Tag Archives: injustice

Bad advice in the Bible

If you’re looking for good advice, I don’t recommend consulting the Bible. Just like the Bible’s rules, the Bible’s advice is unbelievably bad.

When God first created humans, he announced that he was giving them “every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth” to be their food. Even though a lot of them are poisonous.

Solomon (supposedly the wisest person ever) claims that the prudent keep their knowledge to themselves. But that’s obviously not always a good idea. Would Esther have been more prudent to keep her knowledge of Haman’s plans to herself, instead of telling the king so he could stop Haman from getting all the Jews killed?

The rich king Solomon also says you should never say, or even think, anything negative about the king, or about the rich. Because they will find out about your thought crimes, because apparently they have mind-reading birds spying on you.

Solomon claims that it pleases the eyes to see the sun. He fails to mention that looking at the sun actually makes your eyes hurt, and that anything more than a brief glimpse is likely to damage your eyes.

One saying of the “wise” says you shouldn’t build a house until you’re finished with all your outdoor work, getting your fields ready. As if building a house so you have somewhere to live is supposed to be a low-priority luxury or something.

Jesus has some horrible advice about what to do when you’ve sinned. He thinks you should just cut off whichever part of your body “causes you to sin”. He claims you’ll be better off if you gouge out your own eyes and cut off your own hands. Because apparently you can’t go to heaven otherwise. Though apparently when you’re living in heaven, you’ll still be missing whatever body parts you cut off. Anyway, Solomon says sinners don’t know what makes them stumble, so luckily it’s not really possible to follow Jesus’s advice here.

But Jesus has lots more bad advice! He says it doesn’t matter what you put in your mouth, or whether you washed your hands first, because it’s just going to come back out of you. He thinks if you’re generous, that will magically make everything clean for you, so you’ll never need to wash your hands. Jesus also gives needlessly limiting advice to students, telling them that they can never become better than their teachers.

Jesus advises people to be like the good Samaritan, but neglects to mention the fact that seemingly needy strangers are often scammers, and some of them are dangerous violent criminals. Jesus doesn’t think you need to worry about that kind of thing, since people who have killed you can’t harm you any further, so you shouldn’t be afraid of being killed! And anyway, Jesus wants you to hate your life. And your family.

Paul says you should do everything without complaining or arguing, ignoring the fact that complaining and arguing are useful and important things to do. When there’s a problem, people need to identify it and point it out, so it can get solved. When there’s an objective disagreement, people need to discuss it, so that whoever has a false belief can stop having a false belief. Preventing these things from getting done is wrong.

But Paul insists that his followers need to be sheeple, completely agreeing with each other about everything, with no independent thought allowed. He says they all have to insist on going along with his own dumb ideas about slavery and stuff. And he claims that anyone who is so conceited and confused as to teach anything that disagrees with him must “have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels” that can result in nothing but trouble.

More advice from the Bible: You’re no worse if you don’t eat, and no better if you do, so you might as well never eat. Welcome enemy spies and aid them in destroying your country, because you’ll get killed if you don’t. And don’t love anything in the world, because anyone who is a friend of the world is an enemy of God.

Irresponsible advice

When God created humans (and also again after the flood), he instructed them to increase in number, fill the earth, and subdue it. Overpopulate the world until it can no longer support you, so you can defeat the earth!

God told his people to take a year off from working in their fields every seven years, and also every 50 years. He assured them that he would make the land produce enough food in the sixth year to last for three years. Which is necessary because it will take around a year after they start planting again before the food planted in the eighth year will be ready.

But God didn’t think this through quite as well as he thinks he did. He didn’t realize that sometimes the next year after the 7th year will also be the 50th year. Then you’ll need to save up enough food for four years: the sixth (last normal year), seventh (Sabbath rest), eighth (Jubilee rest), and ninth years (while planting). But God will only provide enough to last you three years.

Solomon says it’s pointless to spend a lot of time working for food, because if God loves you, he will make sure you can afford to rest. Then he contradicts himself with an even less reasonable admonition. He says you should never get even a little sleep, or you’ll suddenly become poor. (This message is repeated several times in Proverbs.) Solomon also says the wise store up their food, while fools gulp theirs down. What’s so wise about keeping food lying around till it rots?

According to King Lemuel (whoever that is) and/or his mother, the proper use of beer and wine is to help poor suffering people forget about their situation. And Paul thinks wine is good for sick people. But I’m pretty sure drinking isn’t the best way to deal with your problems. If this book was really written by God, it would have better advice than that.

