I'm Done Covering For God and Jesus
I'm tired of "covering for" God. Aren't you? Ugh. When I first started to deconstruct, I had this intoxicating need inside to "explain away" the horrible images of God that we find in the Bible.
If you pointed to a verse about God's judgement, I'd point to a hundred about God’s love.
If you threw a verse at me about hell, I'd come at you with a Greek lesson about what that word really means.
God's wrath?
God's anger?
"God isn't angry", I'd say, "and the Bible 100% proves that - everyone is welcome, everyone is bound for heaven"... and then I'd do the exact same thing I used to do as an Evangelical - I'd string together any number of verses to prove my point, all the while disregarding the others.
This time, though? Instead of using verses to send people TO HELL, I'd be using verses to save people FROM HELL. Call it cherry-picking, I guess, but that's what I did. It's what we all do, isn't it? We have a specific view point about faith and so we take our holy text and find all the verses that prove our point all the while becoming VERY skilled at explaining away the others.
The book of Revelation is a perfect example.
It's a horrific book, but whenever the horrors were brought up to me about God's judgement and what John says that God will do to his enemies.
Well.
I'd just focus on Revelation 21:25, which says that the gates of the New Jerusalem (God's eternal Kingdom) will never shut. "In other words", I'd say, "there will always be the opportunity for people to awaken to who they really are, to come to their senses, and to walk into the embrace of God. This is the end of Revelation, this is the climax of the whole story."
It's a beautiful sentiment, for sure, but (at the same time) it pretty much ignores and dismisses all the other stuff that John says God will do throughout the book of Revelation.
What will he do?
Good golly, have you read this book? It's absolutely NUTS. If anyone acted the way that God and Jesus are depicted as acting, they'd be locked up for the rest of their lives and never be allowed to lay an eye (much less a finger) on another human being.
But, don't take it from me - let's go dip our toes into what Revelation says about God and Jesus.
In chapter 2 verses 18-29 John shines a light on a prophetess named "Jezebel". Who is this woman? What's her deal? We don't know, but what we do know is that John (the writer of Revelation) absolutely loathes her and her wicked teachings.
Wicked teachings?
Like I said, we don't know much, but what we do know is that she seems to have believed that it was OK for Christians to eat food that was offered to idols. Why? I don't know.
But ...
Maybe some of the Christians had pagan neighbors who worshipped various idols.
And maybe those neighbors offered their meals to idols before they picked up their forks and ate.
And maybe they invited their Christian neighbors over for dinner.
And so maybe Jezebel was telling those Christians that "rather than turn down an invite to share a meal because you don't like who the meal was offered to, maybe take them up on their invite, privately offer your meal back to Jesus, and fellowship with them. You know, 'love your neighbor as yourself' and 'treat others as you want to be treated."
Sounds reasonable to me, right?
I think so. Not to John, though. And apparently not to Jesus and God either.
Now is where it gets kind of ugly. Trigger warning here regarding rape, violence, and all sorts of unthinkable things. I'm serious. I've read this passage a thousand times, but it wasn't until I got ready for **my chat with Bart Ehrman about the book of Revelation that I REALLY read it.
Here we go.
John says that Jesus says, "So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. (2:22)
The "bed" here that John refers to … in his book, “Armageddon”, Bart Ehrman shows that it's not a bed of roses and it's not a "sickbed" where Jesus is merely "making her sick" so that she has to "go to bed" for a while.
INSTEAD.
… this is a bed where sex happens and Jesus is the one throwing her there - a place where men will come to have sex with her.
Is she willing?
Are they forcing themselves on her?
Is this consensual?
Or is this rape?
Who knows. Whatever the case may be, though, those men are punished too. Jesus is going to punish Jezebel with extreme violence and then (as if it’s not bad enough) he’s going to take his anger out on her offspring by "striking her children dead" (2:23).
Why?
All because they had the audacity to share some meals with pagans and Jezebel told them it was OK - she gets tossed on to a bed, men come in and (seemingly) rape her, and then Jesus punishes all the men who refuse to turn from her teachings ... and he kills her children.
Crazy, right?
