Paul vs. Bar-jesus - In which the Lord’s power blinds the social conservative

I wonder how bad it would be for the GOP if Christian leaders were still blinding those who try to impede social progress

One day in Antioch a group of early Christian leaders were chillin’ at the church when the holy spirit of God decided to make an appearance. After thanking everyone for coming, it gave a brief sermon on the concept of a social contract and handed out a few awards for things like “Best Preacher” and “Biggest Liberal.” Then it told Paul and Barnabas they needed to go do some missionary work in Cyprus.

After preaching the good word in Cyprus for a while Paul and Barnabas ended up in the city of Paphos. The local ruler, Sergius Paulus, heard what Paul and Barnabas were doing and decided he wanted to know what all the fuss was about. To this end, he summoned them to his home. Sergius already had a holy advisor though, a man named Bar-jesus. Bar-jesus was a Jewish prophet and the bible also calls him a sorcerer, probably to make sure everyone knows he’s the bad guy: just like Maleficent in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.

Bar-jesus was a conservative fellow and was terrified that the socialist society advocated by the Christians would not only take away his individual freedoms, but also cause total social and economic collapse. Naturally Bar-jesus sat in on the meeting between Sergius and the Christians and argued forcefully against Christianity in favor of the old traditions.

It didn’t take Paul long to see he wasn’t making any progress with Sergius so he stood up, pointed his finger at Bar-jesus and said, “You think you’re so clever, child of Satan. Why don’t you just go away and stop working to pervert the ways of the Lord? Because God is displeased with you, your sight shall be taken from you!” Bar-jesus immediately went blind and started to wander around in circles gesturing for someone to guide him by the hand. Sergius was shocked to see that Christians could blind people just by talking to them, so he jumped right on board the Christian bandwagon, professing unbounded depths of devotion (and a desire to keep his eyesight).

Moral: When in doubt, have Jesus poke out someone’s eyes.

Ref: Acts 13:1-13

Image of Polyphemus losing his eye.
Taken from Wikipedia Commons.

Every time God blinds someone in the bible I think of Odysseus in the cave of Polyphemus: I found a good summary for the uninitiated on www.thinkquest.com.

The Cyclops

Landing his ships in Sicily, Odysseus and twelve of his men went in search of supplies. They come across a cave that was obviously inhabited by a giant. Odysseus insisted on meeting the inhabitant in the hope of exchanging gifts. Polyphemus, a Cyclops and son of Poseidon, drove his giant herd of sheep into the cave and blocked the huge cave with a huge boulder.

Finding intruders in the cave, he immediately killed and ate two of Odysseus' men. Knowing he would never be able to leave the cave unless they killed the Cyclops, Odysseus devised a plan. He and his men sharpened a huge log of wood into a stake, during Polyphemus' absence the next day.

Two more of his men were killed upon Polyphemus' return. Odysseus gave the Cyclops a little wine. Enjoying the wine, Polyphemus promised him some gift in return for some more wine. Asking for Odysseus' name, the hero reply that it was "Nobody". Polyphemus promised to eat "Nobody" last.

Drunk, the Cyclops went wearily to bed. Odysseus and his men hardened the huge stake point in the fire pit, before driving the stake into Polyphemus' single eye, blinding the Cyclops. They hid under the bellies of the huge sheep, and when the Cyclops was herding his sheep the next day, due to his blindness, he did not notice them.

Furious with what Odysseus had done, he proceded to call all the other Cyclops living in the vicinity to ask for their assistance. When they asked him what happened to his eye, the poor Polyphemus could only repeat " 'Nobody' did this to me!!" The other Cyclops went back home, pitying their friend whom they now thought mad.

Elijah, Cop Killer – If he wears a leather skirt, he must be up to no good

This story makes me think of “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine

And it came to pass that there was this one time when Elijah was on the run from the law and set up camp on top of a hill. It might surprise you that such a well-known prophet was at odds with the legal system, so I’ll explain it to you.