Jesus expects his followers to forgive any debts that people owe them, which is absurdly simple-minded. This would mean Christians who lend money will never get it back. So Christians are going to have to either lose all their money to the people who notice that Christians never insist on being repaid, or just refuse to ever lend money.

I guess the latter is more likely, since people who actually do what Jesus said won’t have any money to lend. Jesus requires his followers to sell all their possessions and give the money to the poor. Seems like it would be kind of hard to live if you’re not allowed to own anything, though.

Jesus thinks cleaning the inside of a cup somehow makes the outside clean too. And he apparently agrees with Solomon that people should never sleep. Jesus expects you to keep watch all day and night, every day, for the rest of your life, so your master won’t catch you sleeping when he returns. Because your master thinks it’s wrong for you to sleep at night, apparently.

Here’s some of the stupidest advice Jesus gave: Don’t bother doing any of the basic stuff you need to do to stay alive, because living is more important than living! Life is what matters, so don’t bother looking for food to preserve your life. Your body is what matters, so don’t bother looking for clothes to preserve your body.

Live like a dumb animal! Rely on whatever natural beauty you might have to somehow replace the protective function of clothing. Also, never plan ahead. Don’t save up money for the times when you’ll really need it. Just spend it all today.1

Paul thinks you should do what is right in the eyes of everyone. So if anyone thinks something is right, I should do it? That doesn’t sound like a very good reason to do things. This would be a dumb idea even if it was possible to please everyone.

Paul mistakenly believed the world was about to end, and he advised his followers to act accordingly. That means acting irresponsibly, living like there’s no tomorrow. For instance, Paul pressured poor people to donate more than they could afford. He expected his followers to look forward to the destruction of the earth, and to try to make it happen faster.

He also taught them that it was wrong to “think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh“. So don’t even think about getting food to eat! And definitely don’t think you can produce food by planting and watering. Don’t you know that only God can make things grow? Follow Paul’s example, and just ignore the fact that your body is wasting away. You were about to get a new one anyway!

When people are afraid, Isaiah’s solution is to tell them not to be. And in Revelation, Jesus sends a message to some Christians telling them they’re about to suffer and maybe die, but also telling them not to be afraid. Why should people not be afraid when these things are about to happen to them? And when Jesus isn’t even promising to protect them or anything?

I guess he just expects them to accept it for no good reason at all; in other words, to have faith. The Bible encourages you to embrace faith, and other irrational and anti-intellectual ways of thinking that are inherently opposed to truth.

Promoting ideas that will cause people to do wrong

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The Story of John the Baptist
Too Many Herods!

John the Baptist, a relative of Jesus, was in the wilderness of Judea, baptizing and insulting people. People thought he was demon-possessed. He made people get in the river, even though it’s possible to be baptized without getting wet at all.

Jesus (now grown up) came to the river where John was baptizing. John thought Jesus should be the one baptizing him, because he thought Jesus was greater than him. But Jesus wasn’t actually any greater than John, so Jesus had John baptize him instead.

Then John was put in prison for claiming that it was against the law for King Herod‘s son Herod to marry his niece Herodias after she divorced his brother Herod Philip. Herod and his wife Herodias both wanted to kill John, but Herod was hesitant to kill someone who was thought of as a prophet.

On Herod’s birthday, Herodias got her sexy daughter to help her convince Herod to have John beheaded immediately. Herod was very distressed at the thought of having to kill the man he wanted to kill. But he did it anyway, because he had promised to give his hot stepdaughter/niece whatever she asked for.

(Herodias’s daughter married Herod’s other brother who was also named Herod Philip. And later, she married the son of one of Herodias’s two brothers who were named Herod. Herodias’s other brother, Herod Agrippa, later persecuted the disciples of Jesus, and then an angel killed him for failing to point out that he wasn’t a god. Herod Agrippa’s son was… Herod Agrippa, who met the “apostle” Paul.)

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Too Many Herods!
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The Story of the Birth of Jesus
The Massacre of the Innocents

Over a hundred years after the time of Esther, Judea (the home of the Jews) was taken over by the Greeks when Alexander the Great arrived. And three hundred years after that, the Roman Empire took it over.