And this is just the tip of the iceberg regarding the violence coming from the hands of God and Jesus in the book of Revelation. This is the sort of stuff I used to try and explain away. I'd come across a verse like this along with commentary about it like we find in Ehrman's book and I'd magnify any and every verse in Revelation that paints a different and better picture of God and argue that THOSE verses are the verses we need to pay attention to.
But, is that right?
Should we ignore this VERY alarming thing that John says Jesus is going to do? That God apparently signs off on? Is this something we should just “explain away”?
More alarming than that, though - doesn't the church teach that we should be "Christlike"? And if we're going to just look the other way at this image of Jesus setting up a woman to be raped and abused. Well. Isn't it just as easy to use these verses as justification to look the other way at rape and abuse today?
This is a lot, I know. But the reason I'm sharing this is because I've come to this place where I'm tired of covering for God and Jesus. I'm tired of coming across verses like this and trying to cover them up with better verses, with verses that paint a brighter and happier picture of God and Jesus. I'm tired of jumping through theological hoops as I try to put God and Jesus and the Bible in a good light.
I'm tired of it.
And so nowadays I'm at a place where I say …
"Yeah. Revelation very often paints a pretty terrible image of God and Jesus. But, you know what? John wrote this book from a place of anger. He was obviously really ticked off at Rome and really ticked off about the way his people were being treated. And so in writing from a place of anger, he wrote lots of anger and violence and revenge and blood into his story - much of that anger coming from the words and actions of God and Jesus. John's anger, though, isn't God's anger. It's not Jesus' anger. It's JOHN'S ANGER. He's the one who is angry here, not God. He's the one who is pissed, not Jesus. He's the one who wants to see bloodshed, he's the one who wants to see death and misery, he's the one who wants to see Jezebel thrown onto a bed and raped. John is the one who has created this narrative. That's ALL on John, not God and not Jesus. And so just because Revelation says something about God, that doesn't mean that it's an accurate picture of who God is and how God acts in the universe. Throw all the verses you want at me about God being angry and miserable, about God being a killing machine. I don't really care. Why? Because all of them come from the mind and hand of someone who had an ax to grind with someone ... with someone in their world, in their context, with someone that they met or experienced on their journey. They wrote that into their story about God, but I can choose to write something else into MY story about God. I can look at Revelation 2 and say that John is way off his rocker about how God and Jesus would treat Jezebel ... and I can write a different story."
When I read the Bible these days, I find myself taking this approach a lot. That might sound heretical and blasphemous to some, but it's where I'm at. Sometimes I come across verses in the Bible that make my heart sing and the hairs on my arms stand at attention. And other times? Other times I come across verses like the ones about Jesus and Jezebel and something in me rises up and says, "absolutely not. This is not God. This is not OK. This is not the Jesus in whose footsteps I walk. I refuse to believe this. I refuse to treat people like this. I refuse to follow this portrayal of God" ... and then I rewrite the story.
And really, I think this is how the Bible is meant to be used/read.
Why? Because isn't this what the Biblical writers did? Don't different parts of the Bible written by different people present God in drastically different ways? And isn't it possible (probable, I’d say) that the reason God is presented in those different ways isn't because God changed, but because the way those people saw and understood and thought about God did change? And if that's true (and I think it is), couldn't it be an invitation for you and me to take our place in this long line Biblical writers so that we can join them in imagining and wondering and thinking and dreaming about who God is?
So, yeah. I don't really care much about what the Bible says about God anymore. I love the Bible and I read it pretty much every day. But I don't feel the need to cover for God when I come across a story that presents God and Jesus in a negative light. Instead, I feel free to use my God-given imagination to rewrite the story.
Much love,
- Glenn || SUPPORT THE PROJECT
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** Bart wrote a book called “Armageddon” that explores the book of Revelation and is what springboard some of the thoughts I’m fleshing out in this post. Pick up the book, you won’t be sorry!
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PS - people ask me all the time what books I’m currently working through. Here’s a short list …
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture by Bart Ehrman
A New Spiritual Home by Hal Taussig
Voices of Gnosticism by various writers
Guided Astrology Workbook by Stefanie Caponi