Wednesday, April 22, 2009

This I Used to Believe

The most recent episode of This American Life involves a phone conversation between a deeply religious and a deeply non-religious person. What they talk about covers a lot of the tough, gnawing questions that I also have.

EXCERPT

Ira Glass and his non-religious guest talking about why people die when they do.

IRA: What if it's as simple as, for people who believe in God, God takes people at different times and that doesn't mean that God doesn't have some plan for you?

GUEST: See that makes more sense to me than anything he ever said in our conversation.

IRA: Well that's very sad because I actually don't believe in God.

GUEST: [laughs]

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Check it out HERE (listen to the whole thing, or skip to act 2 for the story on religion)

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

GENESIS 39, or, "Mrs. Potiphar, you're trying to seduce me"

Wherein we witness the Bible's first account of sexual harassment in the workplace

The Ishmaelites who captured Joseph take him to Egypt where he is sold as a servant to Potiphar, the captain of the guard for Pharaoh. Though now a lowly servant, God is still with Joseph, blessing everything he does. Because of this he exceeds at his job and becomes Potiphar's most favored and trusted servant.

"Joseph was well-built and handsome" the Good Book tells us, and so he quickly catches the eye of Potiphar's wife, who tries to get Joseph to sleep with her. Joe, being the stand-up guy he is, refuses. The wife gets more aggressive, grabbing Joe by the cloak. Joe (in not exactly the most manliest of moves in the Bible) runs away from her, leaving the cloak in her hands.

The wife later shows the cloak to Potiphar, claiming that it is evidence that Joe tried to seduce her. Furious, the captain throws poor Joe into jail. While in jail, Joe is treated well because God is still with him.

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I suppose there's a lesson to be gleaned from this chapter - be righteous and God will stay with you. But most of all it's just a good story.

Chapters like Gen 39 reinforce my growing belief that the Bible is not a rule book - not entirely, anyway. Sometimes it just wants to entertain.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

GENESIS 38, or, "Masturbation is (not?) a crime"

Wherein we detour into the life of Judah and his sons.

Taking a break from the story of Joseph, Gen 38 focuses on his brother Judah, who leaves his family and gets hitched to a woman named Shua. They have three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah.

Er is married to a girl by the name of Tamar, but shortly afterward God puts Er to death for being "wicked." Judah then tells Onan to sleep with Tamar to produce an offspring for Er. Onan has some scruples with this, and so let's just say that he "pulls out" when he is with her. Because of this, Onan is soon put to death by God (for wickedness, of course).

Tamar goes to live with her father at Enaim. Later on, Judah is passing through and Tamar decides to disguise herself as a prostitute and sleep with him (only later does Judah realize he had sex with his daughter-in-law. Oops!). She becomes preggers and gives birth to two sons: Perez and Zelah.

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Okay, this chapter has special significance to me. When I was a teenager, my clique consisted of both religious and non-religious folks and there was great debate about whether it was right or wrong to masturbate. The "wrong to masturbate" side cited the fact that the Bible classified it as a sin. The "right to masturbate" side cited the fact that masturbation is "totally awesome."

One of my friends was on the fence about the issue so he went straight to the source - good ol' Genesis 38. As it turns out, a group of kill-joy Roman Catholics in the medieval era interpreted Gen 38 as illustrating that both masturbation and coitus interruptus are sinful, and that interpretation has stuck ever since. But, as my friend and I discovered when we looked it up ourselves, that reading doesn't really hold water.

Here's Gen 38:6-10

"Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the LORD's sight; so the LORD put him to death.

Then Judah said to Onan, "Lie with your brother's wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother." But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so whenever he lay with his brother's wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the LORD's sight; so he put him to death also."

You can make up your own mind, but the passage seemed to us to be saying that it was Onan's disobedience, not the fact that he "spilled his semen", that got him put to death. And thus a giant weight was taken off our shoulders.

GENESIS 38 in pop culture:
In David Foster Wallace's magnum opus "Infinite Jest" the United States has been renamed "The Organization of North American Nations" or O.N.A.N.

P.S. Thanks to MumDoris for motivating to get off my butt and blog some more.