By Diana Holbourn
During Becky's Last Term at University, she Takes Interest in Controversial Debates Between an Atheist and a Christian she Knows
Book five of the online Becky Bexley series. Chapter 3 continued.
This series accompanies the books about what Becky does at university and afterwards, which you can find out more about on my author website. (The online series is in draft form.)
(To recap: The previous page ended with one of the girls joking about evolution, including imagining what it would be like if they discovered that God came into being through evolution himself, only now his is going backwards, so he's turning less sophisticated.)
But then Deborah turned the conversation serious, by saying, "Supposing God isn't a product of evolution though, if he really did create the world, and knows everything, you'd have thought he'd take more interest in the world and make it a better place, like by helping people communicate with each other in the days before it was easy, and even now sometimes. I mean, he could transmit people's words and thoughts to each other sometimes, like when someone's mum's wishing they'd phone her, but the person's thinking, 'My mum doesn't care about me; why should I bother ever speaking to her again?'
"Or what about when two countries are lurching towards war, and some of the things that are causing hostility are misunderstandings? I read that part of the problem that increased suspicion and hostility before the American War of Independence was each side misunderstanding the other's intentions, in an age when it could take weeks and weeks for a message to be taken across the Atlantic and passed to the person it was meant for. A lot of worrying rumours could develop in that time. It seems the colonists thought the British government was intending to oppress them, while a lot of people in the British government were convinced the colonists intended to rebel no matter what. Proper negotiation could have prevented the war from happening. Couldn't God have instantly transmitted messages from some minds to others?"
Judith said, "Well apart from the fact that any mum who wants a child of hers to phone her could always just phone them, I don't know about that. How could you ever be sure it was God giving you the information, and not just your own brain making you think it was him? Even if God appeared physically in some way, people could still think they were just having a hallucination.
"And a lot more people could have thoughts about doing things and be sure God put them there when he didn't really. I actually met someone who said that for a while he was convinced God wanted him to marry a certain person; but after a while, he realised it was just something he wanted himself.
"And it would probably be easier for fraudsters to convince people God had spoken to them, and that he'd told them people needed to follow them, or even to follow them into war if they were commanders of rebel armies or something, and things like that, unless God was forever appearing to people to correct misinformation, or smiting people to stop them spreading it in the first place. And I know you wouldn't like that, especially since it would be impossible to know that God was doing it to stop them doing harm if they hadn't done it yet!"
Deborah said, "Fair enough, although it doesn't seem as if God minds people going to war very much! But what if you've got more faith in God's good intentions than he deserves? What if you got to heaven and heard God talking, and you became really disillusioned with him, because you discovered he really was a hot-tempered bigot, the way he comes across in the Old Testament, or he gloried in war, or he looked on the suffering of some humans and mocked them as weak instead of feeling sorry for them, or sounded really callous when he talked about it, as if he didn't care about it at all, or he laughed scornfully at the mistakes of people on earth, even when they couldn't help what they did, or couldn't have known it was the wrong thing to do?"
One of the girls quipped, "If that happened, we'd all think, 'Oh no, he's just like my mum!'"
Deborah chuckled and said, "Your mum doesn't glory in war, does she?"
The girl who'd made the quip said, "Actually, no, she doesn't do that. I'd forgotten what you said at the beginning of your sentence by the time you got to the end. ... Actually, my mum isn't as bad as all that."
They all grinned.
Then Judith replied, "I suppose I'd be upset if God turned out to be like that, Deborah; but it's hard for me to believe he would be, after reading all the verses in the New Testament about how Jesus spent years helping people, and about how Christians are commanded to do good and be kind and caring and so on.
"And it's not just the New Testament that contains commands like that. In between the passages where Old Testament prophets were warning the people of Israel that God was going to cause armies to rise up against them if they didn't change their ways, there are lots of passages about what kinds of changes God said he would like, and how he'd like to have a loving relationship with the people of Israel and do them a lot of good, if only they'd change their ways for the better.
"For instance, in the Book of Isaiah, there's a passage where Isaiah says God was telling rich people he hated the way they would pretend to be pious, going through the motions of rituals like fasting and bowing their heads on special religious days, acting as if they were sorry for their sins, and thinking it would please him, when it didn't at all, because they would do that and then keep right on doing them, mistreating people who worked for them, and fighting and quarrelling.
"Isaiah said God wanted them to stop mistreating their workers and give them fair wages, and to free people who were wrongly imprisoned, and to feed the hungry and give clothes to people who needed them, and not to deny help to their relatives when they needed it.
"He said if they did all that, God would make the people of Israel prosperous and healthy, and protect them.
"And there are quite a few passages where prophets said God was saying he didn't want anyone to be killed; he'd prefer not to punish them; and if only they would stop harming each other, he'd do a lot of good for the country instead.
"And some of the prophets said a lot about how there would be a time in the future when everyone would live in peace and happiness with a good quality of life, and they'd all have softer hearts and be good people who wanted to follow God. Maybe they were partly talking about heaven.
"There are so many verses in the Bible where it says God wants people to turn away from harmful ways and do good and be caring, it's hard to believe he could be evil, since why would an evil God want those things?
"And in the Law of Moses, which does contain a lot of laws with harsh punishments, a lot of the laws are still caring, such as commands not to put something in front of a blind person who won't know it's there so as to make them fall over it, and laws about being caring towards poor people, and not mistreating foreigners and widows and orphans, and about how poor people should be allowed to gather grain from people's fields and grapes from their vineyards after the main harvesting's been done, and how day labourers should be paid promptly at the end of the day instead of just being promised payment that might not materialise in reality, since they need the money, and all kinds of things like that.
