My only source of truth used to be the bible. Everything in the world was interpreted through its glass. I now have the freedom to evaluate life and the world using everything I have read, heard, and experienced.
It seems that many people want reality to be perfectly ordered. They want simple solutions. I used to be the same way. I used to try to justify the abhorrent actions of men, claiming that god can do as he pleases. But I have come to understand knowledge, truth, and morality as something that unfolds and builds upon itself. It is not simple, and it does not have one foundation or author who can give us quick and easy answers.
People are complex, as are situations and problems. I have continually encountered Christians who challenge me on the basis of morality. How can I say anything is immoral, or true, without this god? How can I say anything is moral without an absolute foundation for morality?
The problem is presented as if Christians have this absolute authority. They consider this authority their god, as he has revealed himself in the bible. The problem with this argument is that the bible presents an inconsistent and developing picture of morality. Christians need to defend their bible while abandoning their own moral compass. So when asked questions about slavery and rape in the bible, I receive responses like this one:
Actually, I have come to understand, looking at the full context of scripture, that the Israelites were incapable of following god's commands, (unless they were commanded to do something that satisfied their immoral nature, like waging war, stealing vineyards, and raping girls). They were so incapable that countless prophets needed to be sent to call them to repentance. They were so sinful, rebellious, and wicked that they could not be left alone for 40 days at the base of a mountain without falling into hedonistic revelry and fashioning a golden calf, even after witnessing god's supposed miracles in Egypt. So really, I have no reason to believe that men who sack and pillage cities will take good care of little virgin girls. To believe that these girls would be loved and taken care of is to portray this circumstance in an unbelievably optimistic light. It is so optimistic that the bible would have to read like fiction.
But that still isn't the point. We are talking about the slaughter of people, of babies, and the raping of girls. But this is justifiable to certain people. It has to be. In any other context, it is monstrous. Well, at least those women were grafted into the covenant...maybe. We can't be sure. How merciful. And of course, "the taking of the women from the sacked cities," or, better phrased, "the raping of women from the sacked cities," brings god glory.
The worst part of this? It stifles our ability to feel empathy. When confronted with these kinds of stories, which Christians believe actually happened, the response is one of almost complete apathy. The victims in these stories are so far away from us in proximity in time and space that our mind glosses over what is actually happening. We look at a scene where men, women, and babies are being slaughtered and enslaved, a scene where girls are being given to soldiers to be raped, and we say "god is good," "praise god," "to god be the glory."
What sort of god glories in such things??
Here is another response to my questions:
"It would be perfectly just for God to have [children] killed," because, "they were already sinful." "They took wives maybe by force...but they later fell in love with their husbands."
How twisted we have to make our way of thinking, to water this plant that is faith. How quickly we abandon our moral compass to defend what we find abhorrent, to try to make this world view consistent.
And all along, it is men claiming to have the authority of god to say and do such things. It is men who herald this meta-physical entity, a god who exists in the mind. A god both merciful and wrathful, blessing us with prosperity and cursing us with poverty, raising us up and bringing us low. But we can take comfort in knowing he is always there, that there is always a plan.
The god who brings peace and comfort, no matter our circumstances. A god who gives purpose to any and all events. A god of fate.
A god in our imagination.
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