Tag Archives: self-defeating

The Story of Samson and Delilah—
Brawn and No Brains

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Samson got a new girlfriend, named Delilah. Samson’s enemies, the Philistines, paid Delilah to figure out Samson’s secret weakness, so they could capture him. So Delilah asked Samson three times how such a strong man could be successfully tied up, and Samson gave her three false answers.

Each time, Delilah tied him up the way he suggested while he was sleeping, and then woke him up by telling him the Philistines had come for him, but Samson easily broke out of his restraints. Delilah kept nagging him every day, saying if he really loved her, he would tell her how to drain his strength and allow his enemies to capture him. So he did.

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Brawn and No Brains →
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The Story of Balaam’s Ass—
God Can't Make Up His Mind

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The Israelites wanted to peacefully pass through the country of the Amorites on the way to Canaan. But the king of the Amorites wouldn’t let them, because God made him stubborn. So to punish the king for what God had made him do, the Israelites murdered all the Amorites, stole all their possessions, and took over their land. When Balak king of Moab found out about this, he was terrified of Israel. So he decided to hire Balaam, a prophet of God, to curse God’s chosen people. Great idea, Balak. /s

Balak sent messengers to Balaam to ask him to come and weaken the Israelites so Moab could defeat them, but God told Balaam not to do that, so the messengers returned to Balak without him. Then Balak sent more messengers to Balaam and offered him a large reward for cursing Israel. For some reason, “God” changed his mind and said Balaam should go with them this time.

So Balaam got on his donkey and started to go with the messengers to see Balak. But when God saw that Balaam was going with them after he had told Balaam he should go with them, God was very angry. So God tried to get Balaam to stop by putting an invisible angel in his way. Balaam’s donkey could see the angel standing in the road with a sword, so the donkey turned away from the road. Balaam beat his donkey to get it to get back on the road.

Then while Balaam was on a narrow path between two walls, the donkey saw the angel again, and it crushed Balaam’s foot against the wall. Balaam beat his donkey again, but there was nowhere the donkey could go, so it lay down, and Balaam kept beating it with his staff.

Then God enabled the donkey to talk, so it could tell him that it had a good reason not to keep walking, and that he had no good reason to beat it. God also enabled Balaam to see the angel. The angel told Balaam that he was being reckless by going down the straight and narrow path to meet Balak, and that if his donkey hadn’t turned away, the angel would have killed Balaam, but spared the donkey.

Balaam said he had sinned by going with Balak’s men when God had told him to go with Balak’s men. He was going to go back home, but the angel that had been sent to stop him from going to meet Balak told him to keep going and meet Balak.

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God Can’t Make Up His Mind →
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The Story of the Ten Plagues—
The Exodus from Egypt

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The king kills countless kids

The Israelites (the descendants of Jacob) were getting so numerous that the new Pharaoh was afraid of them. So he decided to enslave them and have all their baby boys thrown into the Nile River.

Jacob’s great-grandson Amram and his aunt Jochebed had a baby boy, so they put the baby in the Nile… inside a waterproof basket, with their daughter watching over it. Pharaoh’s daughter found the baby in the basket while she was bathing in the Nile. She adopted the baby, named him Moses, and hired his mother to nurse him for her.

After Moses grew up, he was watching his fellow Hebrews working, when he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. So Moses killed the Egyptian. When Pharaoh heard about that, he tried to kill Moses. The other Hebrews weren’t happy with what Moses had done, either. So Moses ran away from Egypt and lived in Midian until that Pharaoh died.

The Israelites were still slaves under the next Pharaoh. So when Moses was 80, God spoke to him from a burning bush and told him to go tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave Egypt. On the way back to Egypt, the all-good God tried to murder Moses for some reason. But Moses’s wife touched his feet with their son’s foreskin, which convinced the never-changing God not to kill him.

Moses and his brother Aaron told Pharaoh that the God of Israel wanted his people to go out into the wilderness for a festival. But Pharaoh didn’t know that god, so he refused to let them do that.

God could have instantly overcome that obstacle in a peaceful way, like by making Pharaoh no longer want to keep his slaves, or by teleporting the people out of Egypt. But God cared more about showing off than about the freedom of his people and the wellbeing of all the innocent people of Egypt. So instead, God decided to cause a lot of unnecessary death and suffering, and to let his people continue to be mistreated in the meantime.

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The Exodus from Egypt →
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The Story of Joseph and his Brothers—
The Interpreter of Dreams

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How God got Joseph into Egypt

Jacob made a fancy robe for his favorite son, Joseph. This made Joseph’s brothers jealous. Then Joseph started having dreams about his family bowing down to him. This made his brothers hate him. So Joseph’s brothers stole his robe and dipped it in goat blood, so their father would think Joseph had been killed by a wild animal. They sold Joseph to some merchants, who took him away to Egypt and sold him as a slave to Potiphar, the captain of the guard.

Inmate interprets increasingly insane imaginings

Potiphar’s wife kept trying to get Joseph to sleep with her, but he refused. Then she accused him of trying to rape her, so Potiphar put him in prison. Two other prisoners, who had been Pharaoh’s cupbearer and baker, got Joseph to interpret their dreams for them. Pharaoh’s cupbearer had dreamed about bearing Pharaoh’s cup, which Joseph said meant he would become Pharaoh’s cupbearer again. And it was so. Pharaoh’s baker had dreamed about birds eating Pharaoh’s bread out of a basket on the baker’s head, which Joseph said meant the baker would be executed. And it was so.

