Why Do We Eat?

It's such a simple question, but how many of us have ever really thought it out? Eating is something we do regardless of age, color, or culture. Sometimes it's a ritual, sometimes it's a date, and sometimes it's survival - but we all eat.

The scientific answer is fairly straightforward (if dull): The cells that comprise the human body require energy to perform their various biochemical functions; chemical processes of the body convert the energy stored in food into energy the body needs in the form of vitamins, minerals, water, fat, carbohydrates, fiber, and proteins.

(Thank you, Captain Obvious.)

So I ask again: why do we eat? It sounds like a fair enough deal. I'll eat food and the biological factory that makes me me will continue to thrive until it runs out of steam. But eating is a messy proposition. It's downright dangerous. People die every day because of food. Let's look at the various ways in which food kills us.

Larger Version

And if you can somehow manage to keep all of that straight for your entire life, you could end up eating the right food, at the right time, and with the best of intentions, and still end up choking to death.

From a purely scientific view, this makes sense. We are, after all, bound to the rules of the universe in which we live. We must eat to keep our bodies' energy cycles going, and we're just one species out of millions - not all food can or should be eaten by us. Further, the universe is an unforgiving place. Sometimes a steak is just a steak. Other times, it's a Mad Cow-infected death sentence.

Obviously, the scientific point of view doesn't work for everyone; to each his own. Being the ever-curious type, I'm left to ask: What kind of creator would design a universe with such an imperfect method of sustenance delivery? From a Christian point of view, why would God create beings in His image, claim to love them unconditionally, and then allow them to suffer and die from eon to eon?

How many people had to die through the years so we could identify which berries were off-limits? How many families have suffered because a loved one ate a bad piece of meat or had an unexpected allergic reaction? How many people are suffering this very day because they either spent life eating shitty food or were born in a place that is lucky to see food at all?

Each food-related risk could be addressed by an omnipotent being. Salmonella could be eradicated. Or made benign to humans. Or eliminated from existence altogether. Allergies? Gone. Cholesterol and poisonous mushrooms could disappear faster than Obama's birth certificate. But these things would be treating the symptom and not solving the problem.

I'll ask one more time: Why do we eat? To be clear, why do we need to eat? Couldn't God have given us the ability to absorb nutrients from the ground and the sun? Plants seem to be doing fairly well. Allow me to take it one step further: why do we need to eat at all? If God controls the universe and is the reason the laws of nature exist as they do, why not create His beloved children in an environment that can't be fouled up by the folly of man? God could give humans their own miniature fusion reactor or, even better, change the laws of physics altogether so that people had all the energy they needed for a lifetime without supplementation. If we count JUST food-borne illness in JUST the US, 6,000-9,000 people die every year. Add in allergies, obesity, heart disease, choking and starvation - and the rest of the world - and the numbers are staggering.

If humanity is here as a result of a grandiose biological "accident", we can chalk this up to growing pains and hope that one day we'll be able to cure or even prevent food-related deaths. But if this is the master plan of an intelligent designer (regardless of the name you choose to give that designer), then it's a poor intelligence indeed. 

Which explanation seems more likely?

Love, Actually...Infatuation

**This is not intended to be a full post, it's just a forum I'm using to share something I wrote somewhere else**

The movie is cute, but it just doesn't add up for me. It was very...superficial. I'll ignore all the super-convenient and horribly unbelievable movie situations and just focus on the story. I'll explain below.

The Kiera Knightly storyline:
At first glance: The dude is in love with this woman for a long time and uses the magic of Christmas to express his love with a boombox and giant flashcards. Cute.
When you think about it for more than a minute: The dude is obsessed with his best friend's girl. He never talks to her (according to her), and instead of doing the right thing and forgetting about it he continues to obsess. He's asked to videotape the wedding and instead of being a good friend and taping the wedding, he creates a tape full of spank material since he can't get over his own infatuation. I mean, I know she's hot, but give it up. What's even worse is that instead of moving on, he puts her in a horrible position by confessing his love AFTER they're married and, worse, during a family holiday. You say cute, I say douche. (And to make matters worse, instead of setting him straight and asking that he not fuck up her life, she kisses him and all but guarantees a lifetime of incessant pining and awkward situations.)

The Hugh Grant storyline:
At first glance: The guy meets a woman in the office and has to overcome office politics to make things happen. He tries to avoid it, but eventually he realizes he should go for it and goes searching town for her (since love waits for nothing). Cute.
When you think about it for more than a minute: The guy is single and in a position of power. He meets the office hottie, is turned on by her nervousness around him, and wants to bang her. When he sees another man of power hitting on her, he flips a shit and starts messing with foreign policy - that's more ape-like than it is cutesy love.

The Colin Firth storyline:
At first glance: A guy gets cheated on, moves to France to write a book, meets a beautiful woman that doesn't speak his language, learns the language, travels to her home country to save her from a shitty father and a shitty job. Cute.
When you think about it for more than a minute: The guy was just cheated on and meets a beautiful woman. He wants to bang her but can't communicate with her. He's alone and he's an author, so he learns Portuguese with the plethora of free time he has. Could they live happily every after? Absolutely - but I don't like how this is supposed to be an example of love.

The little bratty kid storyline:At first glance: A cute little kid with a dead mother is in love with a girl in his class. She doesn't know he exists, so he goes on to learn drumming (and possibly gymnastics) to impress her. His dedication and bravery are adorable. Cute.
When you think about it for more than a minute: He's a fucking child. His stepdad thinks that the best way to help him cope with the loss of his mother is to encourage him to devote his life to impressing a girl. I fully support the whole "you should tell her how you feel" approach, but this was a bit much. Forgetting the whole "break the law and ignore security rules" bit, he's sending the message to the kid that "every time you think you love someone you should do insane things," not the best lesson. Besides, what the hell does this kid know about love?

The Alan Rickman storyline:At first glance: A middle-aged man gets involved with a young secretary, while his wife tries to hold the family together. The husband is a douche, the wife is a saint.
When you think about it for more than a minute: This may actually be the most honest and realistic part of the movie and probably should have had a more prominent role.

Overall:The message in this movie seems to be that if you're young and cute, you're going to do just fine. However, if you're old and have a family, you're probably screwed. Emma Thompson, a middle-aged housewife, is losing her husband to a young office hottie, and Laura Linney, a middle-aged worker, can't act on her long-time crush because she has a sick brother. The characters in this movie, for the most part, were willing to completely change their lives for a sense of infatuation that they mistook for love. The final scene with people hugging each other in the airport actually does more to confuse the theme than it does to provide a cute wrap-up to the "love epic" I think they were going for.

1/5 stars.

Humanity Against Cards Against Humanity

...an essay about a party game for horribleish people.





Cards Against Humanity is a game. It's not played with dice or boards, but with cards and a sense of humor. It's basically Apples to Apples with political references, pop culture, racism, and sexual innuendo. It's a wildly popular game that seems to be gaining momentum.

The game's tagline is, "A Party Game for Horrible People." This is a pseudo warning that Cards is not for the easily offended. As the game relies heavily on making light of serious situations (racism, the Holocaust, diseases, death, child abuse, etc), it's a self-deprecating admission that anyone who would laugh at things like coat hanger abortions is clearly a horrible person.

I've had a number of conversations recently with people who like the game for the most part, but are particularly offended by one card or another, usually because something hits too close to home. The proximity of my life to Virginia Tech, for example, means that the "Virginia Tech Massacre" card is deeply personal to many of my friends. I know people who have removed that or other cards from the game because it would be tasteless to make a punchline out of 32 shortened lives, some of whom they may have known personally.

My problem with this is that they don't see the cognitive dissonance they must employ to keep playing the game. Auschwitz? Hilarious! Institutionalized gender discrimination? I can't contain my laughter! Virginia Tech Massacre? How dare you?!

More importantly, at its core, this is really an issue of censorship. We live in a world where we still have to fight over which books can and can't be shared in libraries and schools; if we start selectively allowing certain types of humor to be rejected by an all-too-arbitrary filter, we'll be forever bounded by our fear of ideas we don't like. As with everything else, South Park puts it succinctly - in this clip, Cartman is using people's delicate sensibilities to get not just one episode, but an entire series thrown off the air:



If everyone got to weigh in on which cards crossed their personal line, the game would be over before it began. My VT friend takes out the massacre card. My Jewish friend takes out a card about the Holocaust. Now my black friend comes over and we have to be careful not to offend him. At some point, we're just playing Apples to Apples. I'm not saying everyone should find shooting a rifle into the air while balls deep in a squealing hog funny, I'm saying that if you don't like bestiality, you shouldn't play the game at all.

