The Silence

[David Sky]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nmVmH7t0bo&feature=feedu

TEXT:
"When I open the Bible, I read of an active and vengeful God. I read of a God who brought a storm of fire upon Sodom and Gomorra because their citizens lost his favor. I read of a God who sent ferocious bears to maul dozens of children to death for mocking the hair loss of one of his prophets. I read of a God who once filled the lungs of nearly every person and creature on earth by submerging the entire planet just because some members of one species drifted astray from the apparently personal perfect moral standard he'd set for them. My disbelief in that god's existence anywhere beyond the pages of a book or the boundaries of Christian imagination is not only found in the petty, cruel, and immature nature of above listed actions. It's not just that my expectations for the sole pillar of some allegedly objective morality are so much higher than what the bible describes of the Christian god. My disbelief is fortified by such disappointment of his description in that text, but it is heavily reinforced when my study advances beyond its gilded pages and my reading continues elsewhere.

When I open a history book, I read of Germany from 1933-1945 to learn of six million people robbed of their lives because that God allowed one man and his cruel political party to rise to power and seek extermination of an entire demographic. When I read the memoirs of Holocaust survivors that depict the incineration of infants, the starvation and exploitation of those fit to work, and the inhumane experimentation done on others, I cannot help but contemplate the meekness of a once vengeful God. Could it be the reverent words prayed to him from the millions of dying voices fell on deaf omniscient ears because the lips that spoke them were born into the wrong religion?

Perhaps it was because he saw the Nazi's annihilation of all Jewish people to be acceptable under his perfect moral standards- far more acceptable than mockery of hair loss for one of his chosen people of course. Though it seems any reasonable person would conclude that aggressive God of legend's quietness and unwillingness to react to such heinous actions as he apparently used to is in direct relation to his inexistence.

When I open a web page to learn about the American south in the early 1800's I find that devoutly religious people were treated as property. Human beings that were deprived of education, beaten for discipline, and forced to live lives from start to finish under the subjugation of wealthy men due only to the hue of the skin they were born into, and nothing else. If the Christian god is the one who answered the prayers of those innocent victims he did so in a way that was slower and more peculiar than any of his methods described in the bible. He didn't send angels to sweep the slaves away before raining fire on the plantations, nor did he transform the slave breakers into pillars of salt. He didn't send a great a flood to wash them away, or even a plague that only targeted the guilty. Instead, after generations of praying slaves died without reprieve, he apparently worked through political policies and military processions. Gabriel must have been busy that century, because he sent legions of men from both sides of the conflict and an unreligious president to answer their prayers with war and diplomacy, leaving centuries more of the same conflicts of culture assimilation that we'd expect from the slowly developing society that is mankind itself.

God was becoming awfully good at disguising his works to look like the work of humans by the 19th century.

When I open newspapers and read of countless rape and murder victims across the country, I have to wonder how many last words were cries of help to a mute god- prayers forever unheard and unanswered. Could it be that that every woman and child ever raped and murdered deserved that act enough for it to be considered God's will? If not so, then how could it be done? What reason might there be for such inconsistency in his staunch punishment for evil in biblical times compared to his absolute refusal to metal in human evil during this age of science, journalism, and objective observation?

When I open my mind enough to consider the scope of the Christian God's description, it is clear why I can't believe. The biblical accounts of that God's activity are so monstrous and indignant that I can only describe them as those of an uncivilized human. Just as insulting and unconvincing on his behalf, however, as the cruelty of his allegedly verbose and vengeful actions thousands of years ago, is the inconsistency forged by his modern, unyielding silence."

[emcguffie]

1. Can't read it because the text is too dense.

Could you put in some bigger paragraph breaks there? some blank lines?

Thanks.

[David Sky]

2. Done! You also can simply listen to the writer's own reading of

the entire essay.

There's also this available to all:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Make-the-text-on-your-screen-larger-or-smaller

[trotsky]

3. Liberal, thoughtful Christians find ways to rationalize and set aside those OT stories.

Those accounts are not something they like to associate with their religion, so they become the ancient accounts of a primitive people and their relationship to the world, having nothing at all to do with a god. Just stories.

Yet there are many other stories throughout the bible, those that have a kinder, gentler message, that these same believers embrace and reaffirm as the true and accurate accounts of god's role in humanity's existence. Those are no longer stories but deep, meaningful statements about our relationship with gods.

Pick and choose. Whatever stories you decide are true, determine the kind of Christian you will be. But no one Christian really has the right to say that their choices are the absolute and only correct ones - it's all arbitrary.