Later, Pharaoh had a dream about seven skinny cows eating seven fat cows, and a dream about seven thin heads of grain eating seven full heads of grain. None of his magicians and wise men could tell him what his dreams meant, so his cupbearer suggested asking Joseph. Joseph said both dreams meant that there would be seven years of abundance, and then seven years of famine. Pharaoh was so impressed by this claim that he put Joseph in charge of all of Egypt, without even bothering to wait and see if Joseph’s prediction was accurate.

Do not worry about tomorrow

During the seven years of abundance, Joseph took away all the grain that was grown in Egypt and stored it up, so the people could starve sooner rather than later. Then during the seven years of famine, he sold grain to everyone who needed it in Egypt and Canaan. Joseph gave the Egyptians food (that he had stolen from them) in exchange for all their money, all their livestock, all their land, and their slave labor. He also made them give a fifth of the food they were able to grow to Pharaoh, so that they could have food.

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The Interpreter of Dreams →
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Why did God leave some nations among Israel?

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According to the Bible, when God brought the people of Israel into what would become the land of Israel, there were other nations already living there, so God had to get them out of the way. He thought those nations were terribly wicked, so he drove them out and destroyed them. Except he didn’t get rid of them completely. He let some nations survive and continue to live in the land among the Israelites. Why did he decide to do that? The Bible gives four reasons, but they can’t all be true…

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Should people give everything to the poor?

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Yes.

Righteous people give without sparing. God rewards those who give to the poor by making sure the givers lack nothing. If you invite guests over for a meal, never invite your friends and relatives; only invite poor and disabled people.1 One of the requirements to gain eternal life is to sell everything you have and give the money to the poor. If you do that, you will be perfect, and God will reward you in heaven. Even if you’re poor yourself, you must work your way out of poverty, just so you’ll have something to give to the poor.

But if you refuse to listen to the pleas of the poor, your own pleas will be ignored and you will be plagued with curses. If you ever keep anything to yourself when poor people want it, the love of God is not in you, and you deserve to lose an arm.

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All about angels and demons

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This is a summary of everything the Bible has to say about angels and demons.

What are angels?

Angels are spirits and flames.

How many are there?

There are at least a hundred million of them. There might even be one for every human.2

Does that number ever change?

Angels never die. That’s why God told a cherub he was mortal. Angels have existed longer than the earth. They don’t get married, which some might take to mean they don’t reproduce. And no, the Bible does not say humans can become angels when they die. It just says we will be like angels.

Where do they live?

Angels live in heaven with God. But they can travel back and forth between heaven and earth. They take the stairs.

What do they eat?

Sometimes angels refuse to eat humans’ food. And sometimes they don’t. Normally they eat manna, the bread of heaven.

What are their powers?

Angels are stronger than humans. That’s why it takes two of them to overcome one man.3 Angels can fly,4 and sometimes they give God a ride.5 They can also stand on water. They have their own language(s) that most humans can’t understand, which is kind of strange considering what their main job is.

What’s their job?

Angels deliver messages from God to humans. They also do other things for God, like imprisoning the devil, taking people to heaven or hell, protecting people, freeing people, disabling people, torturing people, killing people, and destroying the world.

Are they good or evil?

Angels have a good sense of morality, and like to see people repent. But that doesn’t necessarily mean angels behave morally. When angels sin, God sends them straight to hell. That’s why there are going to be evil angels running loose in heaven.

How intelligent are they?

Angels are very wise, and they know a lot. They don’t know everything though, so sometimes they might make mistakes. But God trusts them anyway. A guardian cherub apparently once ruled the city of Tyre as king, and he was very wise, but there have been humans who were wiser.

Are they superior to humans?

Humans are a little “lower” than angels, but Jesus is superior to the angels. But even Jesus was lower than the angels when he was a human. In the future, superhuman Jesus will take orders from angels, and the angels will be judged by humans.

Are they gods?

Not all of them, but at least one angel might be. The Bible doesn’t really make much of a distinction between God and this one angel called “the angel of the Lord“, so maybe they’re one and the same? It does call God an angel a couple of times. Usually angels don’t want to be worshiped, because they are mere servants of God, not gods. But angels don’t always object to people bowing down to them.

What do they look like?

The Bible usually describes angels as looking like men. Very awesome young men who glow brightly and wear shiny white clothes. Though sometimes they wear clouds and fire and rainbows and stuff instead. They can have up to six wings. Angels can pass for humans when they want to.

Do different kinds of angels look different?

Yes, cherubim look very different. They are fiery creatures with up to four faces (mostly the faces of animals) all around their heads so they never have to turn around. They have at least four wings with hands, gleaming calf-feet, and eyes all over their bodies. They also have big, sparkly, eye-covered, intersecting wheels next to them that move along with them.

What about demons? What are they?

Demons are evil spirits; the devil’s angels.

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The Story of Noah’s Ark—
The One Where God Decides to Kill Everybody

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More than 1500 years after the perfect God created his perfect world, he realized that creating humans had been a bad idea, because humans are evil. To correct his mistake, God decided to kill all the humans, and all the animals too, for some reason. But there was one righteous man in the world who God didn’t want to kill, and his name was Noah.

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The One Where God Decides to Kill Everybody →
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