Monday School: God’s Burning Love

Hey, it’s Monday! What better time to return to Monday School?

Even after a 2-week recess it’s STILL “The Rational Corrective To All That Nonsense They Tried To Teach You Yesterday!”

Today’s Lesson: Is It Ever Moral Or Ethical To Set Fire To A Living Human Being In Order To Kill Him Or Her?

Umm, let me think about this for a moment…

I would have to say no, it is not.

In those rare instances when it is necessary to kill someone in order to prevent an even greater tragedy, it seems to me that that killing ought to be done as humanely as possible. Inflicting gratuitous pain and suffering on another living creature insults my sense of empathy. Those people and cultures that have lost or abandoned that sense of empathy and gleefully inflicted pain and suffering on others seem to have become caught in a spiral of violence that ended up hurting almost everyone in the long run in a wide variety of ways. (Consider ancient Rome, or Nazi Germany, or contemporary Iraq.)

Indeed, those people who gleefully inflict agonizing deaths on others strike me as being some of the psychologically sickest people imaginable….

Unfortunately, millions of people in the US and around the world embrace a Bible that exults such people and actions and repeatedly presents them as the epitome of absolute morality.

I was reminded of this last night when I picked up a Bible, opened it at random, and found myself once again reading the first chapter of Second Kings.

That chapter (as you may recall) tells the story of Ahaziah, the 8th king of Israel. According to the Bible, Ahaziah fell and was seriously injured. Instead of turning to Yahweh, he sent messengers to the city of Ekron to ask the gOd of the Philistines, Baalzebub, if he was going to recover. As you might imagine, this did not please Yahweh’s prophet of the moment, Elijah. In fact, when Elijah heard what Ahaziah had done, he intercepted the messengers and sent them back to Ahaziah with the message that he was doomed.

What happened next is recorded in 2 Kings 1:9-10 –

“Then the king sent unto him [Elijah] a captain of fifty with his fifty. And he went up to him: and, behold, he sat on the top of an hill. And he spake unto him, Thou man of God, the king hath said, Come down.

“And Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty, If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.”

Ouch!

Seems more than a bit severe for a group of men who were merely following their king’s orders, doesn’t it? I mean, for all we know, Ahaziah just wanted to talk with Elijah and Elijah did worse than shoot the messenger(s) – he burned them alive!

And the Bible would have us believe that he did it not as some lone psychopath but precisely because he was a man of gOd! Burning men alive was offered as proof not of his evil or insane nature but of his holiness.

And when Ahaziah sent another captain of fifty with his fifty? Elijah did it again!

That makes about one hundred smoldering corpses in the Middle East, ladies and gentlemen – all courtesy of a man of gOd. One can easily imagine a terrorist like Osama bin Laden reading such a tale and smiling with utter approval. It is much more difficult to imagine a sane or humane person doing so – yet this is the sort of book and the sort of prophet that millions of Jews and Christians devoutly embrace and declare the epitome of morality….

As for Ahaziah… He sent a third captain and his fifty to Elijah. And this captain – perhaps scared shitless by the news of what had happened to those two captains who went before him – basically kisses Elijah’s butt and begs for mercy. So an angel of the lOrd himself allegedly tells Elijah to get down off of his hill and go see Ahaziah – which he does. And he tells Ahaziah to his face that he’s doomed – just because Ahaziah apparently valued Baalzebub’s opinion more than he did Yahweh the Psychopath’s for some reason. And lo and behold, Ahaziah allegedly did die exactly as foretold by Elijah – which is just one more case of the Bible confirming what the Bible says and millions of theists interpreting this as something profoundly significant rather than transparently self-serving.

The important thing to keep in mind is this: According to the Bible, Elijah and/or Yahweh burned 100 men and their two captains alive just to make a point. These men weren’t accused of murdering anyone. They weren’t accused of sodomy. All they can be said to be guilty of is following what seems to have been a lawful order issued by a king: “Go get Elijah and bring him to me so that I may better understand the nature of his remarkable message.” The point that “I’m a man of GOD!” having been made twice in one of the most hideous (and I would say absurd) ways imaginable, Elijah agrees to go with a third group of men and clarify his message for Ahaziah. And then Ahaziah dies.

