Tell Ol' Pharaoh, Let My People Go

I went to my parent's church for its 50th anniversary. My mom's one of three charter members who are still alive.

They drag my nephew to church. My sister couldn't care less I don't think but my mom insists and my sister would probably be miserable with herself if she ever expressed anything but acceptance toward my mom's religious antics.

It was probably a good experience for the kid in some sense. He met some other little guys, although he's still such a spaz I think he has trouble making a lot of friends. He hung around me during the church event as much as he physically could. I'm not great with kids and he's an obnoxious one so I get my fill of him fairly quickly. And it doesn't help that they're filling his head with garbage, either.

I'll explain. He went off to children's church during the service. The pastor talked about several things, one of which was the parting of the Red Sea. After the whole thing ended, the kids are loosed and my nephew comes back to me. He's talking about "pharaoh", and clearly his group talked about that stuff as well.

So, he asks me "did pharaoh die?" And I said yes, everyone did eventually. He said how, I said I don't know, probably old age. (Yes, I know a common idea is that pharaoh drowns with the Egyptian soldiers as the Red Sea closes in on them, but historians have found no actual indication that the Egyptians kept Hebrew slaves in the first place, so the chances that a man died amidst an aquatic miracle seem pretty slim to me. And I'm not sure if the Bible verses explicitly state that he drowns.)

He tells me that pharaoh died (and forget me if I get this a little wrong) when my nephew knocked him in the head. I think he actually called this a "great mission". He also claimed he exploded someone's lucky watermelon and I think that had something to do with Egypt too. He starts telling me how he's always been 6 years old and he was around back then and he's like God and he killed pharaoh.

So, I know I'm a buzzkill, but I have a few problems here, both general and specific.

First off, generally speaking, it's clear a six year old is not getting a lot out of these stories. They may as well have taught him Dr. Seuss. It's just a different flavor of silliness, one at least intentionally designed to make children think and have fun, as he clearly wants to do.

I mean, here's this six year old blaspheming God by claiming that he himself is like God. Does God care? Well, of course he should! That's a capital sin! The only way God doesn't care is if he realizes the kid is too young too understand what he's saying... and if that's the case, there's my point proven!

Also, I dislike a lot of these stories being taught to small children. They're almost all about death in some way or another. God killed Egyptian children and animals simply to prove to them that he was serious. (I happened to write about this.)

Here we have my nephew saying he killed someone. And he thinks it's a good thing. I get it, cops & robbers, Ninja Turtles, etc... kids will talk about killing bad guys once in awhile. But, really. Teach my kids that the settlers killed the Indians, and I'm alright with it. Teach my kids that this is okay and God was pleased, and we have a problem. If the world gets flooded, yay, God took care of a few of the animals! Rainbow time. If Samson kills hundreds of people in a fit of rage, sweet!

The worst part is the "great mission" line. Again I'll mention Jesus Camp, because the scary lady in that actually said that she sees how Muslim kids will kill themselves for Islam and she wants kids that devoted to Christ here. If the kid were a little older, a little dumber and thrown into a bad situation, this kind of thought is the potential for bad things to happen.

I'll bridge all this together somewhat. The pastor was talking to us about how the Hebrews hesitated to go through the Red Sea, but 40 years later, they crossed the Jordan River without complaint.

He was saying how awesome this one verse was, verse 11.

Joshua 14:
10 "Now then, just as the LORD promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the desert. So here I am today, eighty-five years old! 11 I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I'm just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then.

He was ranting about "this guy's the alpha dog" and "I hope I'm like that when I'm 80!"

Now, notice verse 12:

12 Now give me this hill country that the LORD promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the LORD helping me, I will drive them out just as he said."

So, yeah! God freed us from slavery, let's go to places where other people already live, kill them, and take their land. After all, it's all God's land. If he wants to kill them and give it to us, then they are surely forfeit. Sounds a bit like those Indians.

Interestingly, a few minutes later the pastor was talking about the greatest commandment: love the Lord, and love your neighbor as yourself.

So I guess the Israelites kick themselves out of their own homes and kill themselves. That's a hell of a prayer retreat if you ask me.

Oh, wait. Jesus didn't come to deliver the "greatest commandment" until centuries later. These guys were pre-love.

Another thing the pastor was talking about was how they originally had to cross the Red Sea, but it parted first. Then they had to cross the Jordan, but they had to get in BEFORE it would part.

He said God will do things differently each time, and you'd better learn to obey. They were thirsty, and Moses struck a rock, which sprang forth with water. Later, they were thirsty again, but God told him to talk to the rock, not strike it. He struck it again. God was mad. He never does things the same way twice, apparently.

Amazingly, this story matches perfectly with the greatest commandment. The first time, God tells you to go strike your neighbor. The second time, he says to go speak with them. Please keep in mind this is the same God whose perfect moral character is forever unchanging. He literally wants you to go kill everyone who isn't like you in one part of the book, and go preach to and show love to everyone who isn't like you in the other part of the book. I dare you, I dare anyone to justify this to me. Really justify it. If you can't, how can you possibly believe or accept it?

What really struck me about this little point was how he didn't talk about it at all. He applied the fighting spirit to moving forward as a church, growing and reaching the community. It's just so easy to gloss over the idea that what is being described is unjustifiable.

If I were a Christian and I went and killed a godless man and moved into his house, would I deserve to go to jail? I know these folks at the church would never want to see that happen now. But they've trained themselves not to think about it, not to worry about barbarism and evil as long a it's in the context of Bible stories.

And I know where it all started. It started with little kids, being numbed to atrocity via watered down stories they could not understand.

And where do I come in? Well, I stay out of it. If my nephew asked me why I don't go to church, or if I believe in God, I would probably answer honestly, but I'd try to skim the topic a bit. I know he wouldn't understand. I know he's not capable of having the conversation with me about how there's not evidence, or how not everything about God is good. And I know even if I tried, even if I just said something like "not everyone believes in God", that might be too much for some of them. That might be "rocking the boat", or disrupting his "spiritual walk" (despite the clear demonstrations of the fact that he has none yet).

And that's fine to a degree. I mean, I know what he's capable of, and what he's not. That's why I'd prefer not to go there in the first place. And that's why I think they're not doing anyone any good by going there themselves.

Of course you'll believe in God if you've never heard anything to the contrary and you're too young, uneducated and obedient to think of a reason otherwise.

I don't mean to insult religion by saying this, but I think any kid who hasn't figured out Santa isn't real isn't old enough to understand religion. Even if God IS real, if you want to grasp the concept as presented, you need to be able to tell the difference between an age-old, life-changing story, and a recent commercial bastardization of an otherwise obscure figure. Otherwise you're just a parrot, reciting a belief in God, ghosts, UFOs, chupacabra, Barack Obama's promise of change, and anything else you hear.

But they won't do that. They do not value the process of free and unfettered choice. Very few of them do, anyway. It's a powerful, time-honed system of social pressure. Make good Christian children. They don't care about the other side. They don't care about truth.

I left the faith because it was dead to me, but then I gradually learned the importance of freedom and of truth, and in doing so I came to despise the nature of organized religion. I despise the pressure thrust upon me by the social machine. I despise that the people who claim to hold the truth do not want to speak of it with me. I despise the use of fear and authority to silence open inquiry and progress.

If Hell exists, it is that moment, frozen in time, where one forfeits their critical thinking.

The God of the Bible is false. I will continue to prove this. That is all.