"And most of the laws with harsh punishments are meant to prevent harm, so they could be said to be caring too, really."
Deborah said, "Not all the laws sound reasonable though. Some I've heard about sound downright savage! I'm still not convinced God's a decent being, just supposing he exists. I mean, for one thing, what about that gruesome passage in the Law of Moses where he supposedly commanded that women who weren't virgins on their wedding night and got found out because their husbands couldn't find any blood on their sheets from their hymens that should have been ruptured when they first had sex had to be stoned to death? I mean, for one thing, only about half of women and girls bleed at all when they lose their virginity; and for another, it's just plain barbaric!"
One of the girls wondered if Becky really ought to be hearing the conversation, and asked, "Are you OK Becky? I mean, this is a bit gruesome, isn't it; and it's not normal for people of your age to be hearing conversations like this, ... or at least I hope it isn't!"
Becky reassured her, saying, "Don't worry about me. It has turned into a horrible conversation, but when you think about it, a lot of girls around the world have it a whole lot worse than this, having to marry and start having kids when they're only a few years older than me! I think I'm a lot better off than they are!"
Helen said, "Corr this conversation's turning depressing! I think I'll need to go and get another drink soon! Or two!"
Judith smiled and said, "Remember the Bible says Christians shouldn't get drunk!"
Helen replied, "Well God hadn't met Deborah when he made that command, had he!"
Sandra said, "Wow, imagine if God himself got so depressed he got drunk! That could be dangerous! I wonder what a drunken God would do! Maybe he'd pick the entire world up and fling it out of orbit or something!"
Deborah joked, "Hang on, I'm only talking about the laws God himself supposedly made up! If it was going to depress him that much, he shouldn't have done it, should he! Hey, maybe the real reason there's so much suffering in the world is because God got so depressed a long time ago that he took to his bed, and he's still there!"
Tracy giggled and said, "Wow, imagine a person going to heaven and expecting to see God there, but he was nowhere in sight, so they asked one of the angels where he was, and they said, 'Oh he doesn't show up now. He got so depressed a few centuries ago that he went to bed, and he's still so depressed he never wanted to get up, so he's still there, with a "Do not disturb" sign on his bedroom door.'"
They giggled.
But then Judith said, "Deborah's question seems to demand an answer though. So OK, getting serious again, I'll answer your question, Deborah. I agree that that law does seem pretty savage. But I think I know why it was so harsh. And it doesn't say quite what you think it does, and doesn't sound quite as bad as you made it out to sound, although it still sounds nasty. I'll tell you what it does say in a minute.
"But I read that the reason there was even a law about women having to be virgins when they married was at least partly because it was important in those days that husbands could be as sure as possible that their children were theirs, especially their sons, because if there was some doubt about it, one of their relatives could dispute their right to pass on their property and land to their children when they died in court, since they could claim that at least their first child was likely not theirs; and if they succeeded at winning the case, they could themselves be granted ownership of the land, and possibly throw the family of the husband off it, so his children would be deprived of it, which could have made it hard for them to support themselves, and even have made them destitute, which might have led to them starving.
"That's one reason why virginity was considered a life-and-death issue. In those days, most people lived off the land, by selling crops they grew. It wasn't easy to just get other jobs. And there was no unemployment benefit. But husbands themselves might have sometimes refused to support their wives and children if there was some doubt about whether their wives were being faithful to them, because they suspected them of sleeping around before they married.
"Anyway, what that law really says is that if after a couple were married, a husband decided he didn't want his wife any more and made up false charges that she wasn't a virgin when they married, maybe as an excuse to divorce her, her parents could contest the accusation by bringing the matter to court, bringing out the bloodstained sheet that was on their bed on their wedding night, to prove she was a virgin when she married him, because she'd had some bleeding. Goodness knows what the custom was in those days that would mean the parents would have had the sheet and would have kept it; but when they brought it to the court, the law said it would be proved that the man's accusation was false, and that he should be beaten by the court officials because he'd made a false accusation against his wife that might have ruined her reputation; and he would also be fined a lot of money, which would be given to the woman's parents, and be forbidden to divorce his wife all the days of their lives.
"Maybe he would have been forbidden to divorce her because there was a high possibility that no one else would have wanted to marry a woman who'd had her reputation brought into question by having charges like that brought against her, or because it might have been unlikely that another man would have wanted to marry her and help raise children who weren't his, when it could have been quite a burden because of the poverty of the people, which might have made it hard enough for people to even feed themselves sometimes.
"The penalty for false accusations would have really discouraged a lot of men from bringing charges like that against their wives, I would have thought, knowing what they might face if there wasn't enough evidence to convict them! If they didn't like their wives, it would be a lot easier just to divorce them!
"But the Law does say that if the accusation was found to be true, women could be stoned to death because of it. That sounds barbaric to us. But there are reasons why it might not have sounded so barbaric to ancient people, or at least to some of them, because they might have thought harsh punishments were needed to deter people from doing things that might have eventually led to hardship getting worse and worse till society started descending into chaos, because a lot of children were being born without fathers who thought it was their duty to support them. One of the reasons they might have thought like that is that inheritance issue.
"The law might also have been designed to discourage women from having sex before marriage, to try to prevent the possibility of them having children they couldn't support. Apparently a few centuries ago in this country, in the days before the welfare state and contraception, so many babies were abandoned because unmarried young women had sex with men and then got pregnant with babies they didn't want and couldn't afford to care for that it was common to see abandoned babies on the streets. One man saw so many he decided to start a hospital to care for them.
