AVOID HARM: LET US RISE AGAINST MODERN SLAVERY

Various Bible verses portray God as an evil and bloodthirsty tyrant:

Exodus 12:29: the Lord slaughters all the firstborn of Egypt, both human and non-human, even though they are innocent.

Genesis 6-9: He commits a much larger genocide with the Great Flood, in which almost all human and non-human beings were victims.

Numbers 21:4-9: He sends a plague of snakes that bite the Jews who complained about God and Moses during the journey through the desert due to a lack of food and water, although he later spares the lives of some of them.

Numbers 11:1-3: A wrathful God sends fire and burns part of the Jewish camp because the people complained about their hardship.

Leviticus 10:1-2: He murders Nadab and Abihu by burning them with fire for not making the offering exactly according to his rules.

Exodus 7-12: He sends the 10 Plagues of Egypt, causing great harm to children, innocents, and animals.

Deuteronomy 5:9-10: He punishes those who do not follow his strict dogmas and also their descendants to the third and fourth generation. To make this clear, it is repeated in other verses.

Other similar verses are Genesis 3:14-15, 2 Samuel 7:14, Job 33:19, and 2 Samuel 6:6-8.

The monarchs of those times were often true dictators who abused, waged war, conquered, massacred, plundered, burned entire cities, and handed over all conquered women to be raped by their soldiers as part of the spoils of war. And it was widespread in most of the world.

Read LIVE WITHOUT HARM! Let us not be authoritarian

Read LIVING WITHOUT HARM: Let us de-authorize the texts of the Holy Scriptures that legitimize dictatorships and slavery

Read HOW TO LIVE WITHOUT HARM? Reject the biblical verses that promote war and genocide

People were born and raised in that scheme of the law of the strongest, so it seemed normal to them, as they knew no other model of society. They had always lived within that narrow mental box. Therefore, it is normal that the authors of different books of the Bible conceived God in the image and likeness of those despotic kings, emperors, and chieftains. Hence, they call him “Lord,” as they would surely address their hierarchical superiors.

In fact, from an anthropological point of view, it was common practice for the artists who created the thousands of religions that have emerged throughout history to invent gods in the image and likeness of people, animals, stars, aspects of human life, or other elements surrounding them. Thus, for example, the ancient Greek, Roman, or Viking gods represented different types of people.

In monotheistic creeds, there has been a tendency to construct the one true God in the image and likeness of the sovereigns of those times, the “Lords.” Therefore, it is not advisable to confuse the subjective worldview of previous authors with reality. We can recognize the imaginative creations of those religious authors as the cultural heritage of humanity, much like those of authors of books or paintings, but not as scientifically proven truths.

Read FOR A WORLD WITHOUT HARM: Let’s understand each religious precept within its historical context

On the other hand, there are other verses in the New Testament that claim that the multiple biblical exhortations to violate human rights (read in THE ART OF LIVING WITHOUT HARM: Contextualizing the harmful verses of the Bible) are the word of God:

John 10:35: the Bible cannot be broken.

Matthew 5:17-20: the entire Old Testament is valid and must be obeyed down to the last comma.

2 Timothy 3:16: all Scripture is inspired by God and teaches us what is right and what is wrong.

That is why the Catholic Church and other churches have followed the various precepts of the Bible for thousands of years, including its most abusive and cruel texts, and extracts from both the New and Old Testaments are read during masses.

It is doubtful that Jesus Christ said what John and Matthew claim, as the rest of his message usually deviates from the harmful verses, such as when he protects a married woman who had sex outside of marriage and was going to be killed by stoning (John 8:3-8). Unlike Saint Paul, he never defended slavery, the mistreatment of homosexuals, or other human rights violations.

Therefore, it could be that John or Matthew, educated in traditionalist Judaism, added those verses of their own accord because they did believe in all of those abuses. Another possibility is that, later on, someone altered the Gospels to suit their preferences.

In any case, one cannot serve two masters at the same time: on one hand, justice and ethics, and on the other, traditionalist Christianity that accepts harmful passages. Therefore, in the end, there is no choice but to choose between 2 options:

1. To be an accomplice to the crimes, human rights violations, and great injustices contained in the evil verses, trying to defend the indefensible, justify the unjustifiable, mitigate the unmitigatable, whitewash the unwhitewashable, and sugarcoat the unsugarcoatable.

2. To be upright and a good person, free of cruelty, clearly and categorically distancing oneself from all that and doing something so that Christian churches reform until they are 100% benign and harmless.

Read THE REVOLUTION OF LIVING WITHOUT HARM: Let us reform the harmful part of Christianity

Thank you for being part of the second group and for attracting others to it,