I don’t know if you remember Ahab or not. He was the king of Israel who was shot by an arrow and his dogs licked all the blood off his chariot afterward. Well, that doesn’t really matter because we’re here to talk about his son Ahaziah today. Ahaziah was a naughty little boy who liked Baal instead of Jehovah. Therefore it wasn’t surprising to anyone that after he injured himself by falling out of his upper bedroom through the window lattice he sent a messenger to ask the “Lord of the Flies” if he would recover.

Ok, this “Lord of the Flies” thing may have confused you so I’ll explain. The various English translations of the bible call this god: Baal-zebub, Baalzebub, or Beelzebub. No matter how it’s written in English though, it means “Lord of the Flies.” This “Lord of the Flies” character was a God in Ekron. Therefore, not only was Ahaziah choosing to seek advice from some dumb fly god, he went looking for a foreign one, as if Israel had no gods of its own.

Hopefully you’ve been reading my stories for long enough now to know that Jehovah doesn’t like playing second fiddle to anyone, even if that someone has power over flies (which is a serious thing in the Middle East). Well Jehovah went to his buddy Elijah and said, “I need you to intercept Ahaziah’s messengers and tell them it was stupid to go to get advice from a foreign fly god when there is a perfectly good god here in Israel, and that particular Israeli God is named JEHOVAH! Well, Jehovah says Ahaziah is never going to get out of bed. He’s gonna die, so there! Neener neener!”

Elijah obediently delivered his message and then went up to the top of his favourite hill to hang out. After hearing Elijah’s prophecy concerning the King’s death, the messengers turned around and headed back to Ahaziah’s place to deliver the news. Ahaziah was surprised to see them so soon and asked what was going on. The messengers told the King about their little encounter with Elijah, but they hadn’t thought to ask his name so they told the king he was really hairy and was only wearing a leather skirt.

The king immediately recognized this as Elijah the Tishbite. He wanted to have a little chat with Elijah so he asked local law enforcement to bring him in for some questioning. The police captain was a little nervous about bringing in some guy wearing a leather skirt so he took along 50 of his men. When they got to Elijah’s hill the captain said, “Hello man of God. Please come down. The king would like to speak with you.”

Of course I have no clue why Elijah acted like this, but in response to the police captain’s request he said, “Oh yeah? Well if I’m a man of God like you say, then fire is going to come out of heaven now and burn up you and your men.” Then fire did come down from heaven and 51 families were suddenly without what was probably their sole source of income. No matter how you look at it, that’s a whole lot of women who were suddenly forced to turn to prostitution to feed their kids. Way to go Elijah, you stupid jackass!

The King still wanted to talk to Elijah, so he sent another captain and once again, Elijah provided 51 men with a fiery death. The THIRD captain decided to try a different tactic. Instead of asking Elijah to come down off the hill he begged for his life and the lives of his men. Because Jehovah LOVES to see men grovel, he sent an angel to tell Elijah not to kill this group of men, but go with them to meet the king instead. So, Elijah went to see the king and said to him, “Because you sent messengers to ask Baal-zebbub the God of Ekron if you were going to die from injuries you sustained by falling out your window, Jehovah has decided that you are going to die now. The end.”

So Ahaziah died, but only after Jehovah and Elijah were very careful to punish all those police officers and their families.

Ref: 2 Kings Chapter 1

Samson Dies – In which we see that at least one of the Nazarite rules mattered

This too shall pass

After killing so many Philistines, Samson became an absurdly high profile criminal. Everyone knew who he was, and that the Philistine government was desperate to see him dead. Therefore, when he stopped in Gaza to spend the night with a hooker, plenty of people were happy to turn him over to the authorities. The Gazites gathered by the city gate that evening and decided to wait until dawn so they could capture him. Samson was happy to use this situation as another way to demonstrate his awesomeness. At midnight he walked over to the city gate, ripped it and its supporting posts and bar out of the city wall, and carried the whole mess to the top of a nearby hill. You know, because he could.

