Jonathan Eats Honey – OMFG!

Yay! Killing people is so cool!

Back in the days of King Saul (and many centuries afterward) the Israelites were almost constantly at war with the Philistines. One day when they were facing off in preparation for a fight, Saul’s son Jonathan and his armor bearer snuck over to the philistine camp. When they arrived at the enemy garrison the Philistines saw them and said, “Come over here. There’s something we want to show you.”

Jonathan took this as a sign that Jehovah was on his side and he and his armor bearer attacked the Philistine army. If you have trouble visualizing this, just remember the huge fight scene near the end of Mr. and Mrs. Smith; the movie that brought Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie together and left Jennifer Aniston a wealthy divorcee. In that scene Brad and Angelina kill a few hundred assassins by standing together in the middle of a warehouse and shooting at the assassin army (clearly the least effective assassins on the planet). If that doesn’t work for you, imagine Aragorn and Legolas from the Lord of the Rings killing a huge horde of orcs without getting hurt.

Anyway, after Jon and his slave killed a whole bunch of Philistines, the entire army began to shake uncontrollably and started to run away. The Israeli army noticed the confusion and disarray among the Philistines and attacked. Even the Israelites that were fighting for the Philistines switched sides and it did not go well for the enemies of King Saul that day; thanks to Jonathan.

Here’s the thing though, by killing people all day you can really work up an appetite. King Saul was lame though and earlier had told everyone they couldn’t eat anything that day on pain of death, because he thought it would help him kill more Philistines. Well, Jon didn’t know this and when he was walking back to the Israeli camp he saw a bunch of honeycomb on the ground and ate some.

Of course the jerk-face egomaniac Saul found out his son Jonathan ate some honey and sentenced him to death. Saul’s subjects were really upset by this and started to yell at the king. They said mean hurtful things like, “Jonathan saved us all today and made the Philistines lose the fight. Jehovah will be very angry if you kill him. After all, Jehovah is the one who helped Jonathan kill all those Philistines.”

Because Saul was a spoiled bully, he didn’t know what to do when he didn’t immediately get his way. He ended up dropping the whole thing and walked away.

Moral: If you just go around making up reasons to kill your friends and family all the time, you’ll regret it eventually.

Ref: 1 Samuel 14

Segregation – Lord Farquaad’s Solution

Sometimes you just have to get rid of those damn fairy-tale creatures

Those of you who have seen the movie “Shrek” should be familiar with Lord Farquaad’s mission to make his “kingdom” the most perfect of all. If you haven’t seen it, rent it from Amazon here.

Please note that the film never tells us where Farquaad got the idea he needed to segregate the fairy-tale creatures from the general population and dump them in that swamp to make his “kingdom” perfect. Good thing you have me, eh? He clearly got it from God through his personal study of Holy Scripture. You see, God is all about the segregation.

Paul worked hard to make sure people understood the importance of segregation when writing to the Corinthians, as follows:

Be ye not unequally yoked together with [fairy-tale creatures]: for what fellowship hath [perfection] with [fairy-tale creatures]? and what communion hath light with darkness? (2 Cor. 6:14, KJV)

I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with [fairy-tale creatures]: Yet not altogether with the [fairy-tale creatures] of this world, or with the [witches], or [blind mice], or with [talking donkeys]; for then must ye needs go out of the world.

But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any [creature] that is called a brother be a [possessed toy], or [a cross-dressing wolf], or a [talking pig], or a [gingerbread man], or a [fairy], or a [dwarf]; with such an one no not to eat.

For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves [those fairy-tale creatures]. (1 Cor. 5:9-13, KJV)

St. Mark piled on too.

He that [is not a fairy-tale creature] and is baptized shall be saved; but he that [is a fairy-tale creature] shall be damned. (Mark 16:16, KJV)

Finally we learned that after Christ returns in his glory, he will make segregation permanent. It’s very clear that Lord Farquaad was just doing Jesus a favor.

