Tag: punishment

Deuteronomy Chapters 28, 29, & 30

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This has nothing to do with the post.

I was wrong about Chapter 28. Yes, it takes up a lot of pages and uses lots of words, but it’s all was just about how God will punish the Israelites if they don’t keep all of his commandments. Some of these punishments have to do with agriculture, was, and weather. In other words, things that are out of the sole control of any one group of people. Many of the punishments are truly cruel, like:

41You shall have sons and daughters, but they shall not remain yours, for they shall go into captivity.

Bibles, Harper . NRSV Bible with the Apocrypha (p. 483). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Later in verse 53, they are told that they will cannibalize their own children.

53In the desperate straits to which the enemy siege reduces you, you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your own sons and daughters whom the LORD your God has given you.

Bibles, Harper . NRSV Bible with the Apocrypha (p. 484). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

They will also refuse to feed their own families. This chapter is nothing more that gratuitous torture porn, where the author just thinks of all the absolute worst things that would happen and that’s exactly what God will do if don’t follow every word of every law. If we go from Exodus 20 to Deuteronomy 26, and follow every law, I’m sure we would break a few laws due to contradiction. Personally, I cannot abide by a God that condones slavery. 

Next, in Chapter 29, the covenant is renewed (yet again). And again, we are reminded of the time that Israelites were enslaved in Egypt and the cool stuff God did to show off. Then, they wandered in the desert for forty years even though the trip should have taken less than a full day.

You would think that the number of time their enslavement is brought up, they would be like “You know what? Being a slave sucks, let’s not do that.” But no, instead they wrote chapter upon chapter about where to get and how to treat slaves. Then we get more warnings about what will happen if you don’t follow the law. Examples of Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboiim are given. How many times do we need to give these same warnings?

Chapter 30 assures the Israelites that if they return from their disobedience and obey the law, their fortunes will be restored and he’ll have compassion on them. This chapter, like the previous two, is just restating the same things. If you obey, good stuff. If you don’t, bad stuff. It’s like there were three different accounts of the same tale and the compilers decided to just put all three in. I’m glad I’m getting to the end of this section. I look forward to narrative.

The Death Penalty

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I have been trying to write my thoughts about this subject for more than a week now. It hasn’t been easy because my opinions on it are just that, opinions. People deal with being wronged in different ways and I don’t want to take away from that. I suppose the only thing I can say about this issue is strictly my own, personal opinion.

Once upon a time, I was a supporter of the death penalty. At the time it was carried out in the electric chair, although some states adopted lethal injection, and a few other were still using hanging. It was simple in my mind, if you were found guilty of murder, you deserved to die. Of course, I was young and stupid and didn’t realize that the punishment meted out for a crime was supposed to also serve as a deterrent for any would-be criminals. Years later, when researching the topic for a class, I would discover that a vast majority of states still employing capital punishment would also have the highest violent crime rates.

Today, I am opposed to the death penalty by any means for a number of reasons. The biggest one being that a jury of mere, fallible humans are capable of making mistakes and sentencing innocent people to death. Also, untoward prosecutors are capable of fabricating, withholding, or preventing the entering of evidence that could exonerate a defendant in order to secure a conviction. Those to me are the obvious reasons, but as I read about a week and half ago or so, there are some things that people may not consider.

Convicts sitting on death row normally do so for decades before their reckoning. The case that I referenced above that ended in lethal injection was more than thirty years from conviction to death. The convict was nineteen years old when he stabbed a man and killed him during a robbery. At the age of fifty-three he was killed by the state of Texas and in his final words expressed remorse for the killing stating that he was not the same nineteen year-old he was at the time. People, despite their circumstances, can and do change and come to regret their past actions. I’m not saying that this man should have been set free, but he should have had his sentence commuted to life in prison. So am I saying that the appeals process should be shorter? No.

The problem with shortening the appeals process is that forensic technology continues to move forward. There are many people sitting on death row who were wrongly convicted on dubious evidence and now have to wait, and hope, for advances in technology that could get their convictions overturned. What makes situations like this even more difficult is that innocent people will plead guilty just to avoid the death penalty in the hopes that they can eventually appeal based on new evidence. So in the court of public opinion, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. You plead guilty to save your skin and fight, or you take your chances with a prosecutor hell-bent on getting a conviction and a jury believing him.

I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be punished for their crimes, but I also don’t think that the decision to extinguish a life should be in the hands of a jury. I have never served on a jury, but I also know that I could never bring myself to condemn another person, regardless of their wrongdoing, to sit for many, many years awaiting the executioner.

Refuting Apologetics #2

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Once again the intellectual featherweights at Frank Turek’s Cross Examined tossed me a big, fate softball. The article, Infinite Punishment for Finite Crimes? attempts to make sense of this idea of sending people to hell for eternity for a sin that has an expiration date.