People who advocate for removing the "risqué" cards do so from a false stance of moral superiority, bravely claiming that some things just shouldn't be laughed about. I submit that these people are actually missing the point entirely: we laugh when we hear "What will always get you laid? Date Rape!" not because it's funny, but because it's absurd. We laugh precisely because our moral compass is calibrated correctly and we realize just how awful the Three Fifths Compromise is. I would argue that the people who play Cards Against Humanity without shame are more equipped to handle the world's moral quandaries than those who would choose to ignore them.

Warning: Shit's About to Get Real

This isn't my typical fare. This is something else entirely - something that I saw that I can't get out of my head. Something that I'm hesitant to even share because I don't think people are ready for it. But something that I think people need to see simply because they're not ready for it. I warn you, this is graphic, unsettling, and has the potential to ruin your day. I'm not sharing this because grossing you out gives me pleasure; I'm sharing this because it's something you've almost certainly never seen before, and I think it's necessary that you see it.



I've seen plenty of gross shit on the internet before. This may not even be the worst thing I've seen, but it's a sobering reminder that the world is not full of kittens and rainbows. I comment often on Americans' preoccupation with entertainment and pop culture at the expense of world issues (hell, at the expense of American issues). I have railed the media often for propping up royal baby news or scandalous VMA performances over institutionalized government spying and perpetual, economy-devastating acts of war. On some subconscious level we all KNOW that there are parts of the world that live in squalor, whether due to poor economies, education, political unrest, or all of the above. But where the media has failed us entirely is that we have been completely sheltered from the harsh realities of what life is really like elsewhere. We're coddled by the people we pay to entertain us. They water things down into a morsel that can be more easily digested so we can get back to buying things. "Hey, consumer, look how miserable things are in this country that you couldn't point to on a map if you tried. See? Your life is pretty great, isn't it? Buy a Coke!"

I don't know the full story behind this video. I don't know if this should be blamed on the Syrian government or on the rebels. I don't know if our government and our soldiers have a moral imperative to intervene. This isn't about Obama or Democrats or Republicans. It's not even about God, gods, or religion.

This is about humanity. My Facebook feed is flooded with thoughts about politics, racism, and economic musings. When I see a video like this, I don't give a shit how many illegal immigrants are living in the US. I couldn't care less that welfare queens are living off my tax dollars, and I could live the rest of my life without hearing about race relations in America. Children are getting shot in the head for a war they couldn't possibly understand, and people here are up in arms about how the government pays for health care? When I see this video, I think that everything, absolutely everything that people complain about in life is secondary to the idea that humans can still do this to one another.

Some people are going to click play and then turn the video off. Some are going to skip the video altogether. I think that if fellow humans are being forced to live these conditions, we should have the fortitude to witness it. Watching this video evokes a range of emotions I didn't know I had. As unsettling as it is, I think it's important to see imagery like this. It should be public and it shouldn't be censored. When the news shows us a building blown up from afar, we don't see the real human cost of war. If we see more videos like this, we would likely think twice before supporting wars of any kind.

I need to watch this video to remind myself that my problems are insignificant. I need to watch this video to remind me that I am human.

Circumcision, Gay Marriage and Morality

Everyone knows not to get involved in a land war in Asia - but only slightly less well known is this: becoming a parent changes the way you see the world. For years I had accepted circumcision as a normal and even necessary part of life. It seemed so normal that I really never considered that there was a choice to be made. However, as a parent, I find myself second guessing even little things because there is nothing more important to me than the well-being of my children.

Some people won't understand a reference to the great Vizzini? INCONCEIVABLE!

 When we found out Landon was going to be a boy, I realized we had a decision to make. Naturally, I hit up the Google and started looking into my options. I can make a long story short by summing up my findings in one sentence: No major medical association in the world recommends the procedure. Suffice it to say, I couldn't justify slicing off a piece of my newborn son for what appeared to be nothing more than a brutal tradition.

I've heard all the reasons, but none of them are compelling enough to warrant a surgical knife. The most popular reasons, and my counter-argument:

1. It's healthier because...
   1a. ...an uncut penis has folds where bacteria can grow.
True, but this is easily remedied with good personal hygiene. A little extra attention is all that's required - not something that should be a problem for little boys nor grown men.

   1b. ...uncircumcised men are slightly more likely to contract an STD.
True, but this comes down to education and quality life decisions. If a man is having unprotected sex with someone with an STD, he's beyond foreskin problems.

2. Uncircumcised penises can lead to complications and require a circumcision to be performed later in life.
True, but performing preventative medical procedures because a small percentage of men will develop complications would be like carving out a little girl's breast tissue because she could one day get breast cancer (which is actually far more likely than phimosis or penile cancer).

3. Uncircumcised penises "look weird".
This is a compeltely superficial argument. Anyone who uses this to justify their actions has effectively turned their son's penis into a fashion accessory. There's no way to know what the "fashion" will be down the road, and even if there was, no sane parent would ever choose to perform surgical body modification on their child so they could "fit in" later in life.

4. Other boys will make fun of it in the locker room.
I don't know what kinds of locker rooms these people have been in, but very few children of making-fun-of-penises age spend time in locker rooms where they're getting completely naked. And the ones that do aren't just hanging around with their dicks out and comparing notes. They're not 70 year old men. (To say nothing of the fact that, statistically speaking, cut men are really the weird ones.)

No matter how you slice it (see what I did there?), cutting a body part off of a newborn child is at best a selfish, short-sighted act by the parents and at worst a human rights violation.

I've often wondered why there isn't a larger outrage about such a barbaric, out-dated practice. Hell, there's not even a discussion about it - how often do you hear people debating the merits of various penis styles? I would think that an organization with the size and influence of the Catholic Church would be all over this issue, but it seems they're far more concerned about what those infants choose to do with their penises later in life.

I've seen too many friends, family members, politicians, and clergy mount their soapboxes and tell me that homosexuality is tearing at the moral fabric of society. I realize that if people can't agree on such simple things like, "People should not be treated differently because of the color of their skin," how can I expect them to ignore one's sexual orientation? The thing I will never understand, however, is how people can turn this into an issue of morality.

A moral scholar I am not, but I think an illiterate five year old would tell you that it's bad to hurt other people. If we define morality to mean that we as sovereign individuals have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, SO LONG AS we don't infringe on others' rights to do the same, then I simply can't see homosexuality as a moral issue. If the people involved are a) adults, b) of sound mind and body, and c) consenting, then homosexuality doesn't cross the moral line. Being "icky" isn't a moral conundrum. Wanting sex without wanting children isn't hurting anyone. Making life choices that condradict the wishes of people who lived thousands of years ago is not a reason to hold back human progress.

By even the most minimal of standards, circumcision is performed on a child too young to decide and too young to protest. If the love life of two adults can be considered a moral issue, how can violating a child's bodily integrity not? To be fair, the Catholic Church no longer encourages circumcision, but as they're the ones most vocal about the impending doom wrought by the gays, shouldn't they be the ones taking the moral stand here? If they spent half the money on demonizing penis cutting as they do on keeping rings off of gay fingers, there would be a little less evil in the world. And isn't that what God is all about?

I'm Rabbi Weiss and I do NOT approve this message.

Tragedy: 4/15, 4/16, and Every Other Day

I once wrote in this space that "the more needless the death, the more severe the tragedy." While tragedy is inherently sad, I still believe that circumstances matter, and innocent lives lost to random acts of violence rank among the worst. It seems like we're mourning something every other week these days, and we're running out of colors for ribbons. With each passing tragedy, I can see changes within myself. During my short span of consciousness, I've been hardened more than anyone should, yet I can still appreciate the hardships and the loss faced daily by so many in the world, and I realize that despite our pain, we still lead rather charmed lives. I can't bring peace to the world; that's not what this post is about.

I no longer have any disillusions about where tragedy can strike. I've heard "I never thought it could happen here" enough to know that pain is geographically indifferent. Neither do I trick myself into thinking that there is some ethereal force enacting justice. I've seen horrible things happen to good people of all shapes, sizes, ages, colors, and creeds, and I've seen too many pricks outstay their welcome.