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the [normal people] on his right hand, but the [fairy-tale creatures] on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. (Matthew 25: 31-34, KJV)

Moral: If someone (or something) is different from you, send it to live in a swamp. Then you will be blessed.

God vs. Fanghorn – You Decide Which is Better

 Not all fictional characters are created equal

The events recounted in the Book of Amos take place during a very difficult time for God. You see, the people, they just didn’t care about God anymore. I imagine God was feeling exactly like Fanghorn (or Treebeard as he is sometimes called). Poor Treebeard expressed this quite nicely to Merry and Pippin in The Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers after one of them asked which “side” he was on by saying, “I am on nobody’s side because nobody’s on my side. Nobody cares for the trees anymore.”

Unfortunately for everyone involved, God is not nearly as nice as Treebeard. You see, Treebeard decided to just hang out in the forest and take care of the trees for thousands of years while the world moved on around him and his fellow ents. It wasn’t until his precious trees were being threatened with complete destruction that he and the other ents left the forest to put some hurt on some orcs. Then he and the ents went right back to the forest and didn’t bother anyone else.

Yeah, God isn’t like Treebeard. After he discovered that nobody was on his side, he immediately started unleashing destruction upon the masses. He stopped all the rain except in one city, and when everyone went to that other city to drink, there wasn’t enough water for everyone. Then God gave all the plants mildew and parasites so all the gardens, vineyards, fig trees and olive trees died. God also sent diseases on a scale similar to the plagues of Egypt and He stirred up wars so the young men were killed with swords. Then God even took away the horses! It was so bad that the stench of all the death and decay filled the survivors’ nostrils! Because this still wasn’t enough, God even destroyed several cities Sodom and Gomorrah style.

Here’s the thing though: it didn’t help. All this evil God visited upon his people didn’t make them love him! OMFG! I can’t believe it!

No, seriously; I have major doubts about God’s intelligence at this point. God actually believed that if he made life hell for everyone they would not only start caring about him again, they would actually start to LOVE him! In recent news, I’ve heard that soldiers are dying overseas because God is punishing us for allowing gays in the military. I’ve heard that AIDS in an epidemic sent by God to punish gays and “loose” women. Does God actually think these things will make everyone “behave” sexually? Is God actually that stupid?

Apparently so.

Ref: Amos 4

Isaac and Sibling Love – Is it Actually Naughty?

You just have to accept that people had different ideas about sexual morality in the olden times

This basic story happened with both Isaac and Abraham. In fact it happened to Abraham TWICE! I’ve even told Abraham’s version before. This time however, it’s Abraham’s son, Isaac.

When Isaac was living in Gerar with his wife Rebekah, some of the men started asking about Rebekah. Normal stuff you know, like her virgin status, availability, etc. Now Isaac was a total pussy and was worried his neighbors would kill him and take Rebekah if they knew he was married to her. The obvious answer? Lie. The bible teaches us that the most revered prophets of all time lied their asses off whenever they were concerned for their own safety. That’s right. Isaac followed his father’s example and told everyone Rebekah was his sister.

Apparently everything was going really well until the day Abimelech, king of the Philistines looked out his window and saw Isaac screwing Rebekah’s brains out. Abimelech knew Isaac had been telling everyone he and Rebekah were siblings. The king was concerned and shouted out the window at Isaac, “WTF man? This woman is obviously your wife, why did you say she’s your sister.” Isaac let go of Rebekah’s legs (which then fell back down to the ground) and replied, “Sorry dude, I was scared shitless that if some jerk-face out there figured out we were married he would kill me so he could take my first cousin Rebekah here for himself.”

The king was still pissed. He said, “You moron! If someone decided to have sex with Rebekah one day because he figured she was unattached, our people would have become impure.” The king solved this problem quickly by commanding everyone to be nice to Isaac and Rebekah and do them no harm.