“The assumption underlying the challenge here is that there should be some correlation between how long the offending act took to commit and the punishment that is attached to it.”

After reading this article over a few times, the author seems to be saying that non-believers think this way about crime and punishment. Well, breaking news, Mr. Apologist, I don’t know of any atheist who thinks like this. That’s stupid. My contention is that even the crime of murder is finite in effect and the punishment ends with the perpetrator’s end. The effects of the crime may be felt long after, but we’re talking about the punishment in this case.

The author states that God cannot be victimized, but he does have the right to separate himself from those who rejected him. I won’t argue that God can’t be victimized. To reject God presupposes a relationship with God. I don’t believe in a theistic god of any type. I am aware that there is a character in the Bible known as God and that many apologists refer to him, but I can’t get past the logical contradictions. There is one other line in that paragraph, “We are not chosen at random for such punishment.” Tell that to the Calvinists.

And here is why I do not believe that the God of the Bible exists:

“Though our bodies will die, our souls live on. Let’s consider for a moment what this means: while we may have forgotten many, or even most, of the times that we erred, the times that we hurt others, the times that we did not live up to what was expected; He has not. Each of our sins, each of the times that we chose to act or think in a way we knew violated His perfect will, each of those instances may seem to be the distant past to us, but God is not limited by time.”

We’re human and we make mistakes. To think that the supposed, all-powerful creator of the entire universe cares that I took a penny and didn’t leave one, or I lied when I said that I couldn’t go to a co-worker’s party, tells me that people are in an abusive relationship with their God. Why the fuck would this allegedly amazing entity be bothered by humans being, well, HUMAN? Didn’t he apparently make us this way? I don’t understand how this author can seriously think that this kind of relationship is healthy.

“We have chosen to stand before God, unapologetic, demanding that He accept us just as we are, proud of our lives and our choices. Judge us and find us worthy, we demand. What choice does this leave to a perfectly just judge?”

Perfectly just? This author spent the entire article describing a petty and vindictive judge who set up humanity to fail from his first words to Adam. This is the same “perfectly just” judge who spent most of his time passing down his laws to Moses talking about how build and decorate an altar instead giving us actual, useful laws like don’t rape women and children, be a good steward to this planet, and don’t be a dick to others. Perfectly just, my ass.

Saturday Sermon: Heaven and Hell

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Last week, I talked about the concept of Original Sin and how if one isn’t baptized, he/she would be sent to a fiery torment for all of eternity. If one was baptized, then an eternity in the most holy and glorious place would be the reward. Of course, after an eternity, my question is, “What’s the difference?”

Heaven and Hell (and the other place, more on that later) are concepts that I learned in Catholic school. In case you forgot, or are new here, I was raised Catholic. Pretty much, the above paragraph is what I was taught. If I was good, I would go to Heaven, but if I was bad, I was going to hell. These concepts didn’t last long with me. The biggest problem is that Heaven and Hell make little, if any sense.

Hell

The all-loving, all-merciful, all-forgiving God (at least in one breath of a religion class lesson) loves all of us, but if we are bad and cross him, He will send us all to an eternity of fire and brimstone. Except…why? Being a human being of a limited lifespan, any sin we commit would, by necessity, be a finite sin. The idea of an eternal sentence for a measurable misdeed is unjust by definition. Hell is a fictional construct that gives people a comeuppance when they are wronged. The wrongdoer may not be punished here on earth, but whoa nelly, are they going to get it in Hell.

Heaven

I have even more of a problem with Heaven, believe it or not. Heaven is where the good people go when they die. The people who atoned for their sins and went to church every Sunday (or Saturday evening) would get into Heaven. There they would live in the presence of God and unending happiness forever and ever. Question: What if a happily married couple die, but the husband didn’t atone for his sins prior to shaking off this mortal coil? How could the wife be happy in Heaven for all of eternity when her husband is going to Hell for the same amount of time? Even a convicted murderer on death row is allowed visitors.

How can Heaven and Hell be considered reasonable by any measure of justice?

Oh, right, that other place

One other concept I learned about in school was the concept of Purgatory. It can be summed up by calling it “Hell light” or “Heaven’s waiting room”. Purgatory was a way to get unbaptized babies and not-too-bad people who may not have atoned in time into Heaven without contradicting that whole bad people go to Hell thing. Basically, someone who was good, but didn’t get baptized prior to their death would be sent to an alternate site where there would be some torture and gnashing of teeth, but to a lesser extent and for a shorter-than-eternal period of time. Frankly, I find it a silly idea. My description above may not be church-accurate, but it’s close enough.

Announcements:

There isn’t much to report this week. The blog rolls on as I work my way through Genesis.

I welcome comments and criticisms provided that they’re civil.

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