Gospel Doctrine for the Godless

An ex-Mormon take on LDS Sunday School lessons

Category: biblical marriage (page 2 of 2)

OT Lesson 11 (Sex)

15 March 2014 / / 4 Comments

“How Can I Do This Great Wickedness?”

Genesis 34; 37–39

Links to the reading in the SAB: Genesis 34, 37, 38, 39
LDS manual: here

Background and summary

So far in the Old Testament, everyone’s been getting it on with everyone — Abraham and the housemaids, Jacob and the housemaids, Lot and his daughters for cryin’ out loud — and it was all good. But for this lesson, we’re going to see the emergence of a new kind of hero: Joseph, whose claim to fame is that he’s super-righteous, and never bonks anyone. What good is it being an OT hero if you’re not getting any? This Chaste Hero motif will continue with a succession of sickeningly good characters, including Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego (as far as we know), Jesus, and the goodiest two-shoes of all, Nephi. Joseph Smith was unable to continue in the tradition, so apparently it’s not for everyone.

Ch. 34: We start with the first recorded honour-killing in the Bible, and in a reversal of modern trends, it’s the dudes who get killed this time. It’s the story of Shechem, who falls in love with Dinah. It’s kind of touching — the reading says that he ‘spake kindly unto the damsel’, so he must have liked her. But he committed the fatal sin: laying with her. Didn’t he know she was someone else’s property?

Dinah’s an Israelite, so the sons of Jacob demand that for intermarriage to happen, all Shechem’s tribe had to cut off the tip of their dicks. Strangely, they were all cool with that if it meant they could fit in. To the group. However, on the third day “when they were sore” (owie), the Israelites kill all the men of Shechem’s tribe. Now that doesn’t seem very sporting when they can’t fight back.

Jacob’s all, “WTF? Everyone’s going to kill us now!” and the sons are like, “Well, what did you want us to do? He made our sister look like a ho.”

History does not record what Dinah thought of the whole thing, but Jehovah was evidently cool with it. In the Bible as in so many other horror stories, death is an appropriate penalty for having sex. Which raises the question: between intercourse and mass slaughter, which was the more acceptable to the Bible writers? Evidently the latter, which tells us everything we need to know about who we’ve inherited our morality from. Is this why our televisions can show any number of shootings, but not one good consensual shtupping?

Ch. 35: Kind of a downer episode: Rachel (Jacob’s wife) dies. Reuben has sex with his dad’s concubine, Bilhah. Isaac dies at the age of 180. Is that the record for a post-diluvian patriarch?

Ch. 36: Boring genealogies. No wonder the lesson manual skips this chapter.

Ch. 37: We meet Joseph, one of Jacob’s sons, who shows a remarkable knack for using dreams to tell the future. In a rather blatant display of favouritism, Jacob gives him a special coat and makes no secret that he loves Joseph the most. Joseph’s brothers conspire to kill him when he comes to bring supplies, but sell him to Egypt instead, using the old coat-in-the-goat’s-blood trick.

Ch. 38: This chapter’s a bit of a mess. God kills Er. God kills Onan. Judah has sex with his daughter-in-law, who he thinks is a sex worker. Lots of interesting plot threads, but they don’t go anywhere, sort of like House of Cards.

Ch. 39: Meanwhile in Egypt, Joseph is climbing the ladder. He’s the kind of guy who always rises to the top. I like that about him. But his boss’s wife has set her sights on him, and when he refuses her advances (leaving his clothes in the process), she concocts a fraudulent rape story that sees him thrown in the can.

Wild stuff, but as we’ll see, it all really comes down to: Don’t have sex with people you shouldn’t.

Main points from this lesson

God’s standard of sexual morality has in fact changed

We’ve seen a lot of sexy stuff going on so far, with polygamy, concubines, incest — all included in the Bible without any moral censure. What moral lesson does the church draw from this?