This story is weird. Why did the king automatically assume that just because Isaac and Rebekah were screwing out in their yard (assuming they weren’t just going at it in the street) that they weren’t siblings? It just doesn’t make sense. If we choose to believe the biblical creation account, Adam and Eve’s kids were obviously having a major screw fest and popping out all sorts of babies with interesting relationships. Then, because nobody told them you shouldn’t make babies with your siblings, I’m sure there were 13 and 14 year old girls squeezing out their brother’s babies for generations before there got to be enough cousins to make that seem like a viable option. In fact, moving away from sibling love was probably frowned on because it was different from the way they started.

Isaac’s parents were first cousins, he married his first cousin, his son Jacob married two of his first cousins and Rebekah was furious when their other son Esau DIDN'T marry a first cousin. I mean, how different is sibling love from all that? Many of you have probably heard that if you make babies with your brother or sister they will come out retarded or with the wrong number of limbs. However, this is totally untrue. In both Hawaii and Egypt the royal families only married within themselves with pure pairings between brother and sister for hundreds of years. That’s a LOT of sibling love and nobody had an extra arm coming out of their forehead.

We just have to look at England’s royal family to find marriages between first cousins, second cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews (and the odd 5th cousin) going back 1000 years. Not 100 years mind you, ONE THOUSAND FRIGGIN YEARS! After all that they only earned themselves a tendency toward hemophilia and insanity. I have ADD, my wife has ADD, and we have one daughter with ADD and one without. If my sister had ADD and I made babies with her, our sibling love children would have the same probability of developing ADD as my actual children.

Get over yourself Abimelech. Isaac and Rebekah could easily have been siblings and still been caught screwing outside your window.

Ref: Genesis 16: 6-11

King Saul – King Today, Gone Tomorrow

Saul is really stupid, or is it Yahweh?

For a long time after Moses took the Israelites out of Egypt, they did not have a king. Eventually the little crybabies got tired of all the other nations having kings while they went without. “It’s just not fair” they complained. They organized protests and marches and stuff, all the while trying to bully Yahweh’s favorite prophet, Samuel, into letting them have a king. Samuel was not happy about this and kept trying to convince everyone that kings were bad. They took everyone’s money to make sure they were super rich and they made decisions that weren’t in the best interest of the population like, all the time. They masses didn’t care though. They had decided they wanted a king and nothing Samuel said could dissuade them.

Eventually Samuel prayed to Yahweh and said, “Your people won’t stop bugging me about this king thing. It really hurts my feelings because I am the prophet and want to make sure your prophets are always in charge.” Yahweh responded, “Stop being such a drama queen Samuel. The people aren’t rejecting you anyway. They’re rejecting me. Go ahead and find them a king.” This wasn’t hard for a seer of Samuel’s caliber. He quickly settled on Saul. Saul was not only the “goodliest” person in Israel, he was also the tallest.

After a ton of really boring drama crap that mostly involved threats to the general population, Saul became the undisputed King of Israel. Two years later the Israelites and Philistines were getting ready for a big battle. When Saul’s people noticed how many Philistines had shown up, they kinda freaked out a little and scattered, hiding in “caves, and in thickets, and in rocks, and in high places, and in pits.” Saul was concerned by this, but he waited patiently because Samuel had told him to wait for seven days. At which time, Samuel would offer a sacrifice to Yahweh and then the Israelites would stomp the piss out of the Philistines.

Seven days came and went. Saul was disappointed Samuel hadn’t shown up, but because he felt responsible for his people’s welfare he went ahead and made the burnt offering himself. As soon as the fire died down though, who should arrive but Samuel? Samuel marched right over to Saul, slapped him across the face, and said, “What the fuck man? Are you retarded?”

Saul said, “Well, there were all these Philistines, and you didn’t show up. I knew we needed Yahweh’s help so I made the sacrifice myself.” Samuel replied, “That was really fucking stupid. Yahweh was totally ready to make your kingdom last forever, but because you were so dumb and sacrificed when you weren’t supposed to, now you can’t be king anymore. Yahweh is going to find someone else who isn’t going to make terrible mistakes like this.”

