In poking around Facebook recently, I came across the True Love Waits group (link only works if you’re, you know, in Facebook). I’m not much a believer in it myself, but I do think that overall it’s a good idea, because the numbers of young people who are too stupid to be having sex before marriage seems to be growing (because they won’t stop having sex, you see, which often results in reproduction). If we could maybe get all these folks in one place and maybe get them to hold off on the nooky as long as possible, or lordy at least until they’re in HIGH SCHOOL for heaven’s sake, the world would be a better place. Unfortunately, of the people that I’ve met who joined the True Love Waits organization, all tended to be people who weren’t going to be having any pre-marital sex even if they weren’t opposed to it, due to significant personality/body mass/acne problems.
Upon viewing the group, I noticed the “Recent News” section, and read through it, and it’s a bit terrifying. It starts rather tamely:
Purpose of Group: I do not want to be the one who secludes others because they simply believe differently than myself and how I interpret God’s moral code. Even though I believe in absolute truth, I believe in showing love and respect to all first (even though I heavily disagree). First, I want to address why I created this group, this group is meant to be a place of encouragement to others who have decided to be virgins until marriage.
Great idea. If someone wants to remain chaste until they get the gold band, I’m all for it (though I have to admit, if I were single, and went on a date with someone who revealed they intended to wait until marriage to give up the punani, well… I probably would not call her back). But scroll down further, and things start to get a bit creepy:
This group is based on God’s absolute word revealed to us in the Bible, and the God that I serve is a God of love (who is also a God of justice and wrath)…
Uh, okay, sure. Unfortunately, the love>justice+wrath prioritization doesn’t seem to hold with what comes next:
The concept of Homosexuality if [sic] strongly forbidden in the Bible. Such examples include Leviticus 18 (Old Testament) and Romans 1 (New Testament). I cannot and will not condone such actions to be pure or holy in any shape or form. Homosexuality is a direct perversion of God’s created sex and therefore I will not allow any such discussion in this group.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, first of all, congratulations on not having made any intellectual progress since, oh, about 1840. Secondly, looking above, it seems like you’re FAR more interested in the God of Wrath than you are in either the God of Love or the God of Justice. Thirdly, let’s talk about the absolute truth mentioned in the first quote. As I see it, the Bible can be looked at in one of three ways:
- The Bible is the absolute truth: God made the universe in 6 days and partied on the 7th; He really did kill all but 8 people and 2 of each animal with a huge worldwide flood; and he actually sent His Son to earth, had him killed, and then raised him from the dead; etc. If this is what you believe, then you’re ignoring valid science (which led to, among other things, the computer you’re looking at, the construction of which isn’t detailed anywhere in the Bible) in favor of a document that is between 1800 and 6000 years old, depending on which section you’re reading. At least no one will ever tell you “Don’t be so smart.”
- The Bible is Man’s version of God’s word, and therefore flawed, but still contains valid instructions that must be followed. Of course, these instructions include things like:
- Deuteronomy 22:5 – The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.
- Deut. 21:18-21 – If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;
And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. - Deut. 22:23-24 – If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;
Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour’s wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you.
Those are from the King James Version, and say, in order: if a woman wears pants, it is an abomination to the Lord; if your son is a jerk, you and your friends must kill him; and if your fiancee gets raped but doesn’t scream loud enough, she and the rapist get killed. Definitely an authoritative moral code for the 21st century. Oh, and don’t forget all the dietary laws that somehow get ignored these days.
- The Bible is, at best, a collection of jazzed up stories handed down by word of mouth and eventually put to paper. It contains some nice ideas about love, and how to treat other people, particularly in the New Testament, but should never be taken literally.
How anyone can believe option one is beyond me. And yet a surprising number of people do, even young folks, which astounds me. How can you sit through a basic 5th grade science class and still believe that the world was created in a matter of days? Doesn’t it make more sense that, maybe, JUST maybe, some skeevy priest made that story up in 4000BC because people kept asking him how the world came to be and were getting tired of just hearing “God did it?”
The second option I can at least understand; follow the rules, and you go to heaven. Don’t, and you go to hell. Super simple. However, since the Bible contains all those crazy Old Testament minor commandments about keeping kosher and stoning disobedient children, which even hard core conservative Christians seem to ignore these days, folks are just picking and choosing which rules they want to follow. Which leads to the question: what exactly makes you think that the rules you’ve chosen are the ones that really count? For example, the most frequently quoted Anti-Homosexuality Bible provision is Leviticus 20:13:
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
But in Lev. 11:12:
Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.
So crawdads, lobsters, shrimp, crabs, etc. are all abominations too. Not to mention, of course, how pigs are unclean (which I gather is one step below abominable), and yet I don’t see the churchgoers at the Bob Evans on Sunday afternoons asking the servers to make sure the cooks hold the bacon. What fundamentalists are saying is basically “Okay, you only have to obey the IMPORTANT rules, and we get to say what those are.” Sorry, but no; either you obey ALL the rules, or you don’t get to condemn others for saying that the prohibition on homosexuality is no more valid than the prohibition on eating delicious pork chops.
What scares me isn’t that some people believe that gay folks are going to hell. You can believe that Jesus appeared to you in a vision and told you to sell all your possessions, buy a used Harley Softail, and ride around Arkansas preaching Rastafarianism for all I care. What terrifies me is that folks that believe this crazy stuff have a tendency to band together and convince the government that they have some kind of True Path, and that True Path involves telling the rest of the world what they may and may not do. Religious fundamentalism is religious fundamentalism; the difference between telling homosexuals they can’t get married or adopt kids and stoning them in the streets is just a matter of degree. And time.
Even if fundamentalist Christianity starts to decline, I’m still saddened by the fact that, assuming popular statistics hold true, 10% of them are repressed homosexuals. The likelihood is that they’ll force themselves into marriages, and then get divorced many years later when they can no longer contain their own sexuality; the results of this are never pleasant, particularly if there are kids involved. I was hoping we were moving into a time where we’d see less of it, but I guess not.
I apologize for this not being even remotely humorous; I don’t know what came over me. Stupid facebook.