Some time after the city gate incident Samson came to enjoy the company of a woman named Delilah. Once this became public knowledge, the philistine leadership made a visit to Delilah and promised her 1,100 pieces of silver to discover how to overcome Samson’s strength so they could prevail against him. 1,100 pieces of silver is almost 37 times the 30 pieces of silver Judas got for betraying Christ. It seems the biblical narrative is trying to establish that Samson is worth WAY more than Jesus.

Delilah was not a very subtle person so that very day she just went straight to the point saying, “Samson, please tell me where your strength comes from and how someone could overcome it.” Samson was quick to answer, “If you tie me up with seven lengths of freshly harvested ligaments from animals, I will be as weak as any other man.” That night Delilah bound Samson with the ligaments and a group of philistine men gathered in the room. Once everything was in place Delilah shouted, “The Philistines are here to get you Samson, wake up!” So Samson woke up and broke his gross bonds made from dead animal parts. The bible doesn’t say what Samson did with the philistine invaders, but based on what we knew of Samson, I’m pretty confident that he very politely asked them to leave so he could enjoy his coffee and orange juice in peace. Yes; that must be what happened.

Delilah was upset Samson had lied to her (so she didn’t get the large fortune in silver) and she complained, “Behold, thou hast mocked me, and told me lies: now tell me, I pray thee, wherewith thou mightiest be bound.” Samson told her another lie and they kept the pattern of Samson Lies -> Delilah betrays going every day for a while before Samson wised up and stopped giving fake answers. However, Delilah didn’t give up. She just kept harassing Samson for weeks until finally Samson couldn’t take it anymore and told her the truth: If his hair were cut, then he would be weak like a normal person. Of course, that night Delilah cut his hair and the philistine authorities hauled him off to prison and poked out his eyes, leaving Delilah with payment in full.

Of course this should bother any reader because Samson broke with Nazarite rules all the time and it never mattered before. It was only after someone else violated the Nazarite rules for him, that his Jehovah-powered super strength was suddenly gone. Yeah right.

The philistines decided to throw a national celebration after Samson was captured and offer sacrifices to their god Dagon. A celebration of this scale took a long time to organize and while Samson was bound in prison his hair started to grow back. In fact, he was pretty hairy by the time the philistines hauled him into a huge arena and chained him to the two massive roof supports. The philistines were all super excited to see this infamous mass murderer in chains and they started making fun of him. Samson didn’t like this and prayed to Jehovah saying, “Please remember me great Lord and make me strong again, just long enough that I can take revenge on these philistines for poking out my eyes.”

Jehovah listened to Samson’s plea and Samson was able to pull down the roof support pillars, collapsing the arena on himself and the 3,000 philistine men and women in attendance.

Moral: never mock a convicted felon, or God just might help him pull down the ceiling and kill you.

Ref: Judges 16

He will be missed.

Samson Offends PETA – Even biblical heroes commit great acts of animal cruelty

1,000 men dead and you’re worried about some dumb foxes, seriously?

It took Samson a few weeks to calm down after she who must not be named betrayed his trust. When he decided it was time to patch things up he took a baby goat (as there weren’t any flower shops in the neighbourhood), went to his in-laws place and asked to see his wife. Her father wouldn’t let Samson in. The father explained, “Well, here’s the thing Samson. After you stormed off I thought that you completely and irrevocable hated she who must not be named so I married her off to your unnamed friend (who we will call Tom Riddle). But hey, check out her little sister. She’s way hotter than she who must not be named. You can marry her now instead.

The proposed arrangement wasn’t satisfactory to Samson and he decided to punish the philistine people for this slight. Samson caught 300 foxes, set their tails on fire and released them into the philistine corn fields. As you might imagine the foxes ran all over the place like, well, foxes with their tails on fire. The cornfields, and olive orchards, and vineyards were burned to the ground.

Naturally there was an official Philistine inquiry into the matter and it was discovered that Samson was the culprit and he started the fire as an act of vengeance because his father-in-law gave his wife to another man.

The philistines weren’t soft on crime, so they burned she who must not be named and her father to death. Samson said to them, “If that’s the way you are going to be, I will get vengeance and then do no more.” Then he killed an unspecified number of philistines with his bare hands and went to the top of a huge rock to hang out.