Yes, that’s right. Because Saul asked for help from Yahweh, Yahweh abandoned him. Let this be a lesson to any of you who might be considering asking God for help. DON’T DO IT!

Ref: 1 Samuel 8-13

Fallen Angels – Heavenly Porn Stars

 It’s fun to learn about angels.

Today we are going to have to skip around the bible a bit to bring these angel-related pieces together, but I think they are very important.

Angels often show up in the bible. Sometimes they are assholes that kill people (like in Isaiah 37 or Genesis 11), sometimes they are guards (like when they were guarding Jesus’ tomb), and occasionally they serve as messengers. A huge number of angels, however, don’t do what God wants. The “good angels” that do the will of the almighty are either incredibly boring (guard duty and messenger duty) or depicted as mindless machines of death. I figure these death angels must be mindless or the one that killed all those firstborn in Egypt wouldn’t have needed lamb blood to let it know which houses to skip. These types of angels are lame.

The interesting angels are the ones that God can’t control. These poor guys are destined for “everlasting chains under darkness until the judgment of the great day” (Jude 1:6). And what does Jude say these angels did? It’s simple really. They “[gave] themselves over to fornication, and [went] after strange flesh” (Jude 1:7). That’s right, they were horny. We’ll learn more about these angels in a minute from Genesis but first we need to learn just how many non-boring angels there were.

This bit is from the Book of Revelation. Because said book is terribly incoherent most of the time, I’m going to paraphrase and restate all this stuff: Lucifer used to live in heaven and was one of the most important angels. He got into a fight with God one day. Now, you have to understand that God was more of a lover than a fighter so he ran straight to the Michael the Archangel (archangel means “high ranking angel”). Michael and his posse were able to beat down Lucifer and his followers and cast them down to Earth (where apparently everything sucks). This group of losing angels was huge. It ended up being one third of the entire host of heaven. (Revelation 12)

Michael and the Dragon

Wait a minute though! Jude didn’t say the angels were going to be chained up in darkness because they were cast out of heaven. No! He said it was because they were fornicators who were always chasing pussy. Now, where do you think he got that idea?

Easy; he learned it from Genesis 6:1-4. You see, by the time Genesis Chapter 6 rolled around, there were lots of hotties on the planet, and it didn’t take the “earth bound” angels long to notice. I imaging fallen angels spend a lot of time watching the living; you know, in the marketplace, the bedroom, the locker room, and the shower. Anyway, these angels started picking out the hottest women and making babies with them. Angel sperm is WAY tougher than human sperm so these babies were all born extra large. If Genesis 6:4 is to be believed, they were all male too. These extra large babies grew up into extra large men, “mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

I reckon this wasn’t such a big deal in “Genesis” times back when people were freer with their sexuality. However, by the time the “New Testament” rolled around, most everyone had decided that sex was “naughty” and could only be experienced under limited circumstances. When Jude read about all the “fallen angel” sex he quickly passed judgment on them and declared that for all the sex, they were definitely bound by “everlasting chains under darkness until the judgment of the great day.”

What a prude!

“Lazarus, come forth!” - Grandstanding much, no?

Jesus is such a crybaby

By the time Jesus made it down to Bethany, Lazarus had been dead and entombed for four days. Mary and Martha were busy because apparently they were pretty popular and had tons of well-wishers and such visiting. Martha heard Jesus was coming and booked it straight out of the house to meet him, while lazy Mary just stayed behind on the couch with her friends.

The first thing out of Martha’s mouth when she met Jesus was, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.” Because Jesus was only really there to show off he said, “Thy brother shall rise again.” Martha was pretty well educated regarding Jesus’ take on religious so she replied, “Of course I know he will. In the resurrection at the last day, right?”

Jesus, being the egomaniac he was, was deeply offended by Martha’s response. He put his left hand on his hip, z-snapped with his right, and said, “Lissen up beeotch. I am da resurrection. I am da life. Any foo what believe in ME will live even if dey be dead! Any of yous what be livin’ and believin’ in ME ain’t nevah gonna die!  Wassah mattah? You no believe beeotch?”

