'s furnace. Belshazaar sees a disembodied hand write into plaster. Daniel gets instruction from God via Michael the archangel. Ezekiel sees God's throne (just like the elders of Israel did in the desert around Sinai around the same time as the golden calf, by the way) & the new temple plans. Isaiah sees God & his glory filling the temple. Later prophets just tell people what God tells them. Then for 400 years, we're told, God sits on his hands.
Jesus arrives & spends 30ish years on earth, telling us to have faith & believe both in Him & in the Father. He chastens people for not believing immediately, yet He doesn't really say anything about the lack of immediate faith in Jacob or Moses or the newly expedited nation of Israel from Egypt (though He alludes to them at times), or of Gideon. All of these "greats" who refused to listen to God, but whom God eventually cajoled into His service. Then Jesus dies & rebukes Thomas for wanting proof that Christ actually rose from the dead, even though none of the aforementioned patriarchs were really rebuked at all. Jesus then leaves & promises the Holy Spirit. The HS comes & comes in power a couple of weeks (or so) after Christ's departure. Christians work miracles. Things happen. Wondrous signs are accomplished. Jesus appears to Paul on the road to Emmaus. Paul does a whack-load of miraculous things through the power of the Holy Spirit. John gets taken away "in the Spirit" to heaven & sees unimaginable things--things about the last days of this creation.

Then the Bible ends. And what does history tell us about Christianity & God's influence on the Church and in the world? Well, we hear stories about Constantine & we hear stories about Augustine & we hear stories about the Roman Empire church. We hear about the fall of Rome, and suddenly things get a lot quieter with God. Pockets of wondrous things happen here and there. Popes rule the church & smother Christianity with human rule & thirst for power. The dark ages are called dark because they were dark. Nothing really seemed to happen... really. Heck, even after all of the original apostles died, the miraculous manifestations of God started to dwindle. By 476, little was happening & after that, it seemed that Christianity was stabilising into what we kind of see it as today. Crazy acts of God are sprinkled here & there throughout the last 1500 years, but in no sense has there been a recorded instance of God coming to a human and talking with them face to face (at least in mainstream Christianity. There are divergent sects who claim such events have happened, but their accordance to the scriptural texts is rather short of reasonable).

So what am I getting at? I'm sayin' that God's not fair. At the beginning, He displays His power and splendour to those who want nothing to do with Him & to those who would rather not do His will, flashing about His existence for piles of people to see, but 2,000 years later, you can't even curse His name or consider yourself to be His equal (or greater) and get a response out of Him. What's happened?! Has God stopped caring that there's a world down here? Does He really want to have an intimate relationship with us--especially with those of us who actually do want to have that relationship with Him? How come He doesn't give us that time of day--revealing Himself to us in such magnificent ways as He did to Moses or Joshua or Gideon or even to Paul? I mean, what the heck?!?!???

I'd like to say that I'm convinced that more people are going to hell because God doesn't show Himself as much or as big as He used to. But I can't. Why? Because the Bible's gay & God covers His butt. Read it. Look at it. It's air-tight. Things don't proceed as you'd expect them to & there's always an explanation as to why (now, are these comments afterthoughts &/or ex post facto responses? Were I a non-Christian, I would definitely assert that they were & would find them to be irrelevant to promoting this faith of mine). Take Judges for instance. The Bible says right there that all of the Canaanites weren't wiped out because God wanted to retain some of the nations in order to test Israel's fidelity to Him, even though you can flip a couple of pages back in the text (and in history) where you can plainly read that He commands Israel to wipe all of them out. And, because they don't, He punishes them for not executing His entire will--even though it was His will that these nations survived the Theocratically sanctioned genocide (apparently). All sorts of instances like this exist, seemingly ex post facto. Are they? Maybe? Are they true? Maybe. My faith compels me to say "Yes, they're true." My reason thinks that I'm a blind-fooled retard until it remembers all of the things that I've witnessed and experienced in my own life and in my own days on this planet that invariably support the wild & insane assertion that God exists, that He loves people and that He rules the universe wholly & completely.

I hate the Bible because it doesn't fit my box, because it makes Christianity hard, because it's not exactly reasonable as far as objective reason goes, because it mandates faith, because it's not fair, and most of all: because it's right. I wish that God played by my rules... because at least then, things would make a whole lot more sense & I'd find Christianity a heapload easier. Then again, I guess that's what makes God God..........

You turn things upside down,
as if the potter were thought to be like the clay!
Shall what is formed say to him who formed it,
"He did not make me"?
Can the pot say of the potter,
"He knows nothing"? _{-Isaiah 29:16}

"Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker,
to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground.
Does the clay say to the potter,
'What are you making?'
Does your work say,
'He has no hands'? _{-Isaiah 45:9}