I've come to accept that life just isn't fair, no matter how much we will it to be. Luck can't be bought, it can't be reasoned with, and it can't be controlled. Life is a series of inter-connected events - some work in your favor, some don't. Thinking about it only distracts you from enjoying the short time you have. The best you can do is to not take any excessive risks (intentionally), and try to mitigate the ones you have to take (wearing a seat belt or eating healthful food regularly).

But what this constant string of tragedies has taught me most is this: the universe is a cold, uncaring place, and it's not going to wait around for you to be happy. You can't control everything, but you're in far more control than you give yourself credit for. Start making your own luck because there's no telling when yours might run out. If you want to go back to school and get your Master's degree, do it. Ask out that girl or go searching for a new job, and if neither of those things work out, keep trying. The only thing keeping you from your goals (your attainable goals) is you. And if you're going to hold a grudge, you'd better make damned sure there's a good reason for it, because I'm betting there's not.

My Virginia Tech family has been reminding us to "Live for 32", because 32 lives were taken six years ago before they were really allowed to live. I used to live for 32, but that's not good enough any more. I live for 26 children and teachers, too. And I live for five students in Illinois. I also live for three marathoners in Boston and 12 movie-goers in Colorado. I even try to live for two shoppers in Oregon and sometimes for 13 soldiers who did nothing but show up to work in the middle of America one day. I don't always succeed, but I wouldn't dare dishonor the fallen by taking a moment of my life for granted.

Tragedy is an enemy no different than Peter Pan's shadow - it exists, but it's not the shadow's fault. It's not a conscious, plotting villain; it's merely a shadow of our own imperfection, a constant reminder that the human mind is an incredibly complex force capable of things which we'd just as soon never try to comprehend. But that doesn't mean it is something to be feared. On the contrary, I try to live my life in a way that makes me work to overcome the sadness wrought by tragedy. I don't let it own me. I don't let it define me. It gives me another reason to be a force for good in the world. It gives me a reason to endure.

Unlike most, I also view the perpetrator as one of the victims. Where everyone else sees a cold-hearted bastard that caused unspeakable pain to numerous families and communities, I see a tortured soul that didn't get the help he needed. It doesn't mean that those who are caught shouldn't pay a price, but there is a sadness there that I feel often goes overlooked. I pity them because they'll never know what it is to love, and that they'll never know just how fucking beautiful the world is even on a bad day. That, to me, is the ultimate sadness.

4/15 will go down in history as a tragic day. People will remember where they were when they heard about it. 4/16 will live on inside me, burned into my innermost thoughts and emotions. 4/20. 7/7. 9/11. 6/6. 12/7. 12/14. 7/20. 2/14. Our calendars are filling up quickly. You don't need a 365 Tragedy-a-day calendar to remind you that every day is special, or that life is precious. Live well, and live for those that can't.

Introspection

I'm a difficult person to be friends with. I hold my friends to high standards - by that I mean I don't accept their bullshit excuses for not trying hard enough or not fighting for something they want. I'm honest, which doesn't often come across in a positive fashion. I give my honest opinion about their significant others, their ideas, their art, and their life choices. I want the best for my friends; why shouldn't they want the best for themselves? I ask the same of them in return, and I think I'm better for it.

It's no surprise, then, that the people with whom I get along best have skin as thick as my own. The people who dish it as good as they get it. An outsider overhearing a conversation between some of my close friends would wonder if we were friends at all - insults about overly-romantic Facebook posts, jabs about completely ludicrous theories of baseball physics, or jokes about previously failed attempts at marriage or academia. Nothing is off the table, and I would argue that our friendships are stronger because of it. We challenge ourselves to be better because we know that failure is just ammo for the others, and we can get solid advice because we know we're getting straight answers at all times.

Unfortunately, this brand of honesty takes time to flourish. As such, making new friends  - real friends - isn't easy. Putting aside the fact that time isn't always on my side, some people just don't appreciate the same level of brutal honesty that I do. I don't mind making acquaintances, but it's frustrating to keep a mental Rolodex (link provided for younger readers) of people with whom I can be ME.

Facebook is something of a mixed bag for me. I like that I can "keep up" with people that I might have otherwise lost touch with; some of my favorite conversations are with people that I rarely (if ever) see in public. The obvious drawback is that Facebook combines friends of all types into one group. I refuse to "rank" my friends, so when I post, I post to everyone. As a result, people who don't know me all that well get the full force of my opinion but lack the context that my closer friends have. I don't have a burning desire to make people like me, but for some reason, I do feel the need to make sure people understand me. As such, I'd like to dispel a few common myths.

     1. I do NOT think that religious people are stupid. I know stupid non-theists and I know smart theists. I would never, ever say that having faith makes one stupid.
     2. I do NOT think religion should be banned or made illegal, but I DO think that our government was intended to be secular and that we can only survive as a country if we prevent our government officials from endorsing specific religions through public policy.
     3. I DO think that there are many good qualities of religion and valuable lessons to be had. I just think they come at too high a price.
     4. I do NOT assume that everyone in one category is alike. All Christians don't hate gays, even though I may use gay rights as an example for why Christianity does more harm than good.
     5. I do NOT think I know the answers - I make absolutely no claims about the origin of the universe. I simply believe that a claim requires evidence to be believed, and as I have seen none, I do not believe the claims offered by the world's religions. Despite what some would have you believe, my position does not require faith - I consider myself an agnostic atheist, meaning that I don't think it can be known either way.

I hear frequently that I'm mean or disrespectful. "If you don't have anything nice to say, why say anything at all?" "Why do you have to bash other people's beliefs?" Valid points, all. To understand the answer to these questions, I must explain a bit about my life experiences. I hold no religious beliefs in a decidedly-religious country. A country that still has laws preventing non-believers from holding public office in certain places. A country that levies no taxes on churches, but allows their money to buy political influence. A country that, in my lifetime, has had a president that thinks that non-believers shouldn't be considered patriots nor citizens. People ask me why I must be critical of others' beliefs, but they never say a word when I'm told at wedding after wedding that my marriage is less important or "doesn't count" because it wasn't sanctioned by their god. No one asks me if I'm offended when non-believers are the least trusted group of people in America - tied with rapists. Please forgive me if I scoff when I hear people refer to a "war on Christmas" or that Christians are being persecuted.

Furthermore, I want to make clear that being critical of one's beliefs is not disrespecting the believer. I firmly believe that a person is more than their beliefs, and I put far more weight on someone's actions than I do on what goes on inside their heads. Many of my close friends and relatives are religious, some very much so, and it is because of our mutual respect for each other as people that we can have open and honest discussions about our beliefs.

Lastly, I want to talk about the point of all of this. I am perpetually curious - I want to know how the world works, I want to know how other people's minds work, and I want to know how I work. I live my life in a constant state of re-evaluation; I am always absorbing new data and determining how it affects even my most dearly-held views. I have never used the words, "...and nothing you say can make me change my mind." I do realize that some people don't like confrontation, and I do love a good debate more than most. However, when someone tells me that they would never trust a man to teach their young children, I simply can't accept "that's just how I feel and I don't want to argue about it." If I said, "I don't think women are fit to run businesses and I would never want to work for a woman," I hope that people would try to get to the root of that belief and help me re-evaluate my position. I don't think people get to believe things without reason. I don't think beliefs of any variety are sacred, and I think it's healthy and completely necessary to air one's views and to get feedback. If a belief is sound, it will endure, and society will benefit from the free and open exchange and honest criticism of ideas. If beliefs were sacred and unassailable, slavery would never have been quashed. Racism would be rampant and codified. Women would not be able to vote. I could never compare myself to Frederick Douglass, or Martin Luther King Jr., or Susan B. Anthony; I'm just a guy that's not afraid to ask questions about even the most personal of beliefs.

I've never stopped being someone's friend because of differing beliefs, but others have made that decision for me. I wish it wasn't the case, but some people simply don't like being challenged. I'm not always perfect, but I try to always be fair. I try not to resort to cheap shots or platitudes. But I simply can't dance around certain ideas, and I think political correctness does more to hurt the conversation than help it. I can't change the fact that I think certain things are silly or illogical. I think it's silly to rub ash on your forehead. I think it's silly to talk to the ceiling. I think it's illogical to thank God for a meal when the people in the seats worked 100 hours that week to put the food on the table. As an outsider looking in, I think a lot of the ritual seems ridiculous - but when I say it's silly, I mean to challenge the status quo in a way that only an outsider can. I laugh because it's such an alien concept to me, not because I think someone is stupid.