From the real manual:

Explain that the moral behavior of society often differs from the moral standards that the Lord has established. While the standards of society can change, the Lord’s standards are constant.

That was so out of left field, I’m actually having trouble processing it.

Ask: Are they saying that the Bible, with its wide variety of sexual behaviours, any of which if practiced today would have you fail a temple recommend, is really intended to support the Victorian model of sexual morality that the church is currently promoting?
Answer: Indeed they are, and they’re hoping no one will notice.

Ask: Is this cluelessness or deceit? Did the manual writers actually do the reading? I’m reduced to sputtering over here.

I’ll try and recover by showing a very useful graphic that illustrates the various meanings of “biblical marriage”. Behold God’s unchanging standard of morality.

Click to embiggen.

So far in the OT we’ve seen everything in the first column. We’ll see more as we go on.

Mormon teachings on sexuality are among its most damaging.

When it comes to sexuality, there’s one reliable theme in the church: sex is bad unless it makes more little Mormons.

This anti-sex theme shows up in the story of Shechem and Dinah: the non-married sex they have is ‘defilement’. Or rather, it defiles her.

I can’t be the only one who had an experience like this: When I went off to the dear old BYU, my father quoted me this story from Marion G. Romney approvingly:

I remember how my father impressed the seriousness of unchastity upon my mind. He and I were standing in the railroad station at Rexburg, Idaho, in the early morning of 12 November 1920. We heard the train whistle. In three minutes I would be on my way to Australia to fill a mission. In that short interval my father said to me, among other things, “My son, you are going a long way from home. Your mother and I, and your brothers and sisters, will be with you constantly in our thoughts and prayers; we shall rejoice with you in your successes, and we shall sorrow with you in your disappointments. When you are released and return, we shall be glad to greet you and welcome you back into the family circle. But remember this, my son: we would rather come to this station and take your body off the train in a casket than to have you come home unclean, having lost your virtue.”

Ask: Which would you rather: your child having perfectly normal sexual experiences common to all humankind, or fucking dead in a box?

Romney’s quote is not a one-off. Check out this quote from Heber J. Grant.

“There is no true Latter-day Saint who would not rather bury a son or a daughter than to have him or her lose his or her chastity – realizing that chastity is of more value than anything else in all the world.”

Wait. That graphic needs something. What could it be?

That’s better.

How could a normal parent even think this? Even though my father was a great man who loved me, he’d been so indoctrinated into the view that sex is “the sin next to murder” he’d lost all sense of proportion on this issue.

Even worse, my church culture gave me the idea that if you had premeditated sex in a way that involved planning and consideration of the consequences involved, that was somehow worse — and harder to repent of — than if you sort of “fell into it”. The only message I ever got was “Don’t do it”, so there wasn’t much chance of me getting the idea of responsibility or accountability. I did, however, get loads of guilt and shame.

It’s not just me. Check out this article about soaring STI rates in Utah. This therapist, Kristin Hudson, sums up the Mormon cultural view most ably.

In a state that doesn’t like to talk about sex, there seems to be a whole lot of it going on without much forethought of protection. Hudson believes that could be due to a choice saying, “If you put on a condom and go to that length, you are admitting you were actively cheating on your spouse or your partner. If you don’t put on the condom, it can be a mistake or lived in a bit of denial.“

This is twisted and inexcusable. It’s easily one of the most damaging doctrines of the church.

Ask: How can we give our children better than we got?

I take a completely different tack than the one my parents did. I teach my sons two principles:

  • Look after your body, and the bodies of others.
    • That means using condoms (freely supplied by me) and contraception to avoid pregnancy and STIs, and avoiding sexual contact if you’re not prepared to accept the consequences should these methods fail.
    • It also means making pleasure a focus of sex. It’s supposed to be enjoyable for everyone involved, so if it’s not, stop or wind it back.
  • Look after your heart and the hearts of others.
    • This means respecting yourself, and being your own sexual advocate. Don’t let someone push you into things you’re not ready for.
    • It also means talking to your partner, and making sure you both want the same thing out of the relationship. A relationship? Casual sex? Somewhere in between? It’s all good, but you both need to be on the same page.