"Sometimes unmarried women's parents cared for their babies and pretended they were theirs, because of the social stigma unmarried women who had children would face in those days. But if they weren't willing to do that, and women knew it would be hard to get jobs to support themselves and care for children at the same time, and they knew that men would be unlikely to want to marry them if they had kids out of wedlock, and they didn't want children at their age anyway, they could abandon their babies, who might die if no one found them and chose to look after them.
"These days, with safe abortion and contraception, and a welfare state where single mothers can get benefits so they can get enough money to live on, that kind of thing normally doesn't happen, at least in this country. But imagine how things might be today if those things weren't available! Maybe there would be a lot less sex before marriage, because a lot of women would be more reluctant to risk unwanted pregnancy; but if there was still some, there might still be a fair few abandoned babies around.
"Actually, I read an article about how hospitals in Italy have started providing a service where mothers can anonymously leave babies they'd otherwise abandon, only recently, because the number of abandoned newborn babies has been going up. They might not all be abandoned by unmarried mothers. But I imagine a fair number probably are. The article said a lot of babies have been found in rubbish bins, and that in the previous week alone, three dead babies had been found in bins. It said one of the first hospitals for abandoned babies there was started by the pope in the Middle Ages, and that as late as the 19th century, it was receiving about three thousand babies a year! Some might have been the babies of married women who couldn't care for them any more for one reason or another; but a lot of them were probably the result of unwanted pregnancies caused by people having sex outside of committed relationships, so caring for the child was left up to the single mother, so it would have been that much harder, in the days before welfare states.
"But as for that barbaric-sounding Old Testament law about women who weren't virgins on their wedding night deserving death, apart from it having more reason behind it than we might think, it wouldn't have been enforced no matter what. Women were sometimes found not guilty of not being virgins on their wedding nights even though their parents couldn't produce the supposed evidence that they were virgins when they married. I read that there was a big code of laws that weren't in the Old Testament, but which would have expanded on the laws that were, and given more detail about when they should and shouldn't be applied, and about trial procedures, like the right for people to speak up in their defence, and to have character witnesses and so on.
"There are some records of trials of women who were accused of not being virgins when they married from around the time of Jesus, including one where a woman said she didn't bleed when she first had sex with her husband because her hymen had broken before then because of the strain of keeping having to climb up some steep steps to her father's house, and another where the woman said she came from a family where the women were known not to bleed when they lost their virginity, and another where a woman said it was because she'd been through years of famine, so the stresses of it would have changed the way her body behaved; and in all those cases, the rabbi presiding over the trial believed the women and decided the cases in their favour.
"But in any case, the Old Testament Law was never intended to be the ideal solution, I don't think, considering that the New Testament says Christians are no longer under the Law, and it implies that we should be good people because we ourselves are convinced it's a good idea. It also says that Jesus said there was a command in the Law that was given just because the Israelites were hard to teach because of their hardness of heart, not because it was really God's will. He said that about the law that said men could divorce their wives, saying God's ideal was that couples would never divorce. So it's possible he would have said that other laws were given that weren't the ideal too, but just the best way of controlling the people at the time. After all, Jesus did do things that suggested that the laws should no longer be considered a black-and-white thing, like when he saved a woman who the Pharisees would like to have stoned to death for committing adultery, like the Old Testament commanded people should be.
"They brought her to him and asked him if he thought she should be stoned to death, trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, which they thought they'd be able to do because the Romans were occupying the country at the time, and had forbidden the Jews to use the penalties for crime in their own Old Testament Law, so if Jesus had said yes, they could have told the Roman authorities he was disputing Roman laws; but if he'd said no, they could have caused a scandal about how he was contradicting the Jewish Law he was supposed to believe in. But he evaded the trap by saying, 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone'. That made them all think and realise they'd committed sins too, and they just walked away. And then he told the woman he didn't condemn her either, but that she shouldn't commit the sin again.
"He could have evaded the trap by saying to the Pharisees, 'Well of course God's Law commands that you stone her to death, but you'd better not, since the Romans might punish you for it if they found out', which would have got him off the hook; but maybe he was taking the woman's individual circumstances into account; maybe she was a prostitute who'd had to adopt that lifestyle to get money to prevent her family starving or something. Or maybe she was in an abusive marriage, and was attracted to someone else who was offering her some comfort or something. Who knows! But it shows that Jesus didn't think of the Old Testament Law as a hard-and-fast set of rules that needed to be obeyed no matter what. And since the Bible says Jesus is part of God, I presume the way he thinks must be the way God thinks."
Deborah said, "Maybe. But it still sounds as if God's got a misogynist attitude to women in general. I mean, I saw an Old Testament law quoted on an Internet forum, about how God commanded the ancient Israelites to go through this weird ritual if a husband suspected his wife of being unfaithful to him, where he had to take her to a priest, and the priest would give her water with dust in it to drink, and tell her it had a curse on it that would make her infertile if she really had been unfaithful, but wouldn't harm her if she hadn't been. That sounds like the kind of thing a witchdoctor might do, the kind of person you'd probably say God disapproved of and who was preying on people's superstitions."
Judith replied, "I know that passage. Yes, it does sound gross; but as strange as it might seem, it might well have actually protected a lot of women from violence, since I think some jealous husbands in that part of the world have a long history of inflicting so-called 'honour' killings on wives they think have been unfaithful, and on other women who they think have violated their honour code in some way; so commanding them to perform that ritual might have served as a substitute, and prevented a lot of harm."
Deborah said, "Oh OK, that makes sense."
One of the girls said, "Blimey Deborah, you must have a strong stomach, looking into all this gory stuff for ages, and then being happy to discuss it for hours!