The whole sorry episode could have been avoided had Ahaziah simply died a bit sooner, or had Elijah simply agreed to go with the first group, or if Yahweh had been the obvious gOd to turn to instead of Baalzabub in the first place. Or if Elijah had allowed the messengers to go ask Baalzabub’s opinion and they had discovered for themselves that he was wrong or a false gOd. Instead, we once again find Yahweh acting as petty and jealous as a junior high girl on her first date. And instead of simply going to the person he has a problem with – Ahaziah – and discussing things like a sane, loving, or merciful supreme being might be expected to, he works through a weird prophet and smites 100 or so innocent men (much as Yahweh allegedly caused all of Egypt to suffer because of his quarrel with a Pharaoh)….

This is not absolute morality.

This is immoral, insane, sadistic behavior of the sort that perhaps reaches its Old Testament pinnacle at the end of the very next chapter when Yahweh sends two bears to kill 42 little children just because they made fun of Elijah’s baldness….

Instead of trying to list all of Yahweh’s murderously psychopathic behavior, however, let us today continue to focus just on his penchant for burning people alive.

Sad to say, the atrocious tale told in the first chapter of Second Kings is merely one example in a long list.

Here’s how The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible website summarizes the situation in a special section entitled What The Bible Says About Burning People To Death (which I’ve slightly edited for the sake of clarity):

Some crimes are so heinous that the guilty must be burned to death. (Like when a man has sex with his wife and mother-in-law, the daughter of a priest behaves like a whore, or someone touches the accursed thing.)

—– “If a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you.” — Leviticus 20:14

—– “And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burntwith fire.” — Leviticus 21:9

—– “Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.” — Genesis 38:24

—– “He that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all that he hath. … And Joshua … took Achan … and his sons, and his daughters … And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire.” — Joshua 7:15, 24-25

Sometimes God burns people to death. (Like when they complain too much, burn incense without a license, dabble in astrology, or make God angry or jealous or something. And sometimes God burns people to identify a prophet or to identify himself, and sometimes for no reason at all.)

—– “And when the people complained, it displeased the LORD: and the LORD heard it and his anger was kindled; and the fire of the LORD burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp.” — Numbers 11:1

—– “And there came out a fire from the LORD, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense.” — Numbers 16:35

—– “They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God … For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. … They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.” — Deuteronomy 32:21-24

—– “Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger: the LORD shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them.” — Psalm 21:9

—– “Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame.” — Isaiah 47:13-14

—– “If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.” — 2 Kings 1:10, 12

—– “Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; As the vine tree among the trees of the forest, which I have given to the fire for fuel, so will I give the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And I will set my face against them; they shall go out from one fire, and another fire shall devour them; and ye shall know that I am the LORD. — Ezekiel 15:6-7

—– “Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left.” — Isaiah 24:6

—– “And the people shall be as the burnings of lime: as thorns cut up shall they be burned in the fire.” — Isaiah 33:12

—– “I will cause an alarm of war to be heard in Rabbah of the Ammonites; and it shall be a desolate heap, and her daughters shall be burned with fire.” — Jeremiah 49:2

And God will burn most people forever in hell after they die.

—– “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” — John 15:6

—– “The Lord Jesus … in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God … who shall be punished with everlasting destruction.” — 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9

—– “The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God …he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone … And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever.” — Revelation 14:10-11

—– “The fearful, and unbelieving … shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” — Revelation 21:8

So remember to pray that God will burn your enemies to death.

—– “Let burning coals fall upon them: let them be cast into the fire; into deep pits, that they rise not up again.” — Psalm 140:10

Do Jews and Christians embrace the Bible as holy writ only because they haven’t actually read it?

I hope so.

The alternative possibility that they’ve actually read all these passages and actually believe they reflect the actions of an all-good supreme being worthy of worship seems too horrible to contemplate right now….