Not being a freak about this issue makes me approachable. I can be a source of information for my sons, and I say more than “Don’t”.

What are your suggestions? Put them in comments.

Additional ideas for teaching

Onan

Onan gets a bad rap. He was in an unenviable position — a Levirate marriage (top of the second column on our marriage chart). In this setup, if a man dies, his brother is obliged to marry the widow. Onan didn’t think that was too great, so he spilled his seed upon the ground instead of inside the late-Onan’s-Brother’s widow, and subsequently became one of an ever-increasing number of God’s murder victims.

While the Onan story doesn’t have much to do with masturbation, his name has become synonymous with it: onanism.

There’s a lot of unnecessary guilt surrounding the practice.

I think they have it wrong. It’s supposed to be “Every time you kill a kitten, God masturbates.”

It’s not surprising that a patriarchal society would fetishise its semen…

…but frankly, I’d be surprised if the supreme creator of the universe cared what happened to a few cells.

This hasn’t stopped LDS leaders from condemning the practice, including this memorable video, “Wounded on the Battlefield”, here explained by Dusty. (Language, adult themes.)

Okay, so Apostle Mark E. Petersen was probably not behind a widely-circulated list of helpful suggestions, including tying one’s hands to the bedpost, or tight pajamas.

What’s of more concern is that Mormon parents allow their children to participate in closed-door meetings, where older men quiz them on their masturbation habits. This is creepy and intrusive.

Ask: What would be the benefit of quizzing adolescents on their private sexual behaviour?
Possible answer: Titillating details.
Other possible answer: Just as pets become easier to handle if they’re repeatedly handled when they’re young, so continual intrusion makes for a more docile membership.

This is all part of how religon tries to make you feel bad for doing something normal. It has the effect of keeping you locked in an orbit of:

  1. Failure to obey impossible arbitrary commandments
  2. Feelings of guilt and shame
  3. Redemption, which can only be dispensed by the org.

Lather, rinse, repeat. It keeps people coming back for more, but it’s not the way to build solid people who can stand on their own two feet. It builds dependent and broken people.

OT Lesson 10 (Eternal families)

8 March 2014 / / 3 Comments

Birthright Blessings; Marriage in the Covenant

Genesis 24–29

Links to the reading in the SAB: Genesis 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29
LDS manual: here

Background

This lesson is about Abraham’s son Isaac, and grandson Jacob. Strangely, Jacob’s story is almost a complete rehash of Abraham’s story, in fine detail.

You can read my great summary, or you can watch this video. (Language, casual misogyny, unpleasant depictions of birth.)

Ch. 25: Isaac has two sons, Esau (hairy guy) and Jacob (smooth guy). Esau is starving, so Jacob convinces him to sell his birthright.

Ch. 26: Isaac goes to Abimalech, king of the Philistines, and tells him that his wife Rebekah is his sister. Abimalech believes him, even though father Abraham told him the exact same lie. Won’t he ever learn?

Ch. 27: When Isaac is old, Jacob manages to trick his father into giving him the blessing intended for his older brother. Jehovah approves because he loves a good prank.

Ch. 29: Laban sells his daughter Rachel to Jacob for seven years of indentured servitude. But Laban pulls the ol’ switcheroo on the wedding night, and it’s the older daughter Leah in the sack instead. If Jacob wants Rachel, he’ll have to work another seven years. Since honesty isn’t really Jacob’s thing, I think he’s going to fit right into this family.

Again as with Abraham, there’s polygamous conflict when Rachel turns out barren. The whole thing turns into a baby-making competition, as housemaids are pulled into the action. Hilarity ensues.