Martha was a little surprised her boyfriend chose to berate her for giving what she thought was the right answer, so she just fell back to the good old strategy of stroking Jesus’ massive ego. She said, “Yes of course. I believe you are the Christ. I believe you are the Son of God we have been waiting for.” Then Martha high tailed it out of there before she could piss off Jesus again and went to fetch her sister.

Mary ran straight out to where Jesus was still standing after his meeting with Martha. Mary threw herself on the ground in front of her Lord and they went through the whole drama of “Oh, no. If you had been here my brother would still be alive, blah, blah, blah.” Then, she started to cry. Jesus wasn’t really in touch with normal people so he was shocked that Mary was crying. Then he noticed all the other mourners were crying too. He really struggled with the idea that all these people didn’t think he was going to snap his magic fingers and make everything better. He was so upset after thinking on this for a while that He started to cry too.

After crying for a while, Jesus finally gave up on his fantasy of walking into town and being met with the cheers of the masses while he led them triumphantly to the tomb before dramatically raising Lazarus from the dead. He didn’t want to back out of the deal though, so he bowed his head and shuffled over to the tomb. Once there, he raised his head and said, “Father, thank you for agreeing to help me bring Lazarus back to life so these people will think I’m cool.” Then Jesus shouted in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.”

After a minute Lazarus stumbled out of the tomb wearing his burial clothes. Everyone watching was surprised because they totally didn’t expect this turn of events and they said, “Wow, Jesus is even more magic than we thought. Cool.” Some of these people ran off to tell their religious leaders about Jesus’ latest magic trick. These religious types were united in the fear that the commoners would listen to Jesus’ teachings and rise up against the government, so they also decided to try and kill Jesus.

Now that Jesus was on the run from the law and organized religion, he reneged on his whole “people that walk in the light won’t have anything bad happen to them” thing.  He immediately booked it out of Judea with his apostles again to lay low in Ephraim so everyone that wanted him dead could cool off a little.

Ref: John 11:17-54

Lazarus is Dead - oops

In which we see that Jesus acts like a jerk so later he can show off his awesomeness

Today we examine the story of Lazarus as told in John 11. Now this has nothing to do with the sixth episode in season 3 of the Dr. Who reboot (first aired 5 May 2007), titled “The Lazarus Experiment.” That Lazarus was a professor of human genetics and when he built a machine to cheat death it turned him into a shape changing monster that sucked the life force out of people to extend its own life. This story is totally not about THAT Lazarus.

This story is about the Lazarus who lived in Bethany in the early first century. Lucky for him, he was related to Mary and Martha. Because Jesus was hot for both Mary and her sister Martha he was always especially nice to their brother Lazarus. Things were going really well until Lazarus got crazy sick while Jesus was away on vacation (i.e. hiding from the law) with his “gentlemen friends” (apostles).

Of course Mary and Martha knew where their boyfriend was hiding out and once they figured out Lazarus was going to die they sent Jesus an urgent message, “Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.” After Jesus and his apostles heard the message Jesus saw an opportunity to show off and said, “This sickness is not unto death. Lazarus is sick for the glory of God and so I can be glorified too.”

Then, just to be sure everyone reading the bible understood the situation, the author of “The Gospel According to St. John” said, “Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus” (KJV). I hope this means they were just friend and that they weren’t into four-ways. That would be pretty twisted since three of the parties involved were siblings. Of course I’m not an expert on first century sexuality. For all I know, that sort of thing could have been perfectly normal back then. I do know that people used to sex up their cousins and siblings all the time in the Old Testament. Look, I’m just saying it’s something we should consider.

So after Jesus hatched his little plan to give himself glory from Lazarus’ sickness he stayed “on vacation” for two more days and then said to his apostles, “Ok, it’s time for us to head back to Judea.” Of course his apostle said, “Um, have you forgotten why we’re hiding out here? You’ve been sentenced to death back in Judea for your anti-government, anti-religion, and pro-wine stances: oh, and let’s not forget blasphemy. The Jews have already sentenced you to stoning and they’re certain to carry it out if we run into any law enforcement types or angry mobs.”