"Actually, that reminds me: I used to post on this Internet forum, till it disappointingly closed down. There were some militant atheists there, who felt pretty strongly that Christianity was a bad thing. One of them started a thread that said there's a difference between 'strong' atheists and 'weak' atheists. In his opinion, 'strong' atheists are atheists who feel they can declare with certainty that there's no god. But he said 'weak' atheists are open to the possibility that there's something supernatural out there, and they'd happily believe in it if they became more convinced of it. He seemed to think their kind of atheism was a sell-out. I thought his definition of 'weak' atheists was more like the definition of agnostics, - although some agnostics would say they 'don't know if there's a God and don't care'.
"But anyway, I'd been insulted quite a bit by militant atheists on that forum, who criticised me for things like not speaking out against rabid 'Christian' extremists in America, who they told me had said atheists shouldn't be in government because they couldn't be trusted to do moral things, and that kind of thing, even though I'd barely heard of them, and I'd told them they couldn't expect me to have known about them because I don't live in America; so I was in the mood to just have a bit of fun, not taking what they said all that seriously, - although this particular atheist hadn't said anything bad about me.
"Maybe I shouldn't have done it; but something about what he said struck me as amusing, and I decided to have a bit of a laugh and mess around. I don't suppose he appreciated it; but for some reason, I didn't think of his feelings at the time. Maybe it's time I was dragged to Catholic Confession to confess that; or maybe I just need to be a bit more sensitive in future.
"But I said to him, 'You sound as if you're describing agnostics with your definition of "weak" atheists. I thought "weak" atheists were just atheists who say they "lack a belief in God", rather than feeling as if they can boldly proclaim that there isn't one, like "strong" atheists do. But if you really do think any atheists who think there just might be a God instead of being willing to boldly proclaim that they don't believe in one are weak, maybe they really ought to be called sissy atheists. Maybe the reason some atheistic men prefer to designate themselves as agnostics rather than weak atheists is because the term weak atheist just makes them sound sissy!'
"I joked, 'I don't know why some men have such an objection to being called sissy or weak, actually. But maybe we could try to persuade weak atheist men to own up to being weak atheists, or even sissies. We could start a trend of calling them sissy atheists instead of agnostics, since it seems that's what they really are; and when it becomes common parlance, you might be able to persuade or heavily bribe some macho men you know to go around wearing badges saying, "I'm proud to be a sissy atheist"; and then if they do it for long enough, other weak atheists might think of them as role models, thinking that if such macho men are admitting to it, it must be allright; so they might dare to come out of the closet and admit to being sissy atheists as well. Far more healthy to be open and honest about it!'
"A man there said he was open to the possibility that there was a god, although he was an atheist; and I said, 'Are you happy to own up to being a sissy atheist then? Come on, someone's got to set the trend.'
"Another atheist said he didn't like the idea of wearing any kind of badge. He said that badges were symbols, and that as a comedian said, "symbols are for the symbol-minded'.
"I said, 'OK. But would you be willing to just tell people you're a sissy atheist then? Are you a sissy weedy atheist anyway, or are you one of those macho Hard Atheists, who probably go weight-lifting at the gym every day and have no hesitation in proclaiming that there is no God?'
"Then I had a thought, and said, 'Actually, I wonder how sissy that sissy atheists who Do admit to being sissy can really be, because it must take a bit of strength and bravery to own up to being sissy. Perhaps once they have, they ought to be reclassified as strong atheists instead really, along with the macho iron-pumping Atheists. But then, that might be confusing, since they still wouldn't be boldly proclaiming that there is no God.'
"Another atheist on the board joined in the conversation, and I asked him, 'Which of the categories of Atheists do you fall into? Are you a weak mushy atheist, or a Strong, iron bar-snapping, pulling-a-train-along-with-just-your-teeth, carrying-heavy-weights-while-jogging-for-miles-just-for-fun Atheist?'
"He said he couldn't be absolutely sure there's no God. So I said, 'That's a shame. How can you be a strong, iron-bar-snapping Atheist if you lack the certainty to snap iron bars decisively while you boldly proclaim the no God doctrine? If you don't do that, you must be classified as a weak, squishy atheist, who wouldn't even attempt to bend a spoon. I suppose if you do bend spoons, you could be classified somewhere in between. Either that, or you squish my entire theory into dust by proving that weak atheists can actually be strong. Do you bend spoons?'
"One of the atheists said declaring yourself to be a weak atheist seemed to be a bit of a risk; and I said, 'Yep; you've got God on one side, and the steel-crunching, stone-munching hard Atheists on the other!'
"Then the man who started the thread in the first place said atheism's better than religion, because the definition of faith is, 'Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.'
"I'd read before that that was the definition of faith that was given in a book a man wrote about a hundred years ago that he called 'The Devil's Dictionary', where he gave humorous cynical definitions of all kinds of words. So I said, 'You Bad steel-crunching Atheist, using the definition of faith found in "The Devil's Dictionary"! Are you implying that steel-crunching, lifting-sacks-of-potatoes-with-the-toes Strong Atheists like you actually believe in the devil, although you don't believe in God? And that's why you use his dictionary? So why do you believe in the devil but not God?'
"Another atheist on the board wanted me to clarify a phrase I'd used to one of the others, and said, 'By "no God doctrine", do you mean the opinion that there is insufficient evidence to reasonably justify a belief in a supernatural creator of the universe?'
