To keep this from being a total cop-out, I read Chapter 4 of the Bible and added a new segment to this failed blog column. Let Chapter 4's write-up be my final words on the Bible, and let the other 1330 chapters be forgotten.
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Chapter 0
My search for religious meaning in life has almost gone backwards.
I remember vividly those many nights I spent on my knees, praying to the God I learned all about in Catholic elementary school. My notion of that great bearded dude up in the heavens was shaped pretty thoroughly by a long line of old lady teachers, and I became a good Catholic. I went to Church every Sunday because Moses' stone-chiseled slab told me to, goddamn it! I obeyed the law of YHWH.
As I got older, I still mostly obeyed the law; I still tried to be a good person. However, "God," as it were, slipped away. I no longer go to Mass (unless my dad wants me to go for his birthday), I no longer consider the Church's laws, I no longer think about that bearded dude on a cloud watching over me. I just try to be a good person.
And yet, I am by nature inquisitive. I also like to know where I stand in life. Thus, the whole "religion" thing has got me feeling confused and lost. Not because I don't know how to act—like I said, I mostly know the clear difference between right and wrong, and how to navigate the big gray area in between. I just don't know what to believe.
This is not a life crisis. I can sleep soundly at night not knowing who, if anyone, is all-powerful and all-knowing, or what the purpose of life is, or what's going to happen to me when I get to that Great Gig in the Sky.
There's just a nagging sense that I still have a lot to discover about myself.
The question, then, is how to go about discovering what the fuck I believe in. I think I've come up with a decent idea to help.
Well, okay, drunken conversations with drunken friends about Dionysus is all fun and games. So too is me tacking on a useless Religion Minor to my already useless college education. I need something more though.
So I'm going to read the Bible.
The whole fucking Bible. All goddamn 1334 chapters, both Old and New Testaments. Everything from Eve eating an apple like a whore to some crazy apocalypse visions from the mind of St. John on hallucinogenics, and every slingshot giant, cut up baby, decaying Lazarus, and hungry whale in between.
I may hate myself by the time Moses and groupies make their 23rd trip around the desert. I may not understand anything Malachi has to say. I may roll my eyes at the blatant discrepancies between Matt, Mark, Luke, and Johnny. I may disgrace my one true God, turn to eisegesis, and claim that the story of the Prodigal Son predicted Roger and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music.
Or, maybe I learn something about religion. Maybe I'll come across a few things I had never thought of before. Maybe I'll discover myself in the process.
1334 chapters. On average, if I go one chapter every three days, this project will take almost eleven years.
That's a lot of discovering.
Glad you can be here for the journey, humble reader.
ειλικρινώς υμέτερος, μετά τιμής
Joe K***
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Chapter 1: God Creates Stuff
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| (above: god creating unicorns on the sixth day) |
So this is how it starts, eh? God was bored on a Friday night and decides to make the whole universe out of nothing. Shit, I'd be bored too if I had lived infinite lifetimes among straight up darkness.
This is not the first time I've read Creation Story: Part I, seeing as it was standard for pretty much every religion class I have ever had in my life—even the 400 level Honors Religion class! So I know the deal, and you probably do too. Every day for a week God creates something, like a big basin of water (the ocean), a big fiery ball to rule the sky (the sun), and a bunch of "sea monsters" (sharks?).
No teacher was ever naive enough to tell me that this scenario actually went down like the ancient Bible writers tell us in the opening of Genesis. First of all, there's no way of proving something that happened a potential 4372847 trillion years ago. Secondly, a lot of this shit flat out defies the laws of the universe as we know them.
For instance, God made a "dome, and it separated the water above the dome from the water below it. God called the dome 'the sky.'" So there's a big dome around the earth, is there? Kinda like The Truman Show? And of course, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong somehow crashed through this dome on the way to the moon? A moon that God claims "governs the night" with its light, a light that we now know is just the sun reflecting off its cheesy surface?
I know, I know, this is all symbolism. I appreciate a good story, and I have appreciated the Creation Story (Part I) since fourth grade. The reason I make fun of it is to indirectly make fun of those who read the Bible literally, word-for-word, as pure fact. It's astonishing that they can believe such nonsense after reading about God building a dome around the Earth.
The creation story is supposed to symbolize how powerful God is. Look at all the grand shit he can do! While I like the Creation Story (Part I) for a good read, I unfortunately don't get much out of it anymore. It's supposed to symbolize God's power, but I only know that because my teachers at Presentation B.V.M. told me so. If God really does snap his fingers and builds a dome around the earth, then I'll be impressed about his might and strength. Until then, I'll keep reading the Bible.
I'm only 1/1334th done my journey through the sacred texts, and I am already being skeptical. Please forgive me, YHWH.
(As a postscript: A revelation! Bible-belt supporters of literal translation MUST support marijuana! "Let the earth bring forth vegetation: every kind of plant that bears seed... God saw how good it was." There you go. God saw marijuana as good. If only this proof could be found in Ch 4:20...)
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Chapter 2: Doesn't That Fruit Look Tasty?
Okay, so in Chapter 2, God creates man... again? I thought he already did that in Chapter 1? Well, no one ever said the Bible was consistent. So he creates man again, and puts him in a garden in the fertile crescent.
God then creates all the animals (again) and let's this guy Adam name all of them. I remember vividly here a cartoon we watched in second grade of Adam walking around literally naming every animal. "I'll call you... fish!"
