on biblical brutality

After having made it through most of the Christian bible’s Old Testament, perusing now Isaiah, I see what many people with whom I’ve spoken say about the beauty and kindness contained within said book’s pages. There are fantastic passages that seem to tell the reader to be merciful and good. I also see, however, how someone reading this ancient text could soon become radicalized and filled with righteous hatred.

Psalms 137:8-9 (Good News Bible, Today’s English Version) for example says: “Babylon, you will be destroyed. Happy is the man who pays you back for what you have done to us - who takes your babies and smashes them against a rock.” The Old Testament abounds with such language, with pleasure gained from the suffering of innocent victims, with pleas to Yahweh that the reader might rejoice when the children’s children’s children of this foe or that enemy are punished for his misdeeds. Taken out of context, of course, such words would horrify any modern, rational, sane-minded individual. 

Why, though, are such hateful and despicable passages still in the text? Why have they not been excised? Why does the Christian bible still contain parts that call for finding joy in the suffering of others, kids and other innocents alike? Anybody who recites the Nicene creed must believe in the Old Testament, including that: “Intelligent people talk sense, but stupid people need to be punished” (Proverbs 10:13). Punished by whom, though, and when? By an armed teenager, today, or by a bloodthirst god thousands of years ago? Keeping such destructive and terrifying language in one’s holy book encourages weak-minded and easily excitable individuals, who seek guidance from Bronze-age belief systems such as the Christian bible, to harm others. The bible has been changed before, for purposes political and power-related. Why not change it again and take out all the hate-mongering and schadenfreude? While it’s not a perfect system, anyone looking for a different and more peaceful path might turn, for example, to Buddhism, a code that contains within itself far fewer calls to abject violence against persons who cannot defend themselves.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

success through failure

Francis Bacon said, “By indignities man comes to dignities.” Stated a different way, it could read thus: man succeeds through failure. Ancient teachings, especially those that originated in Asia, are rife with this enduring truthhood.

From one perspective, the yin-yang symbol exemplifies the notion that in all light is some darkness; that fear is rooted of joy; that the elixir of happiness is best distilled from wells of sadness. Therefore, experiencing loss is as beneficial as the gain that comes after it; without such loss, one struggles to see a clear path forward.

Perhaps one reason why Americans are turning away from their Western, Christian heritage and toward Eastern modes of living is that the former tend to promote the notion of an invisible afterlife free of suffering instead of setting forth teachings and tools useful in the immediate engagement of pain and loss while still alive. Without a temporal body, what loss could we possibly endure? To what dignities would we dare strive without a physical vessel to contain them in? Deep thoughts this Monday morning fill. Aho.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