Blogging the Bible

In 2006 I began following the blog of David Plotz, a writer for Slate.com, as he explored the Bible from his point of view as "an ignoramus" (his words) .  It now appears that Plotz has written a book based on that experience.

I heard about the book through a personal email he sent out to everyone who had responded in the comments section of his blog on Slate.com.  Given that the email had such a personal tone to it, I decided to respond to a few questions that Plotz had not been able to resolve in his first read-through of the Bible.  I'm posting the questions and answers here in case they're helpful to anyone else.

David,

Congratulations on your new book. I followed your posts and am glad to see that you were able to learn so much from your first reading of the Bible.  I would urge you to read it a second time to obtain even more revealing insights.  This time, instead of a straight-through, face-value reading, try to tie together the various stories with their thematic interrelationships.  

Do this after reading the below answers to some questions you posed.

Q: Why would anyone want to be ruled by a God who's so unmerciful, unjust, unforgiving, and unloving?
A: What leads you to believe that God is the one who was unmerciful, unjust, unforgiving, and unloving?  Is it God's job to force us to be merciful, just, forgiving, and loving?  Or is it our job to conform to His will through the gift of agency He gave us?  It is as disingenuous to say "God made me do it" as it is to say "the devil made me do it".  God gave the Israelites a simple choice on Mt. Sinai: 1) Keep two simple commandments to become a merciful, just, forgiving, and loving people and I will make you a nation of priests like the City of Enoch that was caught up into heaven because of its righteousness.  Everyone who observes you will never attack you for the fear they have of your righteousness in God.  The remainder will simply want to join you in peace. or 2) Break two simple commandments and, as long as you refuse to repent, you'll be left to the far-reaching and devastating consequences of your own choices.  Forgetting God will cause you to forget that you are a brother to all other men, women, and children.  Withholding love from one another will lead to murdering one another.  You will needlessly struggle to get out from under a waterfall of blood, greed, and hatred all because you stubbornly disobey two simple commandments.

Q: Why would He kill the innocent Egyptian children? And why would He delight in it? 

A: Simple answer: God did not kill innocent Egyptian children, nor did He delight in it.  God sent the plague of the Passover to further demonstrate that He was God to a willful and stubborn Pharaoh (as if Pharaoh needed further convincing after all the previous plagues) and that Pharaoh's brutal enslavement of his earthly brethren was abominable.  Pharaoh had plenty of opportunities to conform to God's commandments, but he chose to shake his fist at God in defiance.  When a man becomes that hardened and stiff-necked against God, there is only one way to humble him...take away that which he most values (his son) and/or which gives him earthly power (his heir).  Pharaoh was responsible for the death of  his own son through his pride and disobedience.  He had every opportunity to reverse that outcome by simply letting the Israelites go in peace, but he chose not to.  God never delights in the death of children and I can't imagine how you came to that conclusion.  Please elaborate.

Q: What wrong did we do Him that He should send the flood?

A: It wasn't so much what they did to God directly...it was what they were doing to Him through the scope and breadth of their injustices to each other.  The flood was a drastic response to a world gone completely mad and into self-destruction mode.  It was a situation that could only be corrected by a baptism of the whole earth (to wash away the sin it mankind had spread over its face).  If anything, God was doing each person a favor by sending them back to the spirit world before they heaped even more sins and murders on their own heads.  Read what Peter says about this and the wonderful blessings that were able to come to the ante-diluvian people when Christ taught the prisoners in the spirit world after His resurrection.  Also, read this vision of the prophet Enoch (who lived before the flood), as revealed to and recorded by Moses, to understand God's true character and feelings towards His children.

Q: Which of His Ten Commandments do we actually need?

A: Two.  Jesus answered this question when the Pharisees asked it in an effort to trick Him into saying something contrary to the Law of Moses.  The last verse can even be seen as a clever play on words on Jesus' part.  "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."  (Their fathers hung/killed the prophets in direct opposition to this teaching...just as Christ would hang from a cross because of it.)

The Wicked Take the Truth to Be Hard (1 Nephi 16 Part I)

Despite Nephi having urged his brothers to pray to know the truth of what he and their father Lehi had been teaching them from the beginning of this journey, Laman and Lemuel continue to protest being taught.

1 Nephi 16:1

And now it came to pass that after I, Nephi, had made an end of speaking to my brethren, behold they said unto me: Thou hast declared unto us hard things, more than we are able to bear.

Notice that even they admit that the things they were told were "hard things" and "more than we are able to bear", not that they were necessarily false. This is one of those scriptures that speaks volumes about our own period in history, where good is called evil and evil is called good. One need only open the newspaper, or a magazine, or turn on the television or surf the Web to see that the things that were once considered decent, and a high-water mark of civilized society are now being called evil, selfish, and indulgent practices.

Take, for example, the erstwhile ideal of having large families. It used to be that a large family was considered a blessing, even a necessity in keeping family businesses, farms, and other economies thriving. When a person mentioned to an acquaintance that he/she had eight children, they received congratulations and were afforded a certain amount of respect. However, I know from my own experience (and hearing that of others) that this is no longer the case. Mention that you have more than one child and you're likely to get stares of disapproval, or even outright rude comments such as, "Well, I certainly hope you're finished now."

On the other hand, things like pornography, drug abuse, violence, gossip, taking advantage of another person to get rich, etc. are all acceptable, even respectable facets of our society. Not that they didn't exist before, but at least there was a healthy dose of stigma attached to them.

In the early history of America you could cause a man to feel real shame when you confronted him with a sin or transgression he was committing against God, himself, his family, and humanity. Try confronting, say, a pornography purveyor today with the real-world, heartbreaking consequences of his business and you will be laughed off as being out of touch with "what the people want" and "good business" and "market forces". As if being popular and rich were a virtue rather than a tipping point for being ripe for destruction.

That is the state in which we find Laman and Lemuel. The good news, at least in the short term, is that they accept Nephi's truth-telling and realize they need to repent.