In the interest of public safety, the philistines sent an army to kill Samson. When the army got to Lehi, the Israelites asked them what they were doing there. The philistines told them about Samson and said they were there to even the score. Because the Israelites didn’t want any trouble with the Philistines, they sent 3,000 men to go get Samson and hand him over to the Philistines. When they got to Samson’s rock they told him they were going to tie him up and carry him to the Philistine army. Samson said that was fine as long as the Israelis promised they weren’t going to try to kill him themselves. The Israelis promised and Samson was taken to the Philistines tied up with cords.

After Samson was delivered to the philistine army, the “spirit of the Lord” came upon him. He broke the bonds and grabbed “a new jawbone of an ass” (once again breaking the Nazarite rules by touching something dead) and used it to kill 1,000 philistine men. All this effort made Samson really thirsty and he started to whine. He said, “You know Jehovah, I’m like glad you helped me kill all these people so I wouldn’t go to jail or be executed or anything, but now I’m so thirsty I think I might just die or be captured anyway.”

Because Samson reminded Jehovah a lot of Himself, He decided to be nice to Samson. Jehovah made water come out from the ground (or jawbone depending on the translation) and Samson was able to drink and be refreshed.

Moral: If you kill enough people, Jehovah will be nice to you.

Ref: Judges 15

Samson Gets Married – Cheaters never prosper

Remember, a Nazarite can never touch anything dead, not even a recently deceased relative

Sabretooth

After Samson reached adulthood, I imagine he looked and acted a lot like Tyler Mane’s portrayal of Sabretooth in X-Men. I consider this mental image to be helpful when trying to understand Samson’s behaviour.

Anyway, after he was old enough to be interested in women Samson took a walk through Timnath. He saw a philistine girl there “dressed so fine and lookin’ so pretty” and he knew he “got to have her, she’s a one-of-a-kind.” When he got home he told his father about the girl and demanded that a marriage be arranged. His parent’s were concerned that he wanted a philistine wife and asked him to consider an Israeli woman, but Samson would not be dissuaded.

While Samson was going down to Timnath with his parents to arrange the marriage, Samson came across a lion. The spirit of the Lord came upon Samson and he ripped the lion in half, but he didn’t tell his parents. I’m pretty sure that it’s considered bad form for a Nazarite to rip an animal in half, if not banned outright. Fortunately the trip was a success and the marriage was arranged. Later, when Samson was on his way to collect the unnamed girl he stopped to check on the lion. He discovered that bees were living in the corpse and had produced a sizable amount of honey. Samson broke the rule about touching dead things and collected the honey. He ate a bunch of the honey and gave the rest to his parents, who also ate and were not told about it coming from a corpse.

So Samson and his unnamed philistine bride were married and Samson threw a feast. 30 young men attended the feast and Samson decided to show them who was boss. He proposed a contest: Samson would put forth a riddle, if the men guessed it Samson would give them 30 sheets and 30 sets of clothing; if they did not guess, the men would have to give Samson 30 sheets and 30 sets of clothing.

Here’s the riddle: Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.

After seven days the 30 youths couldn’t figure out the riddle so they went to have a chat with Samson’s unnamed wife. They said, “Listen up she who must not be named. You need to get the answer to the riddle from your husband or we are going to burn you and your family to death.”

She who must not be named didn’t want to die so she started to harass Samson for the answer. She cried and said, “You hate me. You don’t love me at all. You put forth a riddle to the youths of my people and have not told me the meaning.” Samson didn’t feel like giving up the answer so he said, “Listen woman, I haven’t even told my parents, why should I tell you?” She who must not be named had some really good motivation so she just kept crying and harassing Samson. After seven days of this, Samson finally relented and told her about the lion and the honey.