What’s the theme for this lesson? I would have thought ‘honesty in your dealings’ was a good candidate, but no; everyone in this story lies like a rug, and they’re all doing fine. Instead, it’s ‘the importance of marrying people who think like you do’. Which for Jacob is… actually very fitting, yes.

Main points from this lesson

Marriage ‘in the covenant’ is intended to create ‘ideological bubbles’.

From the real lesson manual:

• Both Isaac and Jacob were instructed by their fathers to marry women of their own faith. Esau brought sorrow to his parents by marrying wives who did not believe in the God of Abraham. Why is it important to marry a person of our own faith?

Ask: Good question, manual. Why would the church think it’s important for Mormons to marry each other?

Short answer: When Mormons marry each other, it affords the opportunity to create ideological bubbles.

I remember being in the Mormon Bubble. It was great. It consisted of my family, the people at church, and pretty much everyone I knew. Inside the Bubble, it was soft and gentle. Everyone affirmed the group’s beliefs, told you how wonderful the Church was, and how wonderful your life was — but only if you were Inside the Bubble.

Sometimes ideas would get in from Outside the Bubble, but there were ways to cope with that. We were encouraged to evaluate external information against the principles we’d learned in the Bubble, which were considered the only reliable principles.

Then I went on a mission, and that was a real bubble. After the mission, I went to BYU, and that was an even bigger bubble! BYU exists to get young Latter-day Saints together so they’ll marry each other, and form their own bubbles. Eventually, you settle into a ward and join your bubble into a bigger church bubble. The church hopes that by doing so, you’ll be in that bubble for the rest of your life.

Purveyors of delusion have found it very useful to construct ideological bubbles. Religious communities rely on them. It’s why we see fundamentalist religions out in rural areas. Sometimes a religious leader will even move the entire group to a foreign country where it’s easier to control the information.

Here’s a primer on religious bubbles, but with a special focus on the Mormon Bubble.

Bubbles are fragile. Believing in things that aren’t real puts you in a tenuous position. To believe in a delusion is to construct an alternative to reality.

In order to seem plausible, delusional beliefs must be handled specially, in communities that are trained to treat the beliefs deferentially and uncritically. Those in the community may also take offence as a way of protecting the belief, or refusing to examine it themselves.

Essentially, religions are support groups for reality deniers.

True beliefs do not need bubbles to exist. Truth isn’t harmed by reality, but delusions sure are. And because reality is available to everyone all the time, it’s easy for delusions to get knocked down. Which is why religion hasn’t done well on the Internet, with its free flow of information.

Here’s a Facebook post by a bubble advocate. It’s Kim Clark, the president of BYU-Idaho, and he thinks ideological bubbles are a fine thing. This post is an elaborate justification for living in a bubble, and I think this is highly instructive.

Here’s the text from the post.

I often have heard students talk about the “bubble”… referring to BYU-Idaho, the campus, and maybe even Rexburg. They have in mind the fact that there is a different feeling on this campus than they find in what they call “the real world”, a different Spirit, and that they feel protected here, surrounded by people who share their faith. Let me share with you a couple of thoughts about what I have heard:

1) The nickname “bubble” has a negative connotation and seems to indicate that what is inside of it is not real. As President John Groberg taught us about the temple, the real world — the world that will endure forever when everything in the mortal world is gone — is actually what you feel and experience inside the “bubble” — Zion, the Holy Ghost, the Kingdom of God.

Ask: How does he justify living in a bubble?
Answer: He has flipped the situation, and now believes that the universe we live in is not real, and the Mormon universe is. His acceptance of the alternate reality is complete.

2) You are a big part of what you feel inside the “bubble”. It really is the faith and devotion and goodness of the people who study and work here that makes the difference.

3) You can take it with you — you can make your own powerful, protective, enduring, eternal “bubble” in your own home and you should. You can build your own little Zion, first in your heart and then in your home, and then in your wards and stakes.

