Saturday, March 20

Good evening. It is currently 1:13 AM and I have been working since 7:00 tonight trying to catch up on stuff I'm behind on. All that and I still don't even feel like a made a dent in the massive pile of stuff I need to get done. Tomorrow's pretty much boned as well because of church and other commitments. I suppose I will just have to work tomorrow night as well to finish up...Buh...

Reading for March 20
Numbers 30:1-31:54
Wow. This is a serious war in this chapter. It's not really a war, per-se - more of a genocide. And this is the kind of stuff that really makes me question the God I believe in...

God orders a war against these Midianites - who were descendants of Abraham mind you - because they worshiped a different god. Damn, God's jealousy is that thick and childish that he would have an entire race of people killed for not worshiping him? Anyway, God orders this destruction against this seemingly harmless nation of people. The Israelites carry it out with great efficiency and return to their current camp.


Moses then approaches the army leaders and tells them to also kill all the woman and children as well - except for the virgins, which he told the soldiers to keep for themselves. Wow - real classy, Moses. So they go back and slaughter innocent women and children for no good reason, after slaughtering innocent men a day earlier.

The chapter ends with a disgusting "tally" of their loot, and everything they stole from the Midianites. And all the while, God stood by - no punishment against his people for slaughtering women and children. No anger for raping virgins in this ruthless, horrific display of ignorant self-centeredness. Oh, but didn't he order someone to be killed for accidentally lifting a branch on the Sabbath? Behold our loving and merciful God. I guess we don't need to question why there is evil in the world anymore...God creates it to serve his own selfish ego.

Now, let's pretend for a minute that God doesn't exist. So then, why would this happen? Moses seems to be the instigator in this battle, and since he's the only one who can communicate directly with God, it would be pretty convenient to be able to say, "Oh yeah, God told me to do this. Let's go get us some virgins!" That makes much more logical sense.

The more I read the Old Testament, the less and less I'm taking as factual, historical information - at least with the supernatural stuff. I've questioned many times why God appears so regularly in the Old Testament and hardly at all in the New. It's believed that Moses wrote the first few books of the Bible - so if that's true Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers were all first hand accounts by Moses - but what about Genesis? Events that occurred possibly hundreds of thousands of years before his time. It would be pretty easy to make up a relationship with a holy being and then fill in a back story about how that all worked out...

This has me extremely worked up, as you can probably tell. I sent a "what's the deal" to the Metro Bible Blog - I'll post the answer if they're able to get to it. 

Luke 4:1-30
Well, I was hoping for something here that reaffirmed my faith, but I only got something very confusing. After Jesus spends the forty days in the desert, he returns to his hometown of Nazareth to preach.

This was written about in Matthew as well, but the details are much different. In Matthew the people are amazed by Jesus until they realize that he's one of them, and just pass his off as another local.

Here in Luke, they recognize him as one of them, to which Jesus quickly replies:
"Surely you will quote this proverb to me: 'Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.' "

 ²⁴"I tell you the truth," he continued, "no prophet is accepted in his hometown. ²⁵I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. ²⁶Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. ²⁷And there were many in Israel with leprosy^[f] in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian."

Um...what? Apparently, this angered the crowd and they tried to kill him by throwing him off a cliff? WHAT?!  Then it says Jesus just walked back through the crowd. All casual like. What the heck did I just read?

Psalm 63:1-11
Nothing really interesting in this one.

Proverbs 11:20-21
 ²⁰ The LORD detests men of perverse heart
       but he delights in those whose ways are blameless.
 ²¹ Be sure of this: The wicked will not go unpunished,
       but those who are righteous will go free.

Wow - that's ironic. Because he ordered his people to rape and kill an innocent nation of people. So he hates them too according to verse 20? Wow, he just hates everyone. I guess the misconception of Christianity being a hateful religion isn't a misconception at all. God just hates everyone.

Dear God,

Get bent.

Brandon