After learning the riddle’s meaning she who must not be named immediately told the philistine youths who then approached Samson and said, “What is sweeter than honey? And what is stronger than a lion?” They presented the answer in the form of a question to fool Samson into thinking they hadn’t been fed the answer by his wife. Samson saw straight through this and said, “You would never have figured it out if my new wife wasn’t such a stupid, traitorous slutty slut slut.” Samson was mad. He was really mad. He walked straight down to Ashkelon, killed 30 random men, took their stuff, and gave it to the 30 youths who found the answer. Then he ditched his new wife and moved back in with his parents.

Samson: some men just specialize in class.

Ref: Judges 14

Samson is Born – Watch out for Flying Angels

Every superhero/supervillan needs an origin story

As was typical for this biblical time period, the children of Israel were in bondage to the Philistines because Jehovah was punishing them for being bad. After 40 years the Lord decided it was time to start thinking about letting the Israelites self-govern again. Like so many of these bible stories involving miraculous children, Samson’s mother was barren. Sometimes (as in the case of Abraham’s wife) the woman is barren because she is too old. However, I just sort of assume in the bible that when age isn’t blamed, these women can’t get pregnant because they are too young and they don’t start having babies because God blesses them. They start having babies because they are finally old enough. But I digress . . .

Manoah’s wife hadn’t given birth, ever. Since this story is about her and she is unnamed in the Bible, I am going to call her Cheeky. One day an angel showed up and said to Cheeky, “You can’t have kids. I’m here now though, and I say you are going to have a kid very soon. Here’s the important part, so PAY ATTENTION! You cannot drink wine, or any other strong drink, or eat anything unclean. You are going to have a son and you can never cut his hair because he is going to be a Nazarite from birth until death and he will begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.”

This was unusual because a man usually became Nazarite temporarily as an adult due to an oath. That person would then avoid drinking alcohol, eating or drinking anything that was related to grapes (raisins, wine, etc), cutting hair, or touching anything dead. At the end of the Nazarite term they would shave their head in the temple courtyard and burn their hair on the altar.

Well, Cheeky found the whole experience rather disconcerting and went to tell her husband all about it. Manoah was a pious man and decided it would be best to get direct instruction himself to make sure he didn’t mess up the whole Nazarite child thing. He prayed to Jehovah and said, “Please send the angel that talked to Cheeky to us again so we can get proper instruction on how to care for this child.”

Jehovah listened to Manoah’s request and sent the angel again. This angel must have been slightly retarded, because he went to Cheeky again when she was working in the fields all by herself. No harm done though; Cheeky saw the angel and immediately ran to fetch her husband. Manoah asked the angel how they should raise the child. The angel just said that Cheeky needed to do everything she had been told previously.

This wasn’t the answer Manoah was looking for, but he didn’t want to anger the angel, so he invited him to dinner. The angel didn’t want to eat and told Manoah to make a burnt offering to the Lord instead. When Manoah made the offering, the angel jumped into the flame and was carried up into heaven. Cheeky and Manoah freaked out when they saw this and immediately threw themselves onto their faces. Manoah said, “OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod! We’re gonna die! OhmyGod we are so gonna die. We’ve seen the face of God and now we’re gonna die! Waaaa!”

Cheeky was a little more clear-headed and said, “Hold on, think for a minute. God isn’t going to kill us. If He was, He wouldn’t have shown us all these cool things about the new baby and He wouldn’t have accepted our burnt offering. We’re going to be OK.”

So Cheeky got pregnant and had a son. She named him Samson and as he grew, the Lord blessed him. And he didn’t eat grapes.

Ref: Judges 13

Nebuchadnezzar and the Golden Image – Size matters

Mine is bigger than yours . . .

Nebuchadnezzar must have been insecure on some level because one day he developed a plan to prove to everyone that he was the richest, baddest, mo-fo on the planet. He had a gold image made and placed in the middle of a huge field. This image was 70 feet tall and six and a half feet thick. He then commanded everyone with even a little bit of authority in his empire to attend the dedication ceremony for this image. At the ceremony the king’s herald announced that from that time forth, any time music was heard anywhere in the kingdom, everyone was to drop to the ground and worship this giant golden image.