Ask: Why would it be useful to the Church to have its members in a bubble of their own creation?
Answer: You don’t have to monitor your members if the members monitor themselves, and the family can be utilised for this purpose.

Ask: When you find someone who is an advocate of ideological bubbles, what are they telling you?
Answer: They know their beliefs can’t compete with reality.

Ask: How can we stay out of ideological bubbles?
Possible answers:

  • By being willing to update and change our minds when new knowledge and evidence comes along.
  • By engaging honestly and openly with sincere and intelligent people who hold different views.

I’ve formed a book club with Christians, atheists, and a few undecideds. We’re working our way through one Christian book and one atheist book. If I’m wrong about my ideas, I know I’ll hear about it from them. So far, a lot of arguments, but nothing conclusive.

The doctrine of eternal families means the LDS Church owns your family

If someone were to ask me what the most evil LDS doctrine was, I wouldn’t hesitate a second in saying, “Eternal families”.

The church pretends to have to power to reunite families after death. That sounds like a great promise, but it didn’t sound so good to Stephen Fry on his trip through Temple Square.

Ask: How does Fry explain the appeal of this doctrine? Who is it especially meant to appeal to, and why?

The idea of “being with” one’s family for eternity falls apart for anyone who thinks about it for five minutes. How exactly is this meant to work? I love my family, and we always have a great time on our extended visits, but after a couple of weeks, we’re all glad to go away again and return to our own ways and routines. Being available for eternity seems grindingly tedious, even for family members who get along. What if there’s conflict? What if there’s a family member who loves you, but whom you detest? It wouldn’t be very heavenly for you if they’re always around, so would there be some way to block them? That might not be very heavenly for them. The whole idea raises so many problems, I can scarcely believe no one seems to mention them.

But there’s a much more sinister side.

Read this quote from the real Gospel Doctrine manual.

President Gordon B. Hinckley told of a family who joined the Church in Australia and then sold all their possessions so they could travel to New Zealand and be sealed as a family. The father of this family said: “We could not afford to come [to the temple]. Our worldly possessions consisted of an old car, our furniture, and our dishes. I said to my family, ‘We cannot afford not to go. If the Lord will give me strength, I can work and earn enough for another car and furniture and dishes, but if I should lose these my loved ones, I would be poor indeed in both life and in eternity’ ”.

Ask: What did this man think would happen if he didn’t engage in farcical temple ceremonies, a prerequisite of which is paying ten percent of his income to the church?
Answer: He thought he would lose his family. Consider this.

Ask: What do we call it when someone threatens you with the loss of your family if you don’t do what they say (including paying them)?
Possible answers: Kidnapping, extortion, holding to ransom.

This doctrine is vile. It is emotional hostage taking. A normal person should be disgusted by it.

This doctrine plays out in ways that are destructive to the working of a healthy married relationship, and to the development of a person.

From the real lesson manual:

• After two people have been married in the temple, what must they do to ensure they have a truly eternal marriage?

What, indeed.

They both have to stay in the church and keep all the church’s rules (again, including paying buckets of money for the rest of their lives). But if one partner stops believing in the Mormon religion — or in other words, recognises they’ve been conned — then they’re the bad one. Supposedly, they’re the one throwing the relationship into disarray, jeopardising their eternal future together, and so forth.

A Mormon friend of mine once confided in me. He’d thought thoughts that couldn’t be unthought, and now he was uncertain that there was a god. I congratulated him, offered support, and suggested some online communities where he could talk to people in the same situation.

Finally, desperate to get his struggle off his chest — out of a very human wish to be known by those we’re closest to — he told his wife about what he was going through. She didn’t take the news well.

Over the next year or so, he was hauled in for meetings with the bishop, chided for his lack of belief, and systematically bullied back into the Church, because that was the cost of his relationship with his family.

The former Mormon in me can empathise with his wife. Here you think you know someone, you have the same goals, and then your partner explains that they don’t share your heretofore shared values. That must throw you into a tailspin.