"I said, 'No, that's not it! That would be the kind of opinion a mere aluminium can-crushing atheist might hold to! The No God doctrine is a dogmatic position, held by strong and ultra-strong Atheists, who carry houses on their backs just for fun, and think it's a good harmless game to go looking for crocodiles to wrestle, and who can be absolutely Sure that no God exists, instead of just thinking there isn't enough evidence of him to believe in him.'
"The atheist I said that to said something that sounded like a quote from the New Testament about faith, saying, 'OK, if you're not happy with the definition of faith in the Devil's Dictionary, how about this one: "The assurance of things hoped-for, the evidence of things not seen"?
"I said, 'The "evidence" of things not seen? Now you're contradicting the Devil's Dictionary definition, that says faith requires absolutely no evidence of any sort. Doesn't it bother you to contradict the devil? Perhaps only strong and ultra-strong alligator-wrestling Atheists dare believe in the devil, so You don't, so you think you'll be allright contradicting him. Actually, the biblical definition of faith apparently had to do with loyalty and trust, and wasn't like that devil's definition.'
"The atheist I said that to said, 'You may be right about the devil; he's just another god I don't believe in, as far as I'm concerned.'
"I joked, 'I knew it! Because you're a Weak atheist, you don't believe in him, because that would scare you too much. It takes a Strong, boulder-hurling Atheist to be brave enough to dare to believe in the devil!'
"One of the atheists I'd called a weak atheist before said, 'The devil's in my empty glass of brandy.'
"I joked, 'Now you're confusing me! You're supposed to be a sissy atheist who's too scared to believe in the devil, not one of those Strong Atheists who can uproot a tree in seconds merely by putting their arms around it and just giving one great wrench, who are so brave they're happy to believe in the devil!'
"Someone else said something a bit philosophical about not knowing if God exists in the thread, and the man who started it said to him, 'Why not become a Darwinist? At minimum a weak Atheist?'
"I joked, 'No! Surely not a mere Coca-Cola can-crushing weak atheist! If he's going to be an atheist at all, he really ought to be a Strong, macho, nuclear fuel-swilling, alligator-wrestling, concrete-crunching, holly bush-punching, porcupine-hugging, old oak tree-hurling, smallpox-snorting, ocean-swimming, Hard Atheist! After all, isn't there some shame in being a 'weak' atheist?'
"So after all that, I'm wondering: Deborah, are you a weak atheist, or a strong, hard, iron-pumping, eating-concrete-for-breakfast, pulling-a-car-along-with-just-the-teeth, macho Atheist?"
Deborah grinned and joked, "Oh, I'm one of those tree-hurling, alligator-wrestling atheists. Actually, I've made a pond in the room in my student hall near my bed, and I keep an alligator in there; and every morning before breakfast, I wrestle it just to keep my strength up. You can come and have a go if you like. Actually, anyone who considers themselves to be a strong Christian should presumably want to wrestle alligators just as much as me and other strong atheists do. So how about it? Judith, would you like to come and have a go?"
Judith chuckled and said, "I'm not sure I'm quite that strong!"
Just then, the girls heard a gust of wind outside. It began to sound as if the wind was getting pretty powerful. It seemed that that turned the mood a bit bleaker, because Deborah turned the mood serious again, saying, "Seriously though, Christians can mock atheists if they like; but I think there's good justification for atheists to criticise a lot of the Bible, especially Old Testament laws! Some of them really do sound unfair!"
Judith said, "You seem to like to talk a lot about those. And I agree that a lot of them sound harsh. But remember what I said a couple of weeks ago about a lot of the Old Testament laws only being relevant for the people of Israel at the time, and other bits not meant to be obeyed literally by Christians today, but they can teach principles that it's good to live by. Of course, I know that doesn't mean it made it any better for the people who lived in those days. But all those laws went out a couple of thousand years ago. And they haven't brought back Old Testament penalties for disobedience to the Laws of Moses even in Israel today, I don't think."
Deborah said, "Well that's one thing, at least. But the New Testament doesn't call for the abolition of all the nasty things in the Old Testament Law, does it. I mean, I know you said Christians would have been under the laws of their own lands instead of under Old Testament Law, because they would at first have just been minorities living in their own countries instead of being under a theocratic government like the ancient people of Israel were. But there were still things they were allowed to do that really should have been forbidden, like keeping slaves!
"I heard that the Bible actually condones slavery, even the New Testament! If it really is a 'good book', why doesn't it speak out against it? I heard that in the New Testament, slaves are just told to work hard, to be an example to their masters of what a good Christian's like, in the hope that it'll mean they find Christianity attractive, even with harsh masters! And in the Old Testament, there might be some laws commanding slave owners to be humane or something, but surely slavery should have been forbidden altogether, if God really is a good God!
"Actually, I seem to remember hearing about a horrible Old Testament passage that says a slave owner should be punished if they beat a slave badly enough so they die, but if they recover after a day or two, they don't have to be punished, since the slave's their property! How could you possibly justify that? If a boss assaulted a worker nowadays, even if they didn't get seriously injured, and you heard about it, I bet you'd want them punished as much as any of us would; and you'd think anyone who didn't want them punished was a sicko, just the same as I would! But somehow you have different standards for God! Why do you accept a command you believe God gave, without it affecting your opinion of God, when you'd probably think it was evil if a government leader gave it? And why didn't God forbid owners to beat slaves, or better still, forbid slavery altogether?"
One of the girls smiled and said, "You know, there's a lyric in a song I like that goes, 'You ask for so much, and give so little'. Somehow I can't help applying the last bit of it to the alcohol I've just drunk. This conversation's beginning to sound so depressing, the drink somehow doesn't seem to be quite good enough to help me tolerate it; I can't help wanting more!"