This next part really confuses me. To reassure the apostles, Jesus said something like, “Aren’t there 12 hours of light every day? If a man walks in the light he doesn’t stumble. If he walks in the dark, he will trip and fall.” I think Jesus was trying to say if someone is righteous nothing bad will happen to him/her, but that seems like a bit of a stretch (and a bald-faced lie). Then Jesus said, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep. I will now go and wake him.” The apostles were happy to hear Lazarus was just sleeping, so Jesus had to clarify his statement and said, “Look, I’m sorry you don’t understand my odd way of saying things. I meant to say that Lazarus is dead. Seriously, try to keep up.”

Understandably, the apostles were still convinced Judean law enforcement would do its job and take out Jesus. However, because they loved Jesus so much they decided to go with him so they could be stoned and die too.

Ref: John 11:1-16

Independence Day: Jehovah is Tougher than Will Smith

The cover art for Independence Day shows an alien spaceship blowing up the White House

In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign over Israel the Assyrians invaded. They easily captured all the fortified cities in Judah before showing up outside Jerusalem.

The only way I can think of to properly explain this situation in modern terms is to refer to the 1996 film Independence Day. Yes, the Assyrians were that badass. When they steam-rolled over Judah it was just like all those massive spaceships (15 miles wide) simultaneously destroying Earth’s major population centers. Please imagine the terror of Earth’s population in light of the alien threat when you consider how the people of Jerusalem felt when the Assyrians arrived on their doorstep.

Fortunately, the King of Assyria was far more polite than the aliens in Independence Day and actually spoke to the people of Jerusalem after he arrived. He said, “Hey everyone. Listen up and pay attention! Let’s not be stupid here. You know you are way outclassed. Don’t let King Hezekiah convince you that you have a chance. Don’t let him try to convince you that your god will save you. We have destroyed the peoples of Hamath, Arphad, and Sepharvaim. Their gods did not help them and yours will not be able to save you. Surrender and we will simply relocate you to a place just like the one where you live now; a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards.”

Unfortunately the Israelis didn’t have Will Smith, Bill Pullman, any fighter jets, or a second-rate rip-off of the “Saint Crispen’s Day” speech from Henry V by William Shakespear. They just had King Hezekiah. Instead of launching a stunning counter attack involving the use of an old alien spacecraft, a computer virus, and a nuclear weapon after learning of the invasion; Hezekiah tore his clothes and went to church.

Here is where we learn Jehovah is better at handling things than Bill Pullman or Will Smith. You see, the Israelis had something those folks in the film didn’t. They had Isaiah. Isaiah was a great prophet of Jehovah and Jehovah heard the Assyrian speech about the Hebrew god being unable to help. This made Jehovah angry. You wouldn’t like Jehovah when he’s angry. Jehovah told his pet prophet Isaiah not to worry about the Assyrians. Isaiah told Hezekiah about Jehovah’s anger and Hezekiah decided to pray. He said to Jehovah, “These Assyrians are not nice. They keep destroying cities and their gods, but those gods aren’t real. They’re just made of wood or stone. You are a real god, so you can save us.”

Angry Jehovah then sent an angel to visit the Assyrian camp. This angel killed 185,000 Assyrians. Just like that: 185,000 dead Assyrians. You thought it was bad when the Assyrians were demolishing Judah, but I guarantee it took months for them to kill that many Hebrews. Jehovah did it like FedEx: overnight.

When the King of Assyria woke up in the morning and saw all his fighting men were dead he decided to abandon his campaign. He went back to Nineveh. You would think the story was over then but it’s not. Angry Jehovah wasn’t done. He made sure that Mr. King of Assyria’s sons killed him and then fled the country.

Yep. Don’t mess with Angry Jehovah.

Ref: Isaiah 36-37