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BIBLE TIME
BY PETER KURTH (published 04.07.04)
Great balls of fire, they’ve done it again! Every year around this time – for
some reason, it’s always on a Sunday -- I wake up in the morning to
find it’s an hour later than I thought. One hour exactly, no more, no less.
Something similar happens in October, when I wake an hour early on what the Lord has
infallibly and irrefutably marked off as a day of rest. The Bible is explicit on this point: "And on the seventh day God finished
His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His
work which He had done. So God
blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all
His work which He had done in creation." (Genesis 2:1-3 RSV)
In other words, God needed sleep.
And so do we. What profiteth
a man to be told in the fall that he’s regained an hour he lost in
the spring? When you’re
sleeping, nothing gets done.
That’s the whole point of it.
That’s the Word of God.
And whoever’s been fiddling with the clocks all these years
had better quit it, pronto.
Sometimes you need to “interpret” the Bible, or “read
between the lines,” in order to know what it means. For example, when God says, “Thou
shalt not kill,” He makes an exception for wars. Thou shalt kill all you want to in a war
and No One on High has a problem with that – unless, of course, your
enemies think like you do, in which case they’re the armies of Satan
and thou shalt “pacify” them with “overwhelming
force.”
As with killing, so with stealing, the Eighth Commandment. When God says “Thou shalt not
steal,” He’s not talking about CEO’s, televangelists, the
health care industry or insider trading – unless you’re Martha
Stewart, in which case thou shalt go to jail.
Verily, if you’re Martha Stewart, thou shalt go directly to
jail and not collect $200, while Juror No. 4, the lone holdout in the Tyco
trial, shall say that Dennis Kozlowski is a “railroaded victim of
ethnic scapegoating.” Why
shouldn’t Kozlowski spend $2 million on a birthday party for his
(second) wife? Why shouldn’t a
Pole sock the shareholders for his $6,000 shower curtains?
You can tell that the Lord doesn’t mind a little stealing,
really, because He puts it way, way down on the list of things thou shalt
not do, after worshipping idols, taking His name in vain, dishonoring
parents, committing adultery and so forth.
All these things are more important than not stealing, which is just
slightly more important than not lying and coveting thy neighbor’s
wife. (Just between us, if you have
to skip a couple of Commandments, these are the ones, since you’re
short on sleep to start with.)
Moving along, the Lord has nothing to say about “gay
marriage.” Neither do I, since
I regard it as the silliest issue ever to rend the Temple veil.
No self-respecting homosexual couple needs sanction from the state. And if we’re going to add these
things up – well, let’s face it, marriage is probably the least
successful social institution in the western world (after the public school
system, of course).
But never mind: God has lots
to say about marriage, and most of it isn’t good. Better you shouldn’t marry at all
(Matt 19:10, I Cor 7:1, 7:27-28, 7:32-34, 7:38), although marriage
“isn’t a sin,” according to Vaughn Roste, a former
Lutheran, Episcopalian and Presbyterian factotum who now works and worships
in the United Church of Christ.
“I picked up my Bible and looked up all the passages that have
anything to do with marriage,” Roste writes in “Biblical
Marriage: A Bad Source for
Debate” (online at www.samesexmarriage.ca).
With a concordance, Roste checked every Word he could think of on
this subject – “marriage, marriages, marry, marries, married,
wedding, weddings, wed, husband, husbands, wife, and wives” –
and discovered, among other things:
1) “Nothing prevents a man from taking on concubines in
addition to the wife or wives he may already have” (Gen 25:6, Judges 8:31, 2 Sam 5:13, 1 Kings 11:3, 1 Chron 3:9, 2 Chron
11:21, Dan 5:2-3)
2) “If a woman cannot be proven to be a virgin at the time of
marriage, she shall be stoned” (Deut 22:13-21) (trust me – she is stoned; she has to be);
3) “A rapist must marry his victim (Ex. 22:16, Deut. 22:28-29)
unless she was already his fiancée, in which case he shall be put to death
if he raped her in the country, but both of them killed if he raped her in
town” (Deut. 22:23-27);
Uh–huh … Well, either “He came to save” or He
didn’t, children – which is it?
4) “Women are the property of their fathers until married and
their husbands after that” (Ex. 20:17, 22:17, Deut. 22:24, Mat 22:25;
5) “The value of a woman might be approximately seven
years’ work” (Gen 29:14-30).
Incidentally, the sin of Sodom (Gen 19:1-38) wasn’t
“homosexuality,” as so many believe, but the failure of every
Sodomite except Lot to offer hospitality to a couple of strangers who
turned out to be angels, and whom all the other Sodomites wanted to rape,
even though the angels were male, or anyway sexless, which is what you
should be, too. Lot even offered them his daughters as a
booby prize, but the Sodomites wouldn’t take no for an answer. That’s why the Lord rained fire and
brimstone -- or “global warming” -- on Sodom and Gomorrah.
And that’s why George W. Bush is going to Hell, and why his
wholly owned chattel, Laura Bush, will be turned to a pillar of salt if she
doesn’t read between the lines and pop him one. Because, starting in October, every
foreign visitor to the United States shall be fingerprinted on arrival. And that’s not – no,
it’s not – a Christian thing to do.
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