Judith said, "Don't worry. I know that law sounds horrible. And of course you're right that I'd want bosses punished for assaulting workers, Deborah. I'll talk about the beating thing in a minute. But as for why slavery wasn't forbidden altogether, I've read that there was a lot of variation in the conditions of slaves in those days, and a lot of people were called slaves who wouldn't be thought of as slaves today. They might have been technically owned by others, and would have had to work for them, but in the Roman Empire, apparently some of them even did jobs that would be considered upper middle class jobs today, such as managing land, property and businesses. Some were slaves in the technical sense, and yet even made a lot of money working in good jobs, entrusted to do them by their masters, rather than being directly supervised.
"Some even owned slaves themselves, who themselves owned slaves, it seems. A lot of slavery wasn't like that, but was pretty barbaric; but some wasn't so bad.
"And it was similar in Old Testament times; the word 'slave' was both used to describe literal slaves, and also people who'd be more accurately described as semi-free, or servants of some description.
"Apparently the word 'slaves' could be used to describe a king's subjects, even when they were pretty much free in reality; and a subordinate would often sign off as, 'your slave' when they wrote a letter to a superior.
"That doesn't mean a lot of slavery wasn't bad; a lot of slaves still did work in miserable conditions.
"But as for the word 'property', it can't have been used in the literal sense, or there wouldn't have been a punishment for killing slaves; after all, no one would get punished if they broke their computer in a fit of temper or something.
"And slaves had some legal rights in some places, which property wouldn't have. And there's a passage in the Old Testament that says that a fellow Israelite who sold themselves as a slave would have to be released in the seventh year, and be sent away with a generous supply of food and wine and animals from the master's flock, unless they specifically wanted to stay with them. That's pretty humane; and you wouldn't do that to property, of course. The word translated as property probably means something more like asset, as in a source of money-making.
"A lot of slavery in Old Testament times, and even into medieval times, was even entered into voluntarily, I think, with people who'd fallen on hard times, like small farmers whose crops failed because of bad weather, offering to work for rich people for a while in return for board and lodging, to prevent themselves from starving, since there was no government support. Or they'd sell family members to work as slaves in return for the person they were sold to paying off family debts for them, or in return for food supplies. That obviously wasn't a good thing; but in some cases the alternative could have been that the family couldn't make enough money to live on. I think that kind of thing still goes on today in some parts of the world, like in some African countries. I think in ancient Israel, it was at least meant to be done with the family member's consent. Another thing that often happened was that someone in debt would sell themselves as a slave to someone in return for them paying their debts.
"So it was bad that it happened; but the alternative could well have often been worse. That's why slavery wouldn't have been forbidden, - because some people were selling themselves as slaves to stop themselves starving. A slave would at least probably have had the security of continual food and shelter, which a lot of very poor people wouldn't have had all the time in those days.
"Slavery should ideally have been a last resort in Old Testament Israel though, since there are laws in the Law of Moses that commanded people to help their relatives and people around them who were poor, giving them food and clothing and other things they needed. And it said debts had to be cancelled every seven years, and that people shouldn't lend money at interest to fellow Israelites who'd become too poor to support themselves in their home communities, and that they shouldn't even sell them food at a profit.
"And a verse commands that if a fellow Israelite became so poor they had to sell themselves to someone as a slave, they shouldn't be thought of as a slave, but should be treated like a hired worker, which might have meant they'd be paid a wage, although it would probably have normally been a low one. And it was forbidden to sell slaves. It said that anyone who kidnapped someone to sell them as a slave or for some other purpose was to be executed.
"And there's a passage about how if some people became too poor to support themselves and had to sell themselves as slaves to foreigners living in the community, a relative who came into some money would be entitled to buy their freedom. Or they could buy their own freedom if they made enough money. Maybe some slaves were paid like servants, but were just under contract to work for a certain number of years, and they couldn't get out of it unless they could pay to.
"And every fifty years, there was to be a year when all slaves were released.
"As for the verse you mentioned about beating slaves, I agree it sounds unfair that a slave owner wouldn't be punished much for flogging a slave so badly they were too badly injured to get back to work for a little while. But at least it doesn't condone doing that.
"And just before the verse about beating slaves, it says that if two men quarrelled and one hit the other with a stone or his fist and the victim was injured and had to be confined to bed for a while, but then he could get up and go outside, even if he had to use a crutch to walk, the man who hit him didn't need to be punished, but had to compensate him for lost wages and the price of his recovery. So the law about beating slaves was pretty much the same as the law about a free man who got injured by another one, since a master who beat a slave so badly they couldn't work for a while would have to pay the cost of his recovery if he wanted him to work for him again, and he would lose money by being deprived of the slave's labour for the amount of time they couldn't work well. So beating a slave badly would cost them. That might have put at least some masters off doing it.
"I'm not saying that made the law OK. I don't like it myself. But it doesn't mean slave masters were free to injure their slaves as much as they wanted to as long as they didn't kill them. A few verses on from the one that says slave owners only needed to be punished if a slave they'd beaten died, it does say that if a master knocked out the tooth or blinded an eye of a slave, he had to let them go free in compensation for it. So that would at least have been an incentive for them not to get too carried away! And that and other verses made the laws a fair bit more humane than the laws about slaves in surrounding countries, I think."
Deborah said, "That still doesn't sound fair though, since doesn't the Law of Moses command that the punishment for a person who knocked out someone's tooth was to have a tooth of their own knocked out, and the punishment for blinding the eye of someone was to have one of their own eyes blinded, and so on? It sounds as if slave masters were punished less harshly for injuring slaves than for injuring other people, if the punishment for them was different."