If you've gotten this far, just know that I value you as a friend, whether we talk once a day or once a year. I criticize because I think everything should be on the table, and I want to live in a society where the good ideas rise to the top and the bad ones don't live to see another generation. If you are confident in your beliefs and feel that you've given them the analysis they deserve, then my criticism can only serve as a way to get them some fresh air. But at the end of the day, whether you're making obnoxious, schmoopy posts to your girlfriend or chanting like a monotone robot in church, don't be surprised if I have something to say about it :-)

Guns Don't Kill People. They Don't Even Have Thumbs.

Humans have a way of falling into routines. People find something that works, then they keep doing that thing until there's a compelling reason to change (see: RickRolling, planking, Gangham Style remixes). The recent string of horrific shootings has evinced another routine:

   1. Individual with likely mental illness decides to inflict his pain on others.
   2. Media reports mostly-false information in the early moments of a developing tragedy.
   3. Media jumps to conclusions about potential motives of individual.
   4. One side of the country screams "BAN ALL GUNS NOW!"
   5. The other side of the country screams "IF EVERYONE HAD A GUN THIS WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED!"
   6. A community is left in tatters with empty beds, heavy hearts and questions that will never be answered.

Each turn around the carousel brings its own nuances, but the end result is typically the same: Nothing happens, nothing changes, and the divide between the sides grows deeper. I've noticed that the conversations tend to be centered around the same thing: laws. One side demands stricter gun laws, one side demands less-strict laws while encouraging that more people carry guns. As someone that has experienced tragedy in two places I consider home, I've had plenty of time and motivation to consider my position on the issue.

At the end of the day, all the talk about laws is political theater. Shooting up a classroom is already against the law - a super-serious law is not going to save lives. Yes, we should be careful to not hand tools of destruction to anyone that asks, but we've also seen enough examples to know that determined people find a way. The issue here is not changing the laws; indeed, the issue here is changing the culture.

Pro-gun folks will cite studies where more guns lead to reduced gun violence. While the studies are not completely conclusive, I can follow the logic. Second Amendment proponents will discuss the right to defend oneself - that, too, I support. The US is not the only place that deals with gun violence, but the US seems to stand alone when it comes to gun "culture". People  love guns. They celebrate them. They flaunt them. They bring guns to political rallies. They have gun slogans and bumper stickers. There are places on earth where people live in actual war zones - this isn't one of them.

While I don't like guns, I'm not naive enough to think they aren't in some way necessary. What I don't support is the near-erotic obsession that so much of our country has with guns. People shouldn't be proud to own a gun. It's not a badge of honor. It should be a serious and somber occasion, a silent admission that the world is fucked up and that you're not willing to roll the proverbial dice. That some people seek to harm others is one of life's saddest truths, and a gun is a physical representation of that, humanitiy's greatest weakness.

Owning a gun is a form of risk mitigation. Celebrating guns and gun ownership isolates one of our greatest flaws and glorifies it. Until we're able to treat gun ownership like the unfortunate but necessary evil that it is, we won't be able to have a real discussion about gun violence in this country.

Consistent or Convenient? You Can't Have Both

The advent of social media has allowed people to connect in a way never before possible. This connection is more intimate and far-reaching than the methods available to us just ten years ago. Through tweets and status updates, people can now open a selective window into their lives, sharing with their network everything from major life events to their nightly meal to their innermost thoughts and feelings. It is this new-found openness, perhaps, that has given me a look into how people view their world; specifically, how they view tragedy.

Tragedy is an inescapable part of life. It can take many forms, but it typically involves death and loss; the more needless the death, the more severe the tragedy. While we all have different ways of coping, the fragility of life coupled with a reminder of our own mortality is something with which we all must struggle. It is in our nature to seek answers when befallen with tragedy. Why did he shoot those people? Why did that plane crash? Why did my grandmother have cancer?

Not surprisingly, I've noticed that many people fill in the blank with God. God has a plan for everybody. God doesn't give you more than you can handle. Follow God's path and He will take care of you. These thoughts, while comforting, are entirely superficial and don't stand up to even minimal scrutiny.

I've been trying to organize my thoughts on this for a long time. I may be an asshole on occasion, but even I won't tell someone they're being irrational on their post about their cancer-stricken grandmother.

I realize that everyone views God differently, so I've broken this post into three sections that should cover almost everyone.

Possibility 1: God created the universe, the whole of mankind, and is in complete control
If you believe that God is all-powerful and in control of everything at all times, then any tragedy is, quite literally, God's fault. He decides who gets shot in a mass shooting, He decides who dies in a tornado, and He decides who gets cancer. When people who believe that God controls everything pray for victims or pray that their grandmother's cancer goes into remission, they are asking that the creator of the universe change his divine plan on their behalf. If God changes his divine plan when people get sad, then it's not a divine plan (see possibility 3). If your grandmother goes to a doctor and the treatment results in remission, thanking God would be like thanking a mechanic for fixing a problem in your car that he himself created. In fact, if your grandmother goes to a doctor at all, she has already acknowledged that she doesn't trust God to take His gift of cancer back; if she did, she wouldn't spend time or money with the doctor.

Anyone who views the world in this way is being dishonest with themselves. In their rush to be grateful for a positive outcome, people forget who put them in that position in the first place.

Possibility 2: God created the universe and the whole of mankind, but he gave humanity free will and does not interfere
Another common view of God is that he set everything in motion, but that he no longer interferes with our lives. This is more of a deist view, but I've heard plenty of Christians and Muslims state that man has free will and God can't be blamed for the vile actions of men. If we're to assume this is true, then it seems easy to dismiss the actions of a madman in a movie theater as just that. However, when these people pray for the victims or praise God for allowing the survivors to live, they're betraying their own assertions that God doesn't interfere. If God wipes his hands clean of all the evil done by man (or even by nature), then how can He be thanked for sparing the lives He didn't take? Why pray for God to watch over someone when you don't believe He interferes? To that end, why pray at all?

Possibility 3: God created the universe and the whole of mankind, and he interferes on occasion
This possibility leaves some gray area. If God interferes occasionally, then people would feel the need to pray as a sort of lottery ticket in hopes that their prayers are the ones answered. Let's assume for the sake of argument that in this view of the world, God doesn't give people cancer nor does he schedule mass shootings or earthquakes. However, we do know that people die constantly from cancer, shootings, and earthquakes. The conclusions that can be drawn from this are few: 1) God could indeed prevent the cancer, shooting, or earthquake from ever happening, but He chooses not to. This calls into question the love and compassion so often attributed to His glory. 2) God only occasionally intervenes, saving some from pain and death and willfully allowing the rest to suffer. Now, if God simply allowed only the bad people to die in these events, I could go along with it. However, unless God intentionally packed 2,996 sinners into the World Trade Center at once, then we have to admit that God can prevent tragedy from befalling good people, but does not. When your grandmother's cancer is cured, what do you say to the people in the next room? "God loves us more than He loves you!"? When you say, "Grandma is better, thank you for your prayers, God is good!" you're reminding anyone that has ever suffered a tragedy that God is not ALWAYS good. And if you take this one step further - say you find yourself in Africa having a conversation with a child that will likely not see his 8th birthday - when you say, "Grandma is better! God is good!" what are you really saying to that child?

Regardless of which view is taken, it's obvious that people can't have their communion wafer and eat it too. If God is to be thanked for life's victories, then He must also be blamed for life's tragedies. When you give God credit for the good things in your life, think about what you're saying to the mother whose child didn't survive its birth. When you say "God is good," think about what you're saying to the rape victim. When you speak of God's love, pretend you're standing in front of the village that has never even seen clean water.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter who's calling the shots. Eventually, we'll all find out - but in the meantime, look in the mirror and realize that you're the one in control today. Not of everything, of course, but certainly how you react to the events of the world. If we all appreciated the fact that our actions are interconnected, we'd be far more willing to use our actions to control our world instead of shifting responsibility to an ethereal being. We can't prevent tsunamis, but we can build better roads and buildings and communications systems so they're no longer a threat.

