A friend of mine whom I've known since we were teenagers sent me a link to this video and asked, "Now I know u know these scriptures so can u explain this to me"
https://www.tiktok.com/@child_of_yahweh7/video/6998495237513432322
I was tempted to give a terse response, but then I reconsidered because 1) it concerned him enough to bring up, and 2) I felt he could use more simple truths that are often denied him. I kept this as concise and as plain as I could for him while getting enough of my point across.
You know, I haven't been Christian in almost 20 years. I read the bible cover to cover all those years ago, and I came across too much contradiction (it's easier to see when you no longer hold the book in high regard - if you hold it high regard, there is no wrong to be found, not even in the passages where "God" commands the slaughter of peaceful people and commands the rape of women and young girls):
"Kill every woman who has had sexual intercourse with a man and kill every male among the little ones, but keep the virgins for yourselves... divide them up evenly." Numbers 31:17
"Now go and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." 1 Samuel 15:3
"In the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall utterly destroy them." Deuteronomy 20:16
These verses, including the ones where "God" teaches people how to enforce slavery (in those same books where "God" teaches people how to kill gay folk), is historically the reason why the U.S. exists as it does. Without justifying the mistreatment of folks using these, the U.S. wouldn't exist - definitely not as it does. Many people would have a good idea how to be decent human beings. But instead, they'll hang your child from a tree and smile while doing it - THAT is what this book gave them.
Most of the books in the bible were written by men who judged humans for being human - condemning children for being children. Those men saw a world and a culture in their imagination, where naked humans and free children did not belong. So they controlled and manipulated people into living in their world, and their children control and manipulate their own children - leaving a broken world, this world. Liberty (freedom in choice and expression), justice (making right what is made wrong, restoring what is destroyed, repairing what is broken), and kindness (treating others the way we'd want to be treated), these all come secondary to culture and religion.
If those people could condemn a dog to hell for barking, they would.
None of the gods ever speak as far as they were concerned, and none of the gods have ever stood on up on the treestump where they're carved and ordered anyone to do anything, so those men took it upon themselves to be the hands, warriors, and mouthpiece of their god. Then they wrote a book, set it on an altar, and called it "the word of God" - but it is no word of God.
Their own prophets said as much: "How can you say, 'We are wise, and the law of God is with us'? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie." Jeremiah 8. Jeremiah was the son of a high priest in Israel, and he called "bullshit" on several of their traditions.
The book of Leviticus that the guy mentioned in the video is filled with sacrificial laws (killing animals for the forgiveness of sins) - it's how the church came up with the "sacrifice of Jesus" - being the ultimate sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins - in an attempt to rationalize his death. But according to Jeremiah, the sacrifice laws were bullshit too:
"Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, 'Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat flesh. For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices.'" Jeremiah 7