If anyone chose to abstain from worship they were to be thrown immediately into a fiery furnace where they would die, consumed by the flames. Naturally the good little Jehovah lovers, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego did not worship the gold image as required and a group of Chaldeans ratted them out to the King.

Nebuchadnezzar was furious. He immediately had Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego brought before him and demanded to know if it was true they were refusing to worship the image.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego were honest Jehovah lovers so they truthfully told the king they would never serve any other god or image, no matter who told them to.

This made Nebuchadnezzar even more upset. He commanded the fiery furnace be heated to seven times the normal level. He had the strongest men in his army tie up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego and throw them into the furnace. Due to a lack of proper foresight, and the haste required by the king, the furnace was so hot that the people who threw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego in were overcome by the heat and died.

The king watched all this and was looking into the furnace. However, he didn’t see Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego get all crispy like he expected. Instead he saw four people walking around in there, looking just as happy as you can imagine.

Here’s the part I don’t believe: Nebuchadnezzar was astonished to see the Hebrews walking around in the furnace unharmed with what looked like an angel of God. He walked over to the furnace to talk to them, AND SOMEHOW WAS NOT INJURED BY THE HEAT THAT KILLED HIS BEST AND BRAVEST SOLDIERS. Yeah right! In any case, Nebuchadnezzar said to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, “Ye servants of the most high God, come forth and come hither.”

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego left the fire and Neduchanezzar made a royal decree right then and there. He commanded that from that time forth anyone who ever said anything bad about Jehovah would be cut into tiny pieces and their house would be demolished. Then the King promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego to even higher ranking positions in the province of Babylon.

Moral: Jehovah used to help his believers. Either He no longer feels like helping people, or nobody actually believes in Him anymore.

Ref: Daniel 3

The Babylonian Captivity - Water and pulse

Behold: early pro-vegan literature

Once upon a time, there was a significant Hebrew minority living in Babylon (Iraq). They were there because after hundreds of years of heartache, Jehovah got sick of his chosen people not doing everything he commanded. To punish them for being lame, Jehovah had the Babylonians conquer Israel and take most of the people back to Babylon to live.

Now the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar was an OK guy and he had some of the Hebrew youths move to the palace so they could be trained in the ways of courtly life. Well, here’s the thing: one of the things Nebuchadnezzar did for these youths in the palace was provide a daily ration of meat and wine so they would grow strong and wise over the next three years, then they were to be presented to the king.

This all happened before Jesus came on the scene and made wine drinking popular (Jesus was all about wine, all the time), so these kids were operating on the assumption that wine was bad for you, as was indicated by Jehovah in the Torah (see Leviticus 10:9).  Daniel and his buddies Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego decided to abstain from the wine and meat as part of their plan to serve Jehovah’s whims. Daniel had a chat with the head eunuch in charge of feeding the palace trainees and asked for other food options.

The eunuchs all really liked Daniel and would normally do just about anything for him, but the head eunuch was in charge of making sure the youths were well-fed and became strong and he was afraid the king would punish him if some of the youths looked too weak or thin. After hearing this concern Daniel proposed a test to prove Jehovah’s awesomeness. Daniel and his friends would eat only pulse (think of whole-grain porridge and you’ll be close to pulse) and drink only water for 10 days; then they were to be compared with the consumers of meat and wine.

Because Jehovah still didn’t like wine and meat back then, he helped Daniel and his Hebrew friends so after the 10 days, they were fatter and healthier looking than the other youths. The chief eunuch was so happy with these results he took away all the wine and meat and made everyone else eat pulse and drink water too. I’m sure this made Daniel very popular among the youths who had suddenly had their meat and wine taken away.

You would think that was the end, but it’s not! After the three years when the king examined the youths he discovered that the Hebrew youths were way smarter than anyone else. Yay Hebrews! In fact, because these hebrews were so awesome, Daniel eventually worked his way into the position of the ruler of the Babylonian provice and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego were put in charge of Babylon's affairs.

Moral: when you pray remember to thank Jesus for liking wine so much that it’s no longer bad to drink. Amen!

Ref: Daniel 1