Or at least, it would, if your relationship were based on the church, and not on each other. It would, if your relationship is predicated on always believing the same things.

I still don’t know what’s going on for my friend; he doesn’t write me anymore. If he’s happy participating in and enriching that — here’s a loaded word, but I promise I’ll only use it when I think it’s deserved — cult, then that’s fine. It’s his life, not mine. But I hope that he and his wife can finally get to a place where he’s accepted and valued as himself, and not just as a role.

How can a couple make it? There are a few ways this can play out.

  • The believing partner might follow the deconverted one out.

These are the happiest stories.

  • The deconverted partner can stay in the church, but under deep cover.

You can participate in church, and keep going to keep the peace. (Hello, reader.)

I don’t blame anyone for taking this course, but it seems to me the least desirable option, and the one most destructive to one’s integrity. Is this the kind of relationship where your views can be respected? Or will your disbelief in nonsense be taken as evidence that you’re in league with Satan? Believers can have a hard time with negotiation and compromise when they see it as giving in to the Evil One.

  • One stays in, one stays out, and they work it out in an atmosphere of respect.

This one is a tough row to hoe. The LDS Church doesn’t make it easy for disbelieving spouses. Because of its emphasis on having a ‘righteous priesthood holder’ at the head of the family, it’s difficult not to feel like damaged goods. There are a thousand unintended insults. “Yeah, they’re a great person even though they’re not a member.”

There’s a photo of me at my son’s baptism, before I was out publicly. There’s my son, dressed in white. There’s a friend my age, also dressed in white. And then there’s me in a dark suit (obviously not doing any baptising that day), trying to smile. I’m sure that suit was the talk of the ward.

Free advice to those who have deconverted

Place the relationship before deconverting your partner.
Both partners have to recognise in themselves the tendency for evangelism.

I happen to think this is less of a problem for ex-Mos. Yes, there are some preachy ex-Mos out there, but I think this tendency is mitigated by a few factors:

  • Latent guilt
  • An aggressive church culture that thinks nothing of treating a non-believing spouse as second-best
  • A recognition that your partner won’t be punished in the eternities for believing the wrong thing.

Resist the tendency to feel like you’re damaged or diminished.
You got the right answer. You are now able be moral in a way you never could be when you were getting your moral choices handed to you — and frankly, that morality was often terribly immoral.

Develop boundaries and differentiation
You don’t have to believe the same things or have the same goals. You married a person, and not a role. Or if you did marry a role, now’s your chance to forge a new deal with your partner as a person. See if you meant it the first time, when you said you’d stick it out. You get a second chance to choose your partner.

Divorce is not the worst thing, and keeping it together may have too high a price.

Live a good moral life as an unbeliever, as you define it.

What’s been your experience, and how is it going? What advice would you give? Please leave a comment; I’d love to hear what you think.

Additional ideas for teaching

The church still teaches against interracial marriage.

Since we’re talking about dubious morality, here’s a quote that appears in the LDS Church’s Aaronic Priesthood Manual, both in print and online.

“We recommend that people marry those who are of the same racial background generally, and of somewhat the same economic and social and educational background (some of those are not an absolute necessity, but preferred), and above all, the same religious background, without question” (“Marriage and Divorce,” in 1976 Devotional Speeches of the Year [Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1977], p. 144).

Is this an organisation that has any business telling anyone who to marry?

No camels.

Camels as a means of transportation abound in the Old Testament. When Abraham sends a servant to look for a bride for his son Isaac, that servant chooses Rebecca. And why? Because of her kindness in offering to water the camels. That’s just one of dozens of camel cameos in the Bible, mostly in the book of Genesis, but scholars have long suspected that those camel caravans are a literary anachronism. And now more evidence from two Israeli archaeologists. Their radio carbon technology dated the earliest known remains of domesticated camels. And yes, they came along after the time of Abraham.