Judith said, "I don't know. Maybe slave masters would have to be injured as well as having to let slaves they injured like that go.
"But there's also a verse in Deuteronomy that says that if a slave ran away, they shouldn't be taken back to their masters, but they should be allowed to live in the community they've settled in without being oppressed. So any mistreated slave would be permitted by law to escape. And any master would know that if he mistreated a slave so badly it made them want to run away, he couldn't legally get them back.
"And a couple of verses command that Israelite slaves shouldn't be treated ruthlessly. It doesn't specifically say that foreign slaves shouldn't be, but there are lots of verses that say foreigners shouldn't be oppressed or mistreated, and one or more that say they should be treated just like fellow Israelites, and that Israelites should regard them as highly as they'd regard themselves. So that would imply that the same rules should have applied to them as they did to Israelites.
"And the Old Testament does at least say slaves were to be given a day off every week on the Sabbath, along with everyone else, and also that they should be allowed to go free after six years.
"But it seems to me that the laws had something to do with making concessions to people who were operating at a low stage of morality who were hard to teach again. I think corporal punishment was pretty normal in those days, with parents often using it to discipline children, masters using it to control unruly slaves, and so on. I'm glad society's moved on from there, at least in the Western world!
"And there's a verse in the New Testament that was written to Christians, that seems to make it clear that slaves should have been treated with as much respect and humanity as anyone else. It says, 'There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female. For you are all Christians - you are one in Christ Jesus.' So it seems it was saying that everyone should have been thought of as fellow human beings in the Christian community.
"And it does seem from some of the things he said that Paul, who wrote that, was under the impression that the world would end and Jesus would come back soon; so he might not have expected slavery to last much longer anyway.
"He did say that slaves who had the opportunity to gain their freedom should take it, and that slave owners should treat their slaves fairly and stop making threats. And one book in the New Testament is a letter he wrote to the owner of a slave who'd run away and spent time helping him. He said he was sending him back, but that his master should treat him like a brother in Christ, not as a slave.
"And there are lots of verses in the New Testament about how Christians should be kind and tender-hearted and merciful, and that they shouldn't have fits of temper and so on. And those verses would apply to Christian slave owners just as much as they'd apply to any other Christian."
Deborah said, "OK, I accept most of what you say. But I can't help but wonder: Would you defend anything the Bible says God did or commanded, just because it says it was God who did it or commanded it? I mean, you wouldn't do that if it was just a human who commanded some of the horrible things you think God commanded, would you. Or maybe you would if you loved them, so you had an interest in defending them.
"If you thought God was telling you to do something personally that you'd think was unethical if anyone else told you to do it, would you think it must be OK? I know a woman who asked a Christian whether he'd rape someone if he felt sure God was telling him to. At first he said God wouldn't tell him to do a thing like that, because it wasn't in his nature. But she said, 'Yes, but what if you were sure he did want you to do it, say if you thought he was telling you it would work out for the greater good somehow. Would you do it?'
"Eventually he said he would. She was upset by that."
Judith said, "That's creepy! I think if I thought God was telling me to do something horrible, I'd think there must be a glitch in my brain, and it was just making me think that was what God wanted, and that maybe I needed to go and have a lie down or something!
"But besides that, one way we can be sure that a thought that pops into our heads hasn't come from God is if it actually violates one of his commands. So you know, if a man had a strong thought in his mind that made him feel sure God was telling him to rape someone, and he thought there was a way to justify it because he thought that if it came from God, that must mean it would work out for the greater good in the end somehow, even then, he'd be able to tell the thought hadn't come from God because it would violate the Bible commands about how people shouldn't have sex outside marriage, as well as the New Testament commands about how Christians shouldn't be violent, and how they should be gentle.
"There are some Old Testament passages that I believe were meant as illustrations of how important it is not to violate God's commands. You won't like them, because they're a bit gory, like a lot of the Old Testament. But I'll tell you one anyway:
"It's about how a few hundred years after all the laws were given - which are in earlier Old Testament books, - about how the Israelites were not to set up altars to other gods and worship them, and about how they were to break down the altars to other gods in the land they were conquering, and destroy any other things the people who lived there used in the worship of their gods, Israel was split into two kingdoms. The laws had decreed that there would be one place of worship, where everyone who didn't live too far away would have to go once a year to bring or buy gifts of animals and crops they'd grown, and give them to the priests there as sacrifices to God, and they'd worship him there. Eventually, that came to be in Jerusalem.
"But after Israel was split into two kingdoms, one in the north and one in the south, the king of the one in the north for some reason thought that if everyone still went to the one in the south to perform their worship duties, they might all defect to the southern kingdom. So he decided that he needed his own gods, and his own places of worship, so people could go there instead.
"So he had gold images of calves made, and altars built, and told people the calves were their gods, who brought their ancestors out of slavery in Egypt, and they should go and worship those. He set aside a day in the year as a festival where everyone could go and worship the calf gods, which was on the same day people were supposed to go and worship God in Jerusalem. Then the people celebrated the new festival worshipping the calves instead.
"Then one day, when the king was sacrificing gifts to one of the gods he'd made at the festival, a young prophet of God came up to him and said the priests of the other gods would one day be killed, when a new king would arise in the southern kingdom, who would kill them on the altars they used in the worship of pagan gods, and burn their bones on them. He also said the altar they were in front of was going to fall apart, so the king would know God had sent the message.
"The king ordered his men to seize the prophet, pointing at him. But before they could, the arm he was pointing with became paralysed, and the altar fell to bits. The king begged the prophet to pray to God for his arm to be healed. The prophet did, and the king's arm was instantly healed.