Then God realizes that these cows, dogs, and pigs don't make suitable partners for Adam. And thus, we may have come across our first bestiality reference.
So he knocks Adam out, steals one of his ribs, and crafts a woman from said rib. God names her "woman" and Adam and Eve go off, frolicking naked in the Garden.
Something about this story has always sat uneasily on me. It's the part about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and how God tells Adam to not go near that fucking tree. I mean, it just seems like God is setting Adam up for failure here. First, God creates the tree in the first place. Then he puts Adam near the tree but tells him not to eat from it. Then he gives it a name like "Tree of Knowledge." Then he creates a woman knowing full well that she will eventually eat from the tree (because he is all-knowing).
I feel like this story is almost synonymous with that story about Jesus being tempted in the desert. God is tempting Adam outright. Unfortunately, Adam is not as strong-willed as Jesus, as we will see in the next chapter or two.
I feel like there's not much else to comment on that you didn't already know from a myriad of religion classes. I guess once I start getting into the stories I don't know, I'll be more inclined to think outside the box.
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Chapter 3: Excuses, Excuses
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| (above: the snake) |
Empathy. That's a word that hasn't come up yet in my readings of the Bible. Yet, here it is, a mere three chapters in. Our protagonists, Adam and Eve, find themselves kicked out of the land they called home, and I honestly felt bad for them.
What happened was, this goddamn slithering beast (a.k.a. motherfucking Satan in snake form) slithers up to wifey Eve and convinces her to break God's only law and eat the fruit from the tree which ye shall not eat from lest ye perish. The snake convinces Eve, Eve convinces Adam, and consequently they both get embarrassed about Adam's chode.
It's not that I feel bad. It was a terrible choice breaking God's ONLY FUCKING LAW by eating from a stupid tree. There were plenty of trees, each as tasty as the next. But they let a snake convince them to eat a tree that was mildly better, thus throwing away their days of blissful naked ignorance.
I don't feel bad, but I do feel empathetic, because I too have been banned from a few places. This semester as a whole has been pretty tough, and one of the big factors contributing to its roughness is my ban from the townhouses.
I deserve it. I ate from the Tree of Knowledge. I broke God's law. I know this. I am sorry.
But damn it, it hurts me to see that "fiery revolving sword" outside the townhouse gates, with RC Holly J. acting as the cherubim. I know I fucked up, but it would be real nice to get into the garden once more.
In this regard, I feel bad for Adam, regardless of how much he fucked up. I'll be back in the garden in January. He, on the other hand, could never go back. He was forced to live in barren land with his wife only to watch his sons kill each other and all his descendants be washed away in a flood.
Don't fuck with God, Adam.
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| This section was written in 2020, not 2009. |
Always a good sign when the very first line of a chapter describes your two main characters boning. Adam and Eve, embarrassed by their nakedness in the previous chapter, seem to have regained their confidence (must've been difficult for Adam to stay hard, knowing that god is always watching... or maybe not?). At the very top of the family tree, Eve gives birth to Cain and Abel.
This is one of those bible stories that has resonated outside of the church. You know Cain and Abel. The names are constantly used as metaphors for any two brothers who are fighting. Right? Aren't you watching Succession and just waiting for Roman to make some twisted play on words with the phrase "Am I my brother's keeper?"
Here's something that is always lost in the retelling of the Cain-murders-Abel story—god kinda pushed Cain into committing the deed, for seemingly no reason. Alright, so apparently Cain was in charge of the fields, and Abel was in charge of the flocks. As men of god, they each offered up a gift to him, Cain some fruit and Abel some meat.
With literally no explanation from the Bible, god liked Abel's gift and hated Cain's gift. No idea why. Cain was pissed. And then! Then, god had the audacity to ask Cain, "Why are you angry?" As if god, the all-knowing being and shitty ungracious host, didn't already know. God's bullshit made Cain so angry that he killed Abel.
I'm not defending the murder, I'm just saying that there's more to it than Cain being a huge asshole. God was almost as much of an asshole. That's all I'm saying.
Now God is even more pissed though. He curses Cain's farm, saying that he'll never get his soil to yield a single crop again. Cain says he'd rather be dead, and god fucks with him some more, saying that if anyone kills Cain, god will kill Cain's murderer afterward.
This whole murder drama takes up only half the chapter, by the way. The rest of Chapter 4 describes some more generations of Adam and Eve's family tree. After being cursed, Cain immediately fucks his wife (where'd she come from?!), and has a son Enoch. Enoch has Irad, and so on, and so forth, for three more generations. Adam's great-great-great-great-grandson, Lamech, had kids with two different wives (no explanation as to why he got two).
Lamech has four kids total, and they each had a different job. One day, he gathers his four kids and two wives and tells 'em all: Hey, I killed somebody, so now Cain is avenged.
I do not know how this works, the avenging by killing someone else. The bible never says who he killed. There are some guesses (like, maybe it was his son? or a stranger that injured his son?), but nothing concrete.
I think the interpretation is that we are not supposed to agree with Lamech. We're supposed to feel uncomfortable with this character. He killed someone, and he is the bible's first polygamist. Not really a hero!
Don't worry, in a few more generations, Noah will see that his ancestors were wrong to commit to murder and polygamy, and the whole earth will be wiped out in a flood. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
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