A while ago after I shared one of my videos, I boosted it on Facebook to see if I could reach a wider audience. Somehow, it attracted the attention of some people who apparently did not even watch the video, but simply didn’t like the fact that I was teaching the Bible. A couple of them shared some memes that were so ridiculous, I thought it would be neat to do a series of videos on “Beyond the Meme.”
If you haven’t already, click the subscribe button right under this video and also click the little bell, so you don’t miss anything—because I know you don’t want to. So, here we go.
In case you’re not familiar with memes, they are short sayings or pictures that are supposed to make a point about something funny, political, religious, or whatever.
While memes can be a lot of fun, they can also do a lot of damage, because we have a serious disease in our world today, and it’s not COVID. It’s the disease of shallow thinking. Truth can rarely be summed up in a meme, but people post them and sit back in their La-Z-Boy, grab another handful of chips, and think they’ve successfully won an argument.
But sometimes these memes are so stupid that they’re laughable if you are willing to engage in a moment of thought.
So, we’re going to look at some memes, not to ruin your fun, but to encourage you to think beyond the meme.
The one we’ll look at today is one that someone, whom I assume is an atheist, put in reply to one of my videos.
Here it is:
I think the person who posted this really thought that it is a bona-fide attack against Christianity, like it was supposed to be a slam-dunk refutation of the Bible. In reality, calling the character of the God of the Old Testament into question is something that is brought up so much that it’s tiresome.
So, let me explain to you what this meme is supposed to be saying. The point is that the Bible only has a problem with one of these: genocide, rape, lobster, or slavery. Of course, the answer is supposed to be lobster, because the Old Testament Law allowed only eating sea creatures that had fins and scales. So while the Bible condemns eating lobster, it allows genocide, rape, and slavery. This is supposed to evoke a response like, “Yeah, the Bible is so dumb! We all know lobster is ok, but genocide, rape, and slavery are wrong. So don’t believe the Bible.”
When people post things like this, it doesn’t upset me, because it shows me something about their thought process. This person obviously doesn’t understand much about the Bible. That isn’t a big deal to me. I don’t expect an unbeliever to believe the Bible—that’s why we call them “unbelievers.”
But two things about this meme really captured my attention.
First: Whoever made the meme understands that some things are right and some things are wrong. Where did he get that idea? If right and wrong are not subjective, which is assumed in this meme, then what is their source? If you reject the Bible, then you have to reject God as the source for morals. And you can’t find an arguably good source for morals anywhere else.
Second: The misunderstanding behind the meme cannot only be found with unbelievers, but also in the church.
Here is the problem: faulty hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is just a fancy term for how we study the Bible.
If you just pick up the Bible, read a few verses, and put it down, you’re going to come up with something ridiculous like this.
“Wow…God told the Israelites to go kill people. He must love genocide.” Really? Does the Bible really not have a problem with genocide, rape, and slavery?
Let’s look at each of these to see what the Bible really says about them.
Genocide
I assume the problem here is that God commanded the Israelites to kill everyone in Canaan and take the land for themselves. That’s a common argument that skeptics make. But what was really going on?
The first thing we have to understand is that God, as the author of life, has complete authority over it. He brought life into existence, and He can end it. And death doesn’t really end life, anyway. Death just transfers the location of the person.
But there was a specific reason that He told the Israelites to eradicate the Canaanites. We find it in Leviticus 18.
Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants. (Leviticus 18:24-25)
God ordered the slaughter of the Canaanites as punishment for their sins. And if the Israelites did not completely wipe them out, they would turn the Israelites to their gods, which is exactly what happened.
So, the Bible does not condone genocide. In a specific time, God used His people to punish the Canaanites because of their sin. And it was all working out a plan to put the Jewish people right where He wanted them so Jesus could come and be the sacrifice for sin for the whole world. So the whole thing was set up because of people’s decision to sin in the first place. As humanity, we messed it up, and the fact that some people died on the path to fixing it is not God’s fault.
Now, what about rape?
Rape
There is a passage in Deuteronomy that seems to honor a man for rape.
If a man finds a young woman who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are found out, then the man who lay with her shall give to the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has humbled her; he shall not be permitted to divorce her all his days. (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)
What? He rapes her so he gets to marry her?
Not so fast.
First, notice that this follows a condemnation of rape—if a man rapes a betrothed woman, he would be put to death.
Second, there is no celebration of rape here. This man is forced to marry the woman, whether he liked it or not, with no possibility of divorce. In a day where a woman being single was looked down on socially, this would be a benefit to the woman. Being defiled, she may find it harder to get another husband.
But wait—she has to marry her rapist?
