I continue with my look at the “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” video.
The Poet asks why religion:
“tells single moms God doesn’t love them if they’ve ever had a divorce.”
How do I get into this one? First off, if any person or religion tells anyone God doesn’t love him or her, they are wrong. God cares for all God’s creatures. Jesus practiced open table fellowship and his followers should as well.
The issue of divorce is a sticky one. Jesus said, “Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Mark 10:9) We also know that there are abusive relationships, for women and men, in which it is not safe for a spouse to stay with their spouse. I wonder how any person can say they know for certain which people God has joined together. I think we may have to chalk this one up to the Mystery of God.
“But in the Old Testament God actually calls religious people whores.”
Alright, this is a misreading of scripture, unless there’s a scripture passage I don’t know about. To understand the “whore” language of the prophetic books we have to look at the use of bridal language in the Old Testament. Throughout the story of the people of Israel and their relationship with God, the image of bride and bridegroom is used. Isaiah 62: 4-5 is a perfect example of this. “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate;
but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married.
For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” Or look at the entire book of the "Song of Songs." Now, if you were a married man and your wife was sleeping around with other men I bet you’d have some choice words to say about her faithfulness. This is the same thing the prophets are talking about. God doesn’t call Israel ‘whore’ because Israel is religious but because Israel has forsaken the religion that God gave her and followed other gods and religions. Israel should have been in a marriage relationship with YHWH and instead was “sleeping around.” Religious people aren't equated with whores. God wanted Israel to follow the religious system they were given and to stay true to God.
So, I hope that clears up that part.
(All photos are from WikiCommons.)
P.S. I hesitated to use the image of the sinful woman wiping the feet of Jesus above because I don't want to perpetuate a "sinful woman" motif but the image does speak about forgiveness and the scene itself has long been associated with sexual misconduct on the woman's part, though this is an association and not substantiated by a close reading of scripture as the text just says 'sinful' and says nothing about sexual sin. It is sexist to think that when a woman is called sinful she must be unfaithful sexually but when Peter calls himself a sinful man we don't jump to the same conclusion.
Great post! Our culture seems to go sexual when reading some scripture passages and it seems not the intent of the message, for example the "virgin" Mary.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading :)
ReplyDeleteActually the entire video can be torn apart. Im working on my response to it as well. But thanks for clearing up the Biblical part.
ReplyDeleteI'm working on it in pieces. I don't want to resort to sound bites. Eventually I'll get through the whole thing.
ReplyDeleteYou all are missing the feeling behind the poem, trying to disecting it into pieces is just like disecting a written letter, only pulling words or phrases. You couldn't possibly understand the meaning of it by doing this. A whore is a good definition of a person behaving one way for show, then when you think no one is watching is cheating on what should be your only love for selfish purposes. You can't party on Saturday then show up to church and make it all better until next weekend. You cannot pretend to be selfless but act for selfish purposes. You cannot point out the splinter in your brothers eye and have an entire log in yours. you cannot claim to love all but then judge and condemn. The poem as a whole has a message. One message. YOU CANNOT SERVE TWO MASTERS. YOU CANNOT HAVE TWO LOVERS ... how would you define that person?
ReplyDeleteYou’re absolutely right about a good deal here. You can’t do those things. And if you use scriptural language, like I said in my post, then yes whore is an appropriate word. My issue isn’t that he’s calling people who do those things whores. My issue is that he’s lumping everybody who is in a religion into that group and then claiming God said in scripture that they are whores and it isn’t true. I’m going to have to disagree with you when you say he has only one message. “You cannot serve two masters” is not his only message. He is specifically saying religion is bad. It’s another major message of the poem and the one indicated as his main one as I read his title. If his only message is that we can’t serve both God and ourselves he could have done it by encouraging people to live their religious beliefs better. Calling religion an “infection” is not that same as saying you need to live your life better. Religion isn’t a master. It is a way of life in community, built up on our ancestors’ experience, to help us serve God better.
ReplyDelete