Our lives may or may not be scripted on the back of God's napkin - but the world would be a better place if we acknowledged that we were the ones with editorial control.

Dearly Beloved...Come to the Salvation Expo this Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAAAY!

I've attended many religious wedding ceremonies in the past. Some are longer or more intense than others, but for the most part, they're all pretty much the same. When I attended one last weekend, I got what I was expecting: chanting, droned group responses, choreographed standing and sitting rituals, and embarrassingly little information about the couple for whom we had gathered. With experience comes wisdom, and during this lap around the Christian nuptial track I noticed something that hadn't quite struck me before. Somewhere between losing count of the references to God vs. references to the real-life people whose love we were celebrating (I got to about 60 to 2) and being warned about the "lies of the secular world", I realized that I was sitting right in the middle of an infomercial.

The sales pitch isn't obvious or in-your-face. The priest doesn't Billy Mays his product nor throw in a bonus soul for the first 50 customers. The sale is much more subtle than that.

Hidden among the promises the participants (I'd have forgotten their names had I not known them  personally) make to each other is the promise to raise their children in the faith. This is a promise to the Church, to God, that the newlyweds will commit their children to the Church's particular religion from birth. Baptism, Sunday school, communion, confirmation. The Church is locking in customers before they exist - if Coca Cola or Pepsi could figure out how to hook their product up in utero they still wouldn't beat the promise of yet-to-be-conceived people. Cable companies offer discounts to people who sign up a certain distance in the future; cruise lines offer you a discount on a future cruise if you commit to it today; it's no wonder Churches want to get their commitments early.

Implicit in the requirement to make this promise is the idea that a child allowed to make his own choices may choose to follow one of the hundreds of other religions available to him or, worse, no religion at all. Being forced to compare religions (or denominations within one religion) forces you to evaluate them objectively without having an emotional attachment to one in particular. That's not to say that freedom to choose a religion leads to atheism, but at the very least a child that's free to choose is more likely to choose the one that suits him best, not the one that his parents committed him to before he was old enough to join the fallopian swim team.

As a parent of two young children, I can say that I have big dreams for them and that I will do my best to share my experiences and values with them. I have literally no idea what choices they will make in the next five minutes, much less when they're old enough to choose a spiritual path. I wouldn't dare promise their loyalty to anyone or any idea; to do so would diminish their individuality. I can no more choose their religion than I can choose their future spouse; to do otherwise would be controlling to the extreme or, at the very least, shameless indoctrination.

If people were given the chance to embark on their own spiritual journeys, they might be more sympathetic to those who choose to follow a different path. I have no way of knowing which path(s) my children will choose; I can only hope that one day they thank me for not allowing anyone to call spiritual 'dibs' on them before they were born.

Numbers: 1-36

Numbers! The engineer in me was excited to discover God's mathematical construct of the universe. I was looking forward to seeing the greats: origins of Newton's laws of physics, pi, the golden ratio, perhaps even the grand unified theory! Alas, I didn't even get a simple quadratic equation. The book of Numbers finds our heroes on their way to the promised land, led by Commander Moses and High Priest Aaron. God orders a series of censuses (thus "Numbers") and a number of challenges spring up along the way. Will our heroes make it to the land promised them by the Almighty? Tune in to find out...

The Good:
The book of Numbers opens with a command from God for Moses to start counting his people and dividing them into families or "clans". Only men were counted, and only those older than 20 (I could speculate as to why the women were left out, but I'll refrain). Most civilized peoples have some form of a census today; the ability to keep track of your people is good. We also see a few repeat themes from Leviticus: the quarantine of those with skin diseases, discharges, or anyone who came into contact with a dead body. They even took precautions with any soldier that killed another during a battle. Their knowledge of medicine was primitive, but they did the best they could since God hadn't yet invented antibiotics. We also see some repeats of legal procedures from Leviticus pertaining to paying back, with damages, those you've wronged. It seems ours isn't the only litigious society known to history. There are also a few laws dealing with murder, but the eye-for-an-eye approach sanctioned here wouldn't fly these days.


The Bad:
Unfortunately, Numbers picks up where Leviticus left off. There are enough animal sacrifices requested/performed to make even the Man vs. Food guy sick. A number of laws would never be passed today, especially the ones that treat women like lesser citizens.

Numbers 5 lays out, in detail, what a man is to do should he suspect his wife of adultery. He is to bring her to the priest (with a small court fee, of course), where the priest will make her drink a mixture of holy water, dirt, and the ink used to write her "curses" on a scroll. If no harm comes to her, she will be deemed innocent. If she miscarries a baby and her abdomen swells, then the curse has successfully punished the adulteress. Allow me to point out that a man need only suspect his wife of straying to put her through this test. The last line of the chapter says it all: "The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin." This sounds an awful lot like the witch trials of old, no? A suspected witch would be shackled and thrown into a lake. If she was indeed a witch, she would rise up and save herself. If she was, in fact, innocent, she would die, but her name would be cleared. I have no idea what effect this water/dirt/ink concoction would have on a woman, but shouldn't an all-powerful and merciful God be able to skip a potentially dangerous test to prove one's guilt?

Numbers 30 explains how not even a woman's vow to God is allowed without the express consent of her father or her husband.

Numbers 9 has God explaining that his people are to celebrate Passover during a specific time of year. Everyone loves holidays - how could this be a bad thing? Anyone who doesn't celebrate and has no good excuse, they are to be "cut off from their people". "YOU WILL HAVE A PARTY AND LIKE IT. ALSO, PAY ME A COVER CHARGE."

Numbers 36, following the previously-established themes of bloodline importance, instructs women in control of their own land (due to having no brothers or living male relatives) to marry within their fathers' clans so that each separate inheritance would remain with each family, never changing hands between clans. God would prefer incest to confused property lines (the girls go on to marry their cousins - sorry George Michael, you were born a few centuries too late).

Numbers 14, when the Israelites hear about a civilization ahead of them that seems powerful enough to destroy them, they cry out in fear that "Our wives and children will be taken as plunder," clearly well-versed in God's rules of war. Later, in Numbers 31, they conquer a civilization and proceed to kill the men, children, and non-virgin women while keeping the virgins and splitting them among their citizens with the rest of the "spoils". We all may be God's children, but some of us were created to be slaughtered.

Numbers 25 shows us what happens when the Israelites try to intermingle with an inferior subset of humanity. When they started sleeping with the "enemy", God commanded that they were to die, and one of Aaron's priest sons killed two of them with a spear, which ended the plague that God had sent to punish them for these misdeeds. God killed 24,000 of his own favorite children to prove his point.

Numbers 15 quite clearly states that anyone working on the Sabbath should be stoned to death by the community. Goodbye college football.


General Thoughts:
Numbers is a long book, and in it we see many themes.