"Then the king invited him home for a meal with him, saying he'd reward him for what he'd done. But the prophet refused, saying God had ordered him not to eat or drink a thing in the place, and to go home a different way from the way he'd come.
"He started going home. But the sons of an old prophet who lived there went to their home and told him what had happened, and the old prophet wanted to meet the young one. So he saddled his donkey and caught up with him, and invited him home for a meal with him.
"The young prophet said he couldn't go with him, because God had told him not to eat or drink anything in the area. The old prophet said he was also a prophet, and lied to him, saying God had commanded an angel to go to him and tell him to invite him home and give him some refreshment.
"The young prophet was taken in, and went with him. Maybe he thought God was making an exception because the man was a prophet too, or that he'd changed his mind or something.
"So they went and had dinner. But during the meal, God gave a message to the old prophet, that said the young one was going to die because he'd disobeyed God. The old prophet repeated it to the young one.
"After they'd had the meal, the young one started off home, and a lion came and killed him. It didn't eat him though.
"The old prophet heard about it and was upset, and took his body back to his home and buried it.
"It sounds as if God did an overly-harsh thing there. But I think it was probably meant as an illustration to people that they shouldn't do things the Bible says people shouldn't do, even if they're given a message that says they should."
Deborah said, "Well apart from that story being gross, it sounds as if you're contradicting yourself here, because before, when we were talking about divorce, you said that even though Jesus said people shouldn't divorce except where one partner's been unfaithful to the other, you were pretty sure he wouldn't mind women divorcing abusive husbands. But that could be seen as being in opposition to what Jesus said.
"So what's the real difference between your opinion about that, and, say, someone thinking God's telling them that since a person they'd like to have an affair with seems really miserable in their marriage so it's seriously affecting their quality of life, they can have special permission to have an affair with them, because it'll bring some joy into the person's life, which might make them more cheerful around their kids when they go home, so their kids will benefit, as well as being good for them themselves, because getting closer to them and developing a bond with them by being physically loving to them might mean they get to be their confidante and shoulder to cry on, so the affair will work for the greater good?"
Judith said, "The two cases aren't the same though. Divorcing abusive husbands is about preventing serious harm coming to people. Improving someone's quality of life is obviously a good thing, but someone who's genuinely motivated by wanting to do that should think, 'Isn't there another way of helping them? There's got to be a better way!' After all, the person could end up worse off because of the affair if they got found out. If they thought their marriage was miserable before, they could discover it was capable of getting a whole lot worse!
"And besides that, what Jesus said about divorce wasn't exactly a command, although it was strongly disapproving of divorce. It's no wonder really, since it can cause a lot of hardship and misery and anger, and children can suffer when their parents divorce. But it might be the best thing when they might actually be in danger if the parents stay together.
"But Jesus was responding to a question about whether men could divorce their wives for whatever reason they liked. A lot of men might have liked the idea that they could divorce their wives for minor reasons; so he was stressing that marriage was too important for that. Considering how often the Bible condemns abuse, and implies that God's expressing sympathy towards victims of it, it's hard to imagine Jesus legalistically and heartlessly wanting to make women stay in abusive marriages.
"And it would be strange if he cared so much about healing the people's diseases and deformities, only to want wives to stay in relationships where they were going to be physically or mentally injured, unless they were living in a world where wives and their children would be even worse off after divorce.
"But anyway, as for the question you asked me before about me defending gruesome things just because I believe it was God who ordered them, the thing is that when I first read some of the gory things in the Old Testament, I thought they were horrible, just like you do. I couldn't understand why God, who I've always been taught is loving, would order the things he did. It would be easy for an atheist to just decide the passages were disgusting, and that would be that. But I would have found it hard to just abandon a belief in God, especially since I believe he's helped me in the past.
Judith continued, "I mean, maybe you'll just dismiss what I'm about to say as my own feelings, or the placebo effect, or coincidence, or something like that. But there have been things that have happened to me that did seem to me to be direct evidence of God working for me, such as one time after I'd had an upsetting experience, that I didn't tell anyone about. Some time afterwards, I went to a prayer meeting, and it was on my mind, because something had reminded me of it, so I was feeling a bit upset; and a couple of people offered to pray for me, because I told them I was a bit upset, but I didn't tell them why; and they prayed for a while, and one of them, who I respected a lot, said God had given her a Bible passage for me; and it was on the very same subject as the thing I was feeling upset about! Coincidence? I don't think so.
"And not only that, but I started feeling this sense of deep peace, that lasted for days! I'd never experienced anything like it before! I can't believe it could have been something I could have conjured up in my own mind, because it was so far from anything I'd experienced before that I can't imagine my own mind being able to get the inspiration to give me that feeling.
"It wasn't just because of experiences like that that I didn't want to just dismiss the idea that God existed or could be a good God though. The idea would have gone against my Christian beliefs. So I started looking for answers. And I found ones that make sense to me. So it's not that I want to defend God no matter what, but just that I believe I've discovered answers to some problems people have with the Bible that I think are worth sharing. I don't suppose I've found all the answers. And I myself still find some parts of the Old Testament sickening. But I've at least found some answers that make sense to me."
Deborah said, "Fair enough."
The girls notice that it was getting late, and that a lot of the people at the party were beginning to go home. they decided to go pretty soon too. Judith didn't know if what she'd told Deborah about Christianity would make her any more likely to become a Christian one day; but she hoped it would. Deborah liked the companionship of the other girls, and she liked debating, so she thought the evenings she'd spent with them at the priest's house had been worthwhile.
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