This leads us to the third thing to notice—these verses may not even refer to rape. In the previous verses (25), a stronger Hebrew word is used to indicate rape, translated as “force.” Here, a weaker word is used, translated as “seized.” This word describes physically handling something, but not necessarily by force. Also, verse 28 says “and they are found out,” which seems to treat them as a unit rather than a perpetrator and victim. This may very well be a case of consensual, or at least unhindered, sex.
Finally, isn’t slavery condoned in the Old Testament?
Slavery
The concept of slavery is found in the Bible, especially the Old Testament. However, it is often different than the slavery we think of today. Often people would put themselves in servitude to someone else to pay off a debt. In fact, Exodus 21:16 specifically calls for the death penalty for someone who kidnaps a man and either keeps him as a slave or sells him. And Deuteronomy 23:16 prohibits returning a slave who has escaped.
In Leviticus 25, we have the laws for the Year of Jubilee, which would happen every 50 years. Verses 39-41 discuss how a poor person may sell himself to someone, but he would be released in the Year of Jubilee.
We could go deeper on these topics, but I think we’ve said enough to show that these are insufficient arguments to reject the God of the Bible. Don’t let yourself be fooled by uneducated and shallow arguments. Engage in serious study of the Bible, and I think you’ll find that the Bible is worthy of your trust.
I respectfully assert that your explanations re rape, genocide and slavery are very weak. In fact God did endorse these things. The Biblical God said he created good and evil. Hence he is far from perfect or just. Moses even instructed the complete genocide of a people including the slaughter of male children and babies. He instructed the Israelites to take the virgins, including female children for themselves. In fact they were sex slaves. Concubines were sex slaves and breeders. In Deuteronomy a husband could also divorce his wife simply for displaying him. Her inability to bear children was one excuse, yet the Bible never mentions men being sterile. It always laid “blame” for infertility on the woman. God is also angry and demands the sacrifice of healthy animals for sins. People suffered for the sins of ancestors. You can Google to find the many scriptures that point to these things. Regarding the Cananites: God didn’t choose them as his people. He never instructed them in his ways so why would he have killed them for “sins”? Also, if he wanted to kill them why not use his Angels rather than ill-equipped Israelites? Why did he need to make everything so complex and difficult? It makes no sense.
I was a life-long Christian. But in the information age we cannot claim ignorance. The Bible was written by sexist mysogenistic men who used an almighty God as an excuse. Why did this all powerful God not use his voice to speak to everyone?
Also the story of Noah, the ark, and Jonah and the whale are not physically, logistically or scientifically possible. You can Google it to learn the many problems with it.
Also Jesus was not always kind to women. He was supposed to be God on Earth, yet he was biased towards a non-Jewish woman who proved her faith in him by asking him to help her sick daughter. He dismissed her a and compared her to a dog. The Bible held a very negative if not cruel view of dogs (also created by God?). He did not need to humiliate her. He could have simply helped her.
The Bible is full of contradictions (Google it) and often punishments FAR exceeded the sins. Just because God has a right to destroy life since he “created it” does not make it morally right based on opposing scriptures in the Bible that “show him to be a moral just God”. The Biblical God is not consistent throughout the Bible.
Bible scholars have also debunked the so-called prophecies with many books proven to be forgeries. The fact is religious leaders continue to hold to the Bible as inspired by an almighty God, yet it simply does not hold up to scrutiny. I was a die-hard Christian my entire life up until the last few years. To believe the Noah story would require evolution on steroids for the earth to have 6.5 million animal species. Noah is fiction as is Jonah and the whale. I doubt the writers of these stories did not believe they would be taken as fact.
Natural selection makes far more sense. Terrible things happen to good people due to time and unforseen events as the Bible stated. There are some historical Bible accounts but not genuine prophesies except failed ones. Also the area of Babylon did not remain permanently desolate. In fact there are people living in and vacationing in the area. You can Google ” Lloyd Evans 40 scientific inaccuracies in the Bible”. There are many more than that. I find it interesting that God would forbid the eating of lobster. If true I would not be surprised given the above atrocities endorsed. The Bible was written by a lot of mysogenistic sexist men who were scientifically illiterate at the time of writings.
With all that said, I do believe in spirits, good and evil, human and nonhuman based upon personal experiences and those of Christians and atheists NDEs or OBEs. With many different experiences, including good people having helping experience during the time they temporarily died has many afraid of what will become of them after death. We can hope loved ones are in a good place. I wish there was a heavenly paradise after we leave this life but I know it is not that simple. No one can make sense of an almighty God that contradicts himself and allows abysmal suffering more than 2000 years after his being on Earth as Christ. The need to suffer and die for humankind for the sins of “Adam and Eve”, is ludicrous. The fact that this all powerful God could allow so much suffering demonstrates his lack of existence. I have no desire to live under an all powerful God depicted in the Old Testament.