1. Nepotism: Again we see that Moses, his brother Aaron, and Aaron's children have been given powerful priest positions in the community. Only these people can speak with God, and everyone else must take them at their word. When God needed to choose someone to take some of the people's anger away from Moses, he didn't come out and tell the people - he had each family give Moses a staff, and whichever one "bloomed" overnight would determine who the next leader would be. With little surprise, Aaron's staff was the lucky one. The system was created in such a way that the priests were to collect the offerings and keep them for themselves. In legal proceedings, no matter who won, the priest always won. Every message from God was filtered through them, and they happened to gain personally at every turn.
2. Hyper-specificity: God seems fickle, to say the least. There are times when he is broad, and others when he is incredibly hyper-specific. In Numbers, he goes so far as to make sleeping arrangements for each clan. He also determines that the Levites are to be responsible for the care of the temple, and assigns each family to a specific task. At one point (Num 15:37) he even creates a dress code so that his people will wear tassels on their clothing to remind them not to disobey. That's right...the Israelites had flair.
3. Strict communication rules: God has a way to do things and you're not to fuck with it. On at least six separate occasions (in the book of Numbers alone) God reminds people (through Moses and/or Aaron) that anyone who approaches the temple, sees something they shouldn't, or interferes with those responsible for maintaining it will be put to death immediately. God is, for all intents and purposes, inaccessible to anyone but Moses's family.
4. Forced happiness: God doesn't like complaining. 
• In Num 11, when people started complaining, God sent fire to burn their camp, and only Moses's begging convinced Him to put the fire out. 
• When they went on to complain about not having any food, God, in his anger, agreed to send them meat: "You will not eat it for just one day, or two days, or five, ten or twenty days, but for a whole month — until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it." God took the "If you like smoking so much, why don't you just smoke the whole pack right now?" approach to parenting because his children selfishly asked him for food during their life-long journey through the desert. He then proceeded to strike them with a plague for eating the meat he sent. This was clearly upsetting to the people, so when Aaron and sister questioned God about why he only speaks through Moses and not them...
• He gave Miriam leprosy and condemned her to quarantine for a week (Num 12). 
• In Num 20, the people asked for water. God told Moses and Aaron to break open a rock that would provide water for the people and their livestock, and because of their audacity to ask for water while traveling through the desert, God promised that none of them would live to see the land at the end of the journey on which He was leading them. 
• Shortly after, the people complained about a lack of bread and water. In response, God sent poisonous snakes to kill them. Only after Moses prayed did God remove the snakes instruct Moses to create a bronze snake statue that would cure anyone who was bitten by having them look at the statue (Num 22).
5. Dissenters: When the people started to wonder why God was putting them through this arduous journey, God answered by promising them that they would never live to see the land he was leading them to (Num 14). He would make them wander for 40 years until the last of them died, their children suffering all the while. He then cast "plague" on the two scouts who had come back from their trip with doubts about their ability to take over the villages ahead (it was super effective!). Two chapters later, when some of the Levites began to question their role as de facto slaves in Moses's plan, he told them to gather in the morning while burning incense, and God would choose one of them to be holy - God proceeded to open the earth to swallow them and their associates with Moses reminding everyone that only Aaron and his family were allowed to burn incense for the Lord (despite his instruction to them to do so). God went on to kill 15,000 more people for questioning his decision to kill those that questioned him in the first place.
6. Israelites vs. the World: This chapter puts to bed any doubt about which child is God's favorite. Despite the flourishing of Noah's other descendants elsewhere in the world, God is determined to lead one part of the family tree to a specific piece of land no matter how many of his other children must die in the process. He leads them from village to village, guaranteeing victory when the odds seem stacked against them, and instructing them to murder and pillage as they go. There is even a brief introduction to the only person not in Moses's family that has a direct line to God. This man is asked by a sitting king to bless his own people and curse the Israelites, but he agrees to be God's double agent (really) and continues to bless the Israelites despite the king's promise of riches for cursing them. As thanks for being God's voice and representation in this matter, he was killed.
7. God even goes so far as to threaten his own people for not taking out an entire civilization:

          Num 33:55

‘But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will give you trouble in the land where you will live. And then I will do to you what I plan to do to them.’

          "KILL THEM OR I'LL KILL YOU."


10 Second Version:
Here's the short version of where we are now: God created the universe, all animals and mankind, killed almost everything save for some animals and one family of people, sent one set of the survivor's descendants into slavery for 400 years, saved them from slavery, and now demands constant thanks and praise for it through groveling and the smell of burning animals. The one man he chooses to talk to and his family relayed all the rules from the creator, they need food and money from the rest, and if the people don't listen, they will be punished beyond belief. God has a piece of land with their name on it and he will guide them through the desert for many years to "their" land and He will help them slay their distant cousins that got there first. Also, anyone who set out on the journey originally will be killed before they reach their destination for asking for food and water along the way. With me so far?

Rating: 2.5/10
While the census is in fact a good idea, it doesn't redeem the rest of the book that's full of strange requests and needless death. It could make for a decent movie, but I would need Michael Bay for the action, Scorcese for the drama, Jack Nicholson as an old, scary, and devious Moses, Matt Damon as his priestly-but-shady younger brother Aaron, and Heath Ledger channeling his Joker-wanting-to-watch-the-world-burn performance as God. "Wanna see a magic trick?" ::destroys world::

Open Questions:

1. First and most importantly: If God is commanding Moses to count his people and even taking the trouble to give him the names of the people that are to help him, why not just tell him how many people there are? Surely it took some time to count 600,000 people - what of the boys who turned 20 during the count, or those that died before it was completed?
2. Why would people need to be quarantined from camp for skin diseases and the like? Couldn't God have cured them or told them how to make medicine?
3. Num 7: "When Moses entered the tent of meeting to speak with the LORD, he heard the voice speaking to him from between the two cherubim above the atonement cover on the ark of the covenant law. In this way the LORD spoke to him." How did the LORD speak to him before the tent of meeting was built?
4. Why did God use a fiery cloud to communicate to the camp when it was time to move on, yet need Moses and Aaron to translate his every other desire?
5. In Num 27, why did God need Moses to pass the torch to Joshua? If Joshua is to take over, surely God would be able to tell him directly.
6. In Num 13, why would God order Moses to send a scout team to the next village? God must know what lies ahead and he can prepare His people with what information (if any) they need.
7. It's never explained why God a) chose one branch of a family tree at the cost of cutting off all others, b) has a specific piece of land in mind for that branch (despite the constant promises of "milk and honey"), or c) needed them to endure hundreds of years of slavery, torture, and needless death to get there.
8. Is God's law regarding a woman's infidelity (Num 5) indisputable proof of God's support of abortion?

Next up: Deuteronomy!

Leviticus: 1-27

Holy animal sacrifices Batman! The book of Leviticus is another book of law from the Old Testament, and it is packed with animal sacrifices. If PETA knew about this, they would spray red paint on any church they could find. In Leviticus, we find our heroes newly settled in the land God led them to, and now God tells Moses what laws to give to the people. As usual, I'll highlight the good and the bad and ask questions along the way. This one is a little heavy on the direct quotes, simply because I couldn't bear to dilute the message by paraphrasing.

The Good:
This is tough. I knew going in that the OT was going to be rough, and Leviticus did nothing but confirm that. Some of the laws are good ones and demonstrate the ideas of "fairness" that are still present today. If someone kills one of your animals, they owe you another. If someone damages your property, they must pay for the damages + a little extra. Don't kill other people. Don't sleep with a guy's wife. These are all good things. There even seems to be a hint of medical awareness as Leviticus 7 says, "The fat of an animal found dead or torn by wild animals may be used for any other purpose, but you must not eat it." It also forbids eating animals after a certain amount of time. It even discusses what to do with people who have skin sores/boils, and commands them to quarantine people with certain conditions so as not to infect the village. The descriptions of the diseases are primitive and the treatments are lacking, but the laws seem to be in place to prevent the spread of disease.

We also have good laws like Leviticus 18:7 - "Do not dishonor your father by having sexual relations with your mother. She is your mother; do not have relations with her." Advice we can all live by.

There is also a very interesting concept presented here that deserves mention. The concept of "Jubilee." Basically, people would work as usual for 50 years, and then every fiftieth year everything would be "reset" as it was on day one. Any property that traded hands during that time would be returned to the original owners and everything would start again. Anything sold would be prorated for the amount of time left before Jubilee.

The idea behind it is summed up by God in Lev 25:23 - “The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers."

Another piece of this that I like is Lev 25:35-38 -

If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and are unable to support themselves among you, help them as you would a foreigner and stranger, so they can continue to live among you. Do not take interest or any profit from them, but fear your God, so that they may continue to live among you. You must not lend them money at interest or sell them food at a profit. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.

This is sort of the anti-Capitalism. "Work, live, and be happy, but every 50 years we're going to return to the beginning so that there is not a massive chasm between the rich and the poor." Very interesting concept. God is a socialist - who knew?

The Bad:
Leviticus sets a lot of bad precedents. Up to this point, God would immediately kill anyone who didn't listen to him. In Leviticus, God creates a loop hole.

Lev 4:3-6 - If the anointed priest sins, bringing guilt on the people, he must bring to the LORD a young bull without defect as a sin offering for the sin he has committed. He is to present the bull at the entrance to the tent of meeting before the LORD. He is to lay his hand on its head and slaughter it there before the LORD. Then the anointed priest shall take some of the bull’s blood and carry it into the tent of meeting. He is to dip his finger into the blood and sprinkle some of it seven times before the LORD, in front of the curtain of the sanctuary.

Lev 4:13-15 - If the whole Israelite community sins unintentionally and does what is forbidden in any of the LORD’s commands, even though the community is unaware of the matter, when they realize their guilt and the sin they committed becomes known, the assembly must bring a young bull as a sin offering and present it before the tent of meeting. The elders of the community are to lay their hands on the bull’s head before the LORD, and the bull shall be slaughtered before the LORD.