Camels? Oh, well, clearly they meant tapirs.

This is new research, and it may be overturned by more information. But isn’t it nice to know that it’s not just the Book of Mormon that has anachronism issues?

The Bible gets genetics wrong

It also has genetics issues. Laban promises Jacob all the striped and spotted goats, so how does Jacob make as many of them as possible? By having the goats look at striped sticks while mating. Yep, that will do it.

OT Lesson 9 (Killing Isaac)

1 March 2014 / / 4 Comments

“God Will Provide Himself a Lamb”

Abraham 1; Genesis 15–17; 21–22

Links to the reading in the SAB: Abraham 1, Genesis 15, 16, 17, 21, 22
LDS manual: here

Background

We’re back to Abraham, and a big story that everyone remembers: the attempted murder of Isaac. But a lot of other markers of tribal identity are also making their first appearance in this lesson. Let’s get right into it.

Main points from this lesson

There would have been no attempt on young Abraham’s life.

The lesson manual makes a quick stop at the Book of Abraham. They want to draw a parallel between Abraham nearly getting sacrificed by Egyptian priests as a boy, and then being asked to sacrifice his own son in turn. Wow, parallelism. Abraham having flashbacks and moments of self-doubt. It’s a neat literary twist.

The problem is that it couldn’t have happened.

First up, it’s disputable that human sacrifice was ever practiced in ancient Egypt.

Second, if human sacrifice was practiced in ancient Egypt, it would have been at one specific time and place: Abydos in 2950–2775 BCE. This may have been a case of ‘retainer sacrifice’, or killing all the servants so they could serve the king in the underworld.

Ask: Doesn’t the idea of the afterlife have the most delightful implications?

Okay, so when would that have been on our fanciful Old Testament timeline? Not in Abraham’s time, that’s for sure. Abraham would have been 1,000 years too late.

Click the graphic for a big PDF, straight from the LDS website.

It would have been at about the time of Noah’s birth, before the Flood, and way before Noah’s grand-daughter Egyptus would have discovered Egypt.

Abraham: “Wait — you can’t kill me! All the available evidence shows that the Egyptians didn’t practice human sacrifice during this period!”
Priest: “Can it, white-and-delightsome boy! I killed Fred Flintstone for his clothing, and I can kill you!”
Angel: “Cease this anachronistic ceremony!”

This is just one more manifestation of how mixed-up the LDS timeline is. The bodies from Abydos date from the 1st Egyptian dynasty around 2900 BCE, but according to the LDS timeline, Egypt wouldn’t have a pharaoh until the alleged Egyptus put her son on the throne — some time after the Flood, some 500 years later. Funny how the Flood didn’t wipe all the Abydos evidence out.

Polygamy rears its head

Abraham isn’t the first polygamist in the Bible — that would be Lamech in Genesis 4 — but you begin to get an idea of the problems that could arise.

Abraham and Sarah are ‘barren’ — her fault, natch — so Sarah suggests ‘going in unto’ her maid Hagar. Apparently Abraham didn’t find Hagar too horrible, because it doesn’t even take him a verse to think about it.

16:2 And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.

Conflict arises when Hagar conceives, and Sarah forces her to flee into the wilderness.

Here’s a bit from the real manual:

What can the revelation that Abraham and Sarah would have a son teach us about how God fulfills his promises? (God will fulfill his promises, though not necessarily in the way or at the time we might expect.)

LOL. Right, you might need a concubine to help you with that.

The attempted murder of Isaac embodies the worst idea in religion: “Always obey God.”

It’s a parent’s job to protect their children. No decent deity would try and short-circuit that, but Jehovah does, when he commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.

22:2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

And any decent parent would ignore any such request, but Abraham doesn’t.

Ask: Why did God command Isaac to be killed?

Some have speculated that Jehovah and Isaac didn’t get on.

 

Click through for some good analysis.

Others say that God was off his nut.