We live a relatively short time on this earth. It is how we treat others that matters, including those we don’t necessarily know.
Again, to believe in the Noah story would require evolution on steroids to have the number of animal species on the earth 4400 years since the ” flood”. Since all bugs, spiders, insects, parasites, ground moles, rats etc would have been wiped out in the flood, how do they exist today. Also for the flood to have covered the highest mountain, Everest, would have had the massive wooden ark floating at over 29,000 feet above sea level. The height of commercial planes in flight. Noah, his family and the animals would have suffocated. Science has proven, that the dimensions of the ark would not have made it sea worthy. It would not have floated. What about the food required to keep fresh and feed all the animals. What about human and animal waste? What about animals that live often in water such as the hippopotamus and gators? The problems are massive. There is also NO archeological evidence of a world flood.
I could go on and on. But the evidence stated should suffice.
I sincerely wish you the best.
I would respectfully challenge you to post my comment and let others objectively examine it. I sincerely hope you do the same. But this may not coincide with your religious agenda to promote the Bible as an infallible word of God. It simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny anymore than Ken Ham’s modern version of “Noah’s Ark”.
Also Dinosaurs did not live in Noah’s day nor were they ALL herbivores. Archeologists discovered large dinosaur fossils with bird fossilized (bones) and smaller dinosaur fossilized (bones) within it.
“If you reject the Bible, then you have to reject God as the source for morals.”
Says who?
Seriously, if God has given us a conscience, and we have already stolen the knowledge of right and wrong, then if the Bible says something evil, then that evil said in the Bible is not of God.
I know that immediately your trained reaction would be to quote 2 Timothy 3. Even if it were not a forgery, you should remember that it was supposedly addressed to Timothy, a trained Pharisee under Paul under Gamaliel. All scripture (i.e. the LXX at this time) is useful for Timothy, not everyone, and it clearly shows.
“God ordered the slaughter of the Canaanites as punishment for their sins.” Is God a favoritist now? Romans 3:10 and other bits of Psalms that Paul ripped out of context to make his new doctrines: ‘All have sinned, there is none righteous, all humans are evil and repraved scum incapable of goodness, whose evil is only held back by God himself,’ so says Paul.
Not only are the Canaanites equally sinful compared to all humans (since all deserve to be tortured forever in hell,) but God is the one who specifically made them sin ‘more’ than other nations to punish them for doing what they were born to do.
“…right where He wanted them so Jesus could come” says who? Didn’t Paul say in Romans 9, “not all of Israel are Israel”? If God could harden, delude, and abandon his chosen people using that as an excuse, then certainly God’s promise to Jacob was vague enough that Jesus could have been anyone from anywhere at any time. There is no prerequisite you can pulk out of your rear because there are no specifics to the ‘promise’ that Romans 9 which Paul proved to be a trick question.
“In a day where a woman being single was looked down on socially … Being defiled, she may find it harder to get another husband.” God did not lift a finger through all 40 years’ torture in the desert to fix such thing; why should we think God respected women as more than objects when he upheld dowries and made a virginity worth 50 sheqels but the women worth nothing? Isn’t it also written that a virgin took time to mourn her virginity before she was burned as a sacrifice to God, rather than for her life, having been taught that her virginity is the only thing she’s worth?
“this would be a benefit to the woman” which part, the beatings?
“This word describes physically handling something, but not necessarily by force.” … wait, so that means “he has humbled her” was her idea?
By biblical standards, if she is gagged, she has given consent, since she can’t scream (Deut. 22:24). Consent for personal dignity is not a concept in those days, and God didn’t care to make it one. Her virginity mattered; she didn’t. The 50 sheqels went to her father, the owner of her body, not the woman who was “seized” and “humbled”.
Worst of all, there is no law about what happens if an unbetrothed woman is “raped” by your standards in this case. The above is the closest thing God bothered to give.
Nothing you said about slavery actually applies. It’s like going to 1830s Georgia and saying that it’s illegal for white people to kidnap white people and sell them into slavery to other white people, and that it is illegal to return a white foreign refugee to his previous owners in the Ottoman Empire. Foreigners were not treated the same as the nation. Israel enslaved anyone they couldn’t kill in the promised land. They could buy foreign slaves and keep them and their children forever. They could also bypass the jubilee by economically forcing them to go back into slavery, even if the Jubilee applied to foreigners. There is also plenty of room for beatings, insofaras they suffer for at least 3 days before they die.