Lev 4:22-24 - When a leader sins unintentionally and does what is forbidden in any of the commands of the LORD his God, when he realizes his guilt and the sin he has committed becomes known, he must bring as his offering a male goat without defect. He is to lay his hand on the goat’s head and slaughter it at the place where the burnt offering is slaughtered before the LORD. 

Lev 4:27-29 - If any member of the community sins unintentionally and does what is forbidden in any of the LORD’s commands, when they realize their guilt and the sin they have committed becomes known, they must bring as their offering for the sin they committed a female goat without defect. They are to lay their hand on the head of the sin offering and slaughter it at the place of the burnt offering.

These passages bring up two main concerns. First, they specify "and the sin they have committed becomes known." Despite the fact that God knows everything, once the village finds out about your transgressions, only then will you have to pay for it. Second, and most importantly, we see the true problem with this system. It admits the possibility that humans aren't perfect (which is OK), but it also clears the way for people to sin at will. It puts a price on sin, and allows people to trade bad behavior for livestock. Not only does this bring unnecessary harm to the animals, but it gives the richer people a clearer path to do as they please. Imagine if our laws were only punished by fines - anyone with a large amount of money could break the law all the time, while the poor people would be forced to live with their disregard for the law (like Wall St. executives). Why would God want a system that favored one class of people over another (you know, except for the whole choosing Israelites over Noah's other descendants thing)?

Another concern I have here goes back to the logistics of the setup. First, almost every decree from God (through Moses) ends with "I am the LORD your God," like God is suddenly afflicted with low self-esteem and needs to keep reminding people why they should be listening to him. Second, there is a very large amount of favoritism here - Moses speaks God's word, his brother becomes the high priest, and his nephews become the other priests. The offerings all go to the priests.

Lev 7:35-36 - This is the portion of the food offerings presented to the Lord that were allotted to Aaron and his sons on the day they were presented to serve the Lord as priests. On the day they were anointed, the Lord commanded that the Israelites give this to them as their perpetual share for the generations to come. 

Lev 22:10 - No one outside a priest's family may eat the sacred offering, nor may the guest of a priest or his hired worker eat it.  

Lev 22:10 is immediately corrected by 22:11 when it makes an exception for the priest's slaves (naturally). There's also a caveat about disabled people that's rather cold:

Lev 21:16-23 - The Lord said to Moses, "Say to Aaron: 'For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the food offerings to the Lord. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God. He may eat the most holy food of his God, as well as the holy food; yet because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary. I am the Lord, who makes them holy.'"

It seems that though man is made in God's image, He gets creeped out by the deformed people that He creates. I mean, who hasn't felt a little strange around someone with a mangled hand? It just seems a little cold for a loving god, doesn't it?

Lastly, there is a large portion of Leviticus that discusses cleanliness. There are many rules to follow, and each action has a prescription to clean the uncleanliness. These are mostly innocuous; some relate to skin rashes and the like, others deal with touching dead animals or bugs. There are, however, a few that really stand out.

Lev 15:19-24 - When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening. Anything she lies on during her period will be unclean, and anything she sits on will be unclean. Anyone who touches her bed will be unclean; they must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. Anyone who touches anything she sits on will be unclean; they must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. Whether it is the bed or anything she was sitting on, when anyone touches it, they will be unclean till evening. If a man has sexual relations with her and her monthly flow touches him, he will be unclean for seven days; any bed he lies on will be unclean. 

Lev 12:1-6 - The Lord said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites: 'A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period. On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised. Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over. If she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean, as during her period. Then she must wait sixty-six days to be purified from her bleeding. When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering.

I dislike Aunt Flo as much as anyone, but here we see that even though God created women and gave them periods, he condemns them to be "unclean" during their natural monthly cycle. If this isn't sexist enough, he also condemns them to twice the uncleanliness should they give birth to a daughter. Why am I the only one enraged by this idea? Why aren't women everywhere speaking up about how absurd this is?

General Thoughts:
In Leviticus 10, the Lord seems to be having a bad day. He kills two of Aaron's four children because they "offered unauthorized fire" before the Lord. He then creates a few new rules and threatens immediate death - different from the sin/offer method outlined in the same book.

Lev 10:6-9 - Then Moses said to Aaron and his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, "Do not let your hair become unkemptt and do not tear your clothes, or you will die and the Lord will be angry with the whole community. But your relatives, all the Israelites, may mourn for those the Lord has destroyed by fire. Do not leave the entrance to the tent of meeting or you will die, because the Lord's anointing oil is on you." So they did as Moses said. Then the Lord said to Aaron, "You and your sons are not to drink wine or other fermented drink whenever you go into the tent of meeting, or you will die. This is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come."

Also, on the topic of burnt offerings - the only explanation given is that the Lord is pleased by the smell. Is there anything more human than the notion that an all-powerful, all-knowing creator just happens to love the smell of cooked food? At one point, the Lord even threatens to stop being pleased by the aroma:

Lev 26:27-31 - "'If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you. I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will take no delight in the pleasing aroma of your offerings."

 My amateur translation attempt: "Cut the shit, or I'll stop letting you please me."

And here, the theme of slavery comes full circle. Slavery seemed to be a natural way of life earlier on, but here God gives explicit instructions:

Lev 25:44-46 -  Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

A few sentences later, it all becomes clear:

Lev 25:55 - ...for the Israelites belong to me as servants. They are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

We also see the beginnings of a reward system being put into place (Heaven and Hell aren't here yet). I won't quote the full passages, but a quick comparison of word counts will give you an idea: It takes 255 words to describe how God will reward you for following his decrees, and 865 words to describe how God will punish those that disobey him.

10 Second Version:
Here's the short version of where we are now: God created the universe, all animals and mankind, killed almost everything save for some animals and one family of people, sent one set of the survivor's descendants into slavery for 400 years, saved them from slavery, and now demands constant thanks and praise for it through groveling and the smell of burning animals. The one man he chooses to talk to and his family relayed all the rules from the creator, they need food and money from the rest, and if the people don't listen, they will be punished beyond belief. With me so far?

Rating: 3/10

There seems to be a little common sense provided here in order to maintain a relatively successful civilization, but to ignore millennia of medical knowledge and social equality would be silly. While some of the suggestions remain useful today, I can't imagine passing the book of Leviticus on to a child as a guide to life.

Open Questions:

• In Leviticus 22:12, it says, "If a priest's daughter marries anyone other than a priest..." Up to this point, the only priests are all members of the same family. Are priest's families set up like incestuous royalty?

NEXT UP: Numbers

Adventures in Boredom

I keep getting calls from some bullshit pharmacy. Today, I decided to just waste their time. I got prices, asked questions, and placed an order for almost $1000 worth of Xanax, Valium, Cialis, and Lorazepam. This went on for 10 minutes. I tell him I'm ready to place my order, and he asks me for my info. I come up with:

Michael Krishna
905 H St.
Washington, DC 20002

95 years old, 6'8", 285 lbs

I give him a credit card number: 1234. "uh huh."  5678. "got it." 9000. "last 4?" 1234. "Expiration date?" 11/12. "cvv?" 123.

....

"Sir, do you really want medication?"

"Nope, but since you refuse to stop calling me, I figured I'd at least waste your time. That was 10 minutes you could have spent harassing other people."

Then he tells me that he can call me any time any day, and he loved his job because he could call assholes like me. I told him I had a great time and looked forward to helping him not sell meds.

Victory!

Funerals

(This post is meant as an aside to the main blog. Your regularly-scheduled Bible reviews will return shortly.)

Funerals suck. There is no good reason to be at a funeral (unless you happen to be a funeral director). Funerals remind us that life is short, and every moment is precious. When you're at a funeral, you're not thinking about a boss you dislike or about a promotion you didn't get. You're not dreading your next mortgage payment or wondering when your car will finally hug its last curve. You're celebrating a life, remembering the good times and figuring out how to cope with the loss that you're all feeling. It's a time to celebrate, and a time to reflect. It's a time to face the reality that life isn't guaranteed and that it's certainly not permanent - a fact we generally spend our days trying to forget.

It reminds us that one of life's most basic questions has one of the most elusive answers: What happens when we die? The only thing we know for sure is that no one knows for sure.