At one point, I imagined (and mentioned in my Gospel Doctrine class) that God wanted someone to know what it felt like to have to sacrifice his son. Which is crap; God didn’t have to kill his son. An all-powerful god could have created a different way — hey, maybe just forgiving people — but instead chose human sacrifice. What a wacky god, eh?

So now I’m not sure what the rationale is supposed to be, and I’m left with the impression that God really just likes killing children. (The rest of the Old Testament will do little to dispel this, I’m afraid.)

In Tim Minchin’s words, the God of the Bible has a ‘fetish for dead baby blood’.

In considering the Abraham-and-Isaac story for this lesson, it’s taken me a while to come to grips with what it’s about and what it’s meant to teach. And I’ve come to realise that what we’re seeing here is the foundational belief — and the worst belief — of Abrahamic religion: Always obey God.

In the upside-down world of Abrahamic religion, this loyalty test — in which a father is commanded (and willing) to murder his child — is held up to be the ultimate moral act, the thing that proves Abraham’s righteousness.

22:16 And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son:
22:17 That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;
22:18 And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.

In other words, the most moral thing to do in an Abrahamic religion is whatever you think the voices in your head are telling you to do, no matter how immoral that is.

It’s an idea that comes up a few times in the scriptures, so this isn’t a one-off:

Matthew 6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Ask: What’s wrong with obeying a god above all else?

 Possible answers:

  • It short-circuits reason and discourages questioning.
  • It’s an abnegation of the responsibility to think for oneself and make moral decisions.
  • It invokes a trust that hasn’t been earned.
  • It makes immoral actions seem moral. All it takes is for someone to think that God has commanded an immoral action, and poof! it’s magically moral.
  • It brings about a sheep-like mentality that can be readily exploited by leaders.

And speaking of leaders, here’s one who thinks that by ignoring the commandments of a god, non-believers are ignoring morality, and destroying society.

Cheapened civilisation? I think he’s cheapened civilisation by unloading his dogma onto his followers, and taking their 10% for the pleasure. How wrong that those of us who choose to live by the light of reason should get sniped at and hectored by those who make their living from superstition and control.

Oaks is wrong about this, just as he’s wrong about so much else. For me, using human reasoning to supersede divine influence has been the key to understanding, education, and escape from the muck of religion. And why do they rubbish human reasoning, anyway? If logic and reason were on their side, you can bet they’d appeal to it. But they don’t, and that’s enough to tell you where they stand. Human reasoning has brought all the intellectual progress that we have. Oaks is a guy who’s trying to hold all that back.

Obedience to a god above all else is a terrible idea, and it starts here in this chapter of Genesis. The rot of Abrahamic religion starts with its founder. This gets people flown into skyscrapers, gets children killed from lack of medical attention, and sees poor people give their money away to wealthy mall-builders.

Ask: If obedience to a god is the wrong thing to do, what’s the right thing?

The one word answer is: Think.

  • Use your mind and your moral instincts to decide what’s right or wrong.
  • Think about the consequences of your actions, and take responsibility for them.

A good guide for this is Dan Barker’s book for kids: Maybe Right, Maybe Wrong. It focuses on well-thought out principles instead of rules, and the need to decide what’s right in terms of people, not gods.

Click here for a preview on Imgur, or go to all the usual places to buy.

Additional ideas for teaching

What else was in the reading?

God doesn’t care for foreskins, even though he created them

17:10 This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised.
17:11 And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.

Slavery, on the other hand, is okey-dokey

17:13 He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant.

Casting a mother and child out into the desert to die? A-okay!

21:9 And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born unto Abraham, mocking.
21:10 Wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.
21:11 And the thing was very grievous in Abraham’s sight because of his son.
21:12 And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called.
21:13 And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed.
21:14 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread, and a bottle of water, and gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the child and sent her away: and she departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.

Off you go, darlin’. Lotsa luck.

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