A carpenter named Joseph, who was descended from the kings of Judah, was engaged to a woman named Mary. Then God impregnated her, which nearly caused them to break up. But God insisted that Joseph should marry Mary anyway, so he did. But he didn’t have sex with her until after she gave birth to God’s baby, which they named Jesus.

While Mary was pregnant, Joseph decided to go to Bethlehem to take part in the governor Quirinius’s census of Judea. Even though Joseph didn’t live in Judea, and even though the census wouldn’t happen till several years later. And Jesus was born there.

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The Massacre of the Innocents
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The Story of Queen Esther
A Leisurely-Delivered Urgent Message

An ineffective feminist, a beauty queen, and a genocidal anti-Semite

Xerxes king of Persia (the grandson of Cyrus) held a banquet. He showed off his vast wealth to his nobles and officials and subjects there. He wanted to show off his beautiful wife Vashti too, but she refused to come. The king consulted seven wise men, and they said he should divorce Vashti. That way, all the women in his kingdom wouldn’t think they could get away with disobeying their husbands. So he divorced her.

Now the king needed to find a new wife. So he had lots of beautiful young women from all over the kingdom brought into his harem, so he could try them out. After four years of this, the king found that a girl named Esther was the most attractive. And he made her his new queen.

King Xerxes’ top official was Haman, a descendant of Agag the Amalekite and enemy of the Jews. The king commanded everyone to kneel before Haman, but Esther’s cousin, Mordecai the Jew, refused to do so. This made Haman very angry. So he convinced the king to have all the Jews in the kingdom killed at the end of the year. The king was happy to issue this decree. (He didn’t realize that his wife Esther was Jewish, since she had never told him.)

Esther tries to waste her opportunities

When Mordecai heard about what was happening, he told Esther she should talk to her husband about it. But Esther said no one was allowed to approach the king without being summoned. Anyone who did was usually killed. And the king hadn’t called for her in a month. But Mordecai said if Esther didn’t go to the king, she would be killed anyway, because she was Jewish. So Esther decided to go ask the king for help.

The king was happy to see his beautiful wife, and decided not to kill her for entering his presence. He asked her what she wanted. But instead of telling him, she asked him and Haman to attend a banquet with her. At the banquet, the king asked Esther what she wanted again. But instead of telling him, she asked him and Haman to attend another banquet with her the next day.

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A Leisurely-Delivered Urgent Message
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The Story of Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Daniel
Daniel in the Lions' Den

Fake fortune tellers exposed

After Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon captured Jehoiakim (the third-to-last king of Judah), the four smartest aristocratic young men in Judah were brought to Babylon to be Nebuchadnezzar’s advisers. Their names were Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, and Daniel, but king Nebuchadnezzar renamed them Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Belteshazzar. (Apparently one of those new names wasn’t so catchy.)

Nebuchadnezzar had a troubling dream about a big statue being smashed by a rock, which then became a huge mountain. He decided to see if his magicians could tell him what it meant. To make sure they were really capable of interpreting it, instead of telling them what he had dreamed about, he demanded that they tell him first. The magicians said that was impossible; only a god could do that. Since they couldn’t read his mind, the king decided to have all the wise men in Babylon killed for being frauds.

But the king’s wise adviser Daniel said that wouldn’t be necessary, because his God could help him do what the king demanded. Daniel described the dream and said it was a prediction about the kingdoms that would come after Nebuchadnezzar’s. The king was very impressed, and he promoted Daniel and his friends to high positions.

Daniel obeys the king

After he had a dream about a huge statue, Nebuchadnezzar decided to make a huge statue. He decreed that everyone had to worship the statue or die. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to worship it, so the king had them tied up and thrown into a furnace. Daniel didn’t get thrown into the furnace, so apparently he was willing to worship the king’s idol.

God sent an angel to protect Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and they came out of the furnace unharmed. The king was very impressed, and he promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to high positions.

God continues to communicate badly

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Daniel in the Lions’ Den
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The Story of the Exile of Israel and Judah
The End of the Independent Hebrew Kingdoms

Where the Samaritans came from, according to the Jews

Jotham’s son Ahaz was an evil king of Judah, so God sent the kings of Israel and Aram to fight against him and defeat him after God had promised they wouldn’t defeat him.2 After God predicted Assyria would destroy Judah, Ahaz got the king of Assyria to instead help him attack Israel, by giving him all the gold and silver from the temple of God.