Death and grief are highly personal, and must be dealt with in whatever way(s) each individual finds the most helpful. Religion is one of the ways that people cope with the loss of a loved one, and I can't blame them for that. I understand our innate desire to make sense of it all. What I've noticed during my funeral experiences is that, in our insatiable need to explain and cope with death, we end up losing something important along the way; the person we're mourning.

Too often I've seen funerals play out like an extended infomercial for whichever religion is running the event (I've been to Catholic, Christian, and Jewish funerals). The whole experience is about 90% God and 10% loved one. The rites and rituals are so elaborate and regimented that the priest just fills the departed's name into the blank like a morose Madlib. The occasion feels very formulaic and highly impersonal. Every so often someone will step up to say a few words about the departed, but it feels like an afterthought to the rest of the ritual.

It is these "afterthoughts" that should really be the primary focus of contemporary funerals. They're highly personal and accessible to everyone that knew the deceased, regardless of personal belief or religious preference. If you choose to believe that God has a place for our souls everlasting, and that your loved ones are now enjoying the kingdom that God has for us, that's wonderful! Make the funeral about the person we just lost, not about one possible outcome of the manifestation of our fears.

But, in the words of the great Dennis Miller, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong.


Epilogue:
For my own funeral, I've made it quite clear to my wife how things are to be handled:

My body should be donated to science, where it can be used to help someone make someone else's life better. I don't need people to gather in a creepy, characterless room that hasn't been redecorated since the 70's. I don't need people to spend money on flowers that are comically overpriced and about to die. I don't need anyone reading anything from any spiritual book. I don't need anyone to give my body a final tour of the town (though I do quite like the idea of getting to ignore red lights and stop signs). I didn't need anyone to plan my wedding, and I certainly don't need anyone planning my funeral. Anyone who wants to celebrate my life (or my death) should gather at someone's house or a bar where they can share stories about the best (and worst) times. It'll be cheap, it'll be fun, and I wish there was a way for me to enjoy it as much as everyone else will.

Exodus: 1-40

Now that's what I'm talking about. We're finally getting into a little substance here! The book of Exodus begins with the Isrealites (the descendants of Abraham's grandson Jacob) being forced into slavery by the king of Egypt for being too...fertile. It ends with Moses and his followers, freed, setting up shop to worship the Lord without the slavemasters of Egypt.

Exodus is more complex than Genesis, so I'll do my best to keep my thoughts organized.

The Good:

Compared to Genesis, Exodus reads like an episode of the Care Bears - there is far less raping, pillaging, and murdering. There are still some pretty bad things happening, but the story is a good one, and would make for a good movie. We get to see the characters continue their journey, and, more importantly, we start to understand the point to the overall story. Exodus contains the creation and the delivery of the ten commandments, so we also have something useful to life beyond the context of the story. Exodus also explains the origin of some of the Jewish holidays, and it's always nice to get some historical context for things that still occur today.

The Bad:

My major issue with Exodus isn't the believability of the actual events (plagues, commandments from God, etc), but with the consistency and the motivations of God. I found myself wondering if the two books even refer to the same god. Details below.

General Thoughts:


   Favoritism: The Bible illustrates the most profound case of nepotism in history. In Genesis 6, God decides that humanity has descended into wickedness and he regrets creating them. He spares Noah and his family because he was a "righteous" man. Noah's three sons and their wives are saved on the ark, and go on to repopulate the world (Genesis 9). Then, in Genesis 12, God communicates with Abram directly (a descendant of one of Noah's sons) for apparently no reason, and then establishes a covenant with him in Genesis 17 promising success for him and his descendants. From this point on, it is Abraham and his family that seem to have the direct line to God, and anyone else is just standing in their way. Why would God create humanity, destroy it, and then choose one family from what was left to be his favorite? This is a large enough "plot hole" to distract from the goal at hand.


   The Same God?: In Genesis, God is very clear about his powers and his willingness to use them. He wipes out the entire world with a flood (Genesis 7), destroys entire cities (Genesis 19), and turns Lot's wife into a pillar of salt for disobeying him (Genesis 19). However, in Exodus, God sees his chosen people suffer under the chains of slavery for 430 years (Exodus 12). He doesn't free them. He doesn't destroy the leaders of Egypt that act against his wishes. He sends Moses to use "tricks" to convince Pharaoh to let the slaves go. With each plague, Pharaoh's response is the same: his magicians could accomplish the same things, so he doesn't believe that God's hand is present. So I have to ask - why the games? Why send Moses to convince Pharaoh? Why not communicate with Pharaoh directly, or just skip the whole deal and enact his will as per usual? Worse, in trying to convince Pharaoh, how many Egyptian citizens suffered needlessly for God to make a point he could have made just as simply otherwise? Why slaughter the firstborn sons of an entire people for the actions of their leaders? Further, what was the point of taking gold and silver from the people? Haven't they suffered enough?

   Creation vs. creation: Once Moses finally leads his people to their destination, the rest of the book consists of how best to worship the Lord.

Words used to describe the creation of the universe, the earth, its plants, animals, fish, birds, and its first human inhabitants: ~1,417

Words used to describe the design and building of God's first temple: ~8,440

Creating the world and immensely complex biological and ecological systems? Piece of cake - but those curtains and priestly robes are the tricky part!

   Suspicion: There are a few places in Exodus where my sense of caution is heightened because, as I put myself in the shoes of the people in the story, I feel like I'm being duped. This guy, Moses, heads up to the top of the mountain, expressly forbids anyone except his brother from joining him, and then comes back with a long list of laws I'm supposed to follow on penalty of death. Also, the creator of the heavens and earth suddenly has an interest in "atonement money" (Exodus 30).

Rating: 4/10

Good story, but if the world as we know it were to be destroyed and a new civilization were to one day discover the Bible, Exodus wouldn't add much value to their lives.

Open questions:

• Why would God create man in His (perfect) image, and then demand that we cut a piece of our penises off?
• Why is God obsessed with burnt animal offerings?
• Why does God need the people to put marks of blood on the houses so he will know to pass over them? How could God not know who lives where?

Genesis: 1-50

Book 1 is complete. I knew that this would be an experience, but I'm not sure I was prepared for what I've committed to. I knew that I would read things that would make modern-day people cringe, but I didn't expect to hit them all in the same book.

The good:

There isn't any here. I tried, but the book of Genesis contains absolutely nothing of value. There is no lesson here that should be passed on to future generations, nor any values or virtues that add to the quality of human life.

The bad:

Where to begin? The stories contained in Genesis are teeming with all of humanity's worst qualities. They're not even presented in a way that displeases God - the terrible actions in this book are committed, rewarded, or otherwise encouraged by the Almighty himself.

As far as the creation portion of this book, I can only say this: If the world was indeed created by God, it most certainly wasn't done in the ways described here. Every claim made in this book is demonstrably false.

Rating: 0/10

Lifespans over 900 years. Jealousy. Murder. Sexism. Genocide. Ritual sacrifice. Incest. Rape. Incestuous rape. Slavery. Racism. Deception. Nepotism. Vengeance. Prostitution. Polygamy. There are no lessons here. No examples to pass to our children. In fact, if the book of Genesis was made into a movie, the MPAA wouldn't give it any less than an NC-17 rating. And we think that the word "nigger" in Huck Finn is bad?

Open questions:
Adam is created from the ground. Eve is created from Adam. Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Abel. Suddenly, we hear of Cain's wife. Where did his wife come from?

Next up: Exodus 1

Introduction

Those who know me best are going to wonder, "Why, of all people, would you want to read the Bible?"

There are myriad reasons, from being able to better refute Christian fundamentalism to being able to claim something most others can't. As someone who grew up with absolutely no Christian influence, I would like to view the Bible objectively and through the eyes of an adult. I plan to approach it with an open mind, and I look forward to the discussions to which this journey will lead me.

I will post a "review" of each book as I complete them, from the Old Testament through the New Testament. I will read each testament as stand-alone literary works, and not judge them based on the actions of those who follow them. I will try to avoid pointing out tiny errors or harping on minor issues, but I will be rating each book based on their content and overall contribution to society.

I'm not expecting to walk away from this experience as a religious individual, but I hope that this endeavor will add to my experience of the world and help me appreciate the historical relevance of something that has been the source of so much simultaneous joy and destruction.