Hoshea, the next king of Israel, was an evil traitor. When the king of Assyria found that out, he took Hoshea prisoner and conquered his country, putting an end to the kingdom of Israel. The people of Israel were exiled to Assyria, becoming the Ten Lost Tribes. The king of Assyria sent foreign pagans to settle in the former land of Israel, becoming Samaritans.

How Hezekiah used the gift of success

Ahaz’s son Hezekiah was the most righteous king Judah ever had. So God made him successful at everything. Hezekiah successfully convinced God to let his people break God’s law by celebrating the Passover in any way they wanted.

He successfully rebelled against the king of Assyria, so God told the king of Assyria to destroy Judah. But righteous Hezekiah kept the king of Assyria from conquering Judah by giving him all the gold and silver from the temple of God (which his father had already given to the king of Assyria). After Hezekiah successfully convinced the king of Assyria not to conquer Judah, the king of Assyria continued to try to conquer Judah, as God had commanded him, until God got him killed.

Hezekiah got sick, and God sent a prophet to tell him that he would never recover. But Hezekiah successfully convinced the never-changing God to change his mind, and so he recovered anyway.

Men from Babylon came to visit Hezekiah, and he showed them all the treasure and stuff he owned. The prophet told Hezekiah that now that the Babylonians knew about all that treasure, they were going to steal it all some day. And they would kidnap and castrate some of Hezekiah’s descendants. Righteous Hezekiah said he didn’t mind that, since he wouldn’t be around when it happened.

Continue reading The Story of the Exile of Israel and Judah
The End of the Independent Hebrew Kingdoms
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The Story of the Good Kings of Judah
No Rest for the Righteous

After Queen Athaliah was murdered, she was replaced by the seven-year-old king Joash. He reigned for 40 years, doing what was right. Joash had two wives, and he wouldn’t worship God or listen to his prophets. God got Joash severely wounded in battle, and then his own officials murdered him.

Joash was succeeded by his son Amaziah, who killed his father’s murderers. He reigned for 29 years, doing what was right. Just like his father, Amaziah wouldn’t worship God or listen to his prophets. So God got the king of Israel to attack Judah, and then Amaziah got murdered, too.

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No Rest for the Righteous
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The Story of Jonah and the Fish
It was This Big!

God told a prophet named Jonah to go to the Assyrian city of Nineveh and announce that it would be destroyed soon. But Jonah knew God well enough to know that he wouldn’t actually do what he said he would do. Jonah didn’t think it would be right to deliver a false prophecy, so he ran away from God and hid on a ship that was going somewhere else.3

But God sent a storm, which nearly wrecked the ship. The sailors found out that Jonah had angered his God and brought a storm on their ship. So Jonah suggested they throw him overboard, to divert God’s wrath away from the ship. But the sailors didn’t want to kill him. They tried to sail back and return him to land, so he could resume his mission.

But God liked Jonah’s idea better, so he made the storm worse and prevented them from getting back to land. So the sailors reluctantly threw Jonah overboard, and the storm stopped. God sent a huge fish, which swallowed Jonah and then threw him up on land three days later.

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It was This Big!
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The Story of the Two Prophets
An Expensive Meal

During the reign of Jeroboam, God sent a prophet to deliver a message to the king. After ignoring the prophecy, the king invited the prophet to his home for a meal. But the prophet refused Jeroboam’s offer, because God had told him not to eat or drink until he got back to his own home.

On the way home, the prophet met an old prophet. The old prophet also invited him to have a meal, and the younger prophet explained again that he had to wait till he got home to eat. But the old prophet lied and told him that God wanted him to eat and drink with him. So the younger prophet went to the old prophet’s house and ate and drank. Then the old prophet declared that the younger prophet had disobeyed God and would be punished. The younger prophet tried to go home, but God sent a lion after him, and it killed him.

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An Expensive Meal
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The Story of Ahab and Micaiah
God Admits to Inspiring False Prophecy

God decided to get King Ahab killed by sending him to war with Aram. He sent a spirit to deceive Ahab’s prophets so they would give him bad advice. Evil Ahab was considering retaking some territory that he had lost to Aram. But his ally, Jehoshaphat the good king of Judah, convinced him to seek advice from God first.

Ahab’s 400 prophets, under the influence of the deceiving spirit from God, told him that he should go fight Aram, and he would be successful. But there was one prophet, Micaiah, who had always prophesied bad things about Ahab, so Ahab hadn’t consulted him this time. But Jehoshaphat said he should.

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God Admits to Inspiring False Prophecy
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