Love Letters from God

We’ve all heard it before but it seems more and more magical every time. The Bible consists of sixty six love letters from god to you personally. Just think about it, each one of them went through vigorous testing to see if they would adequately display god’s love to you in the most authentic manner possible. It was the Roman Catholic Church in the year 397 A.D., at the Council of Carthage, who deliberated over the books that were authenticated and those that were contradictory to the overarching theme of god’s love book. Various hands labored over every meticulous detail, translated the Hebrew and Greek, and ultimately presented the Roman Catholic Church with what they knew were the genuine divinely inspired words of the creator.

Because of their hard work, we have beautiful scriptures that we can esteem and thank god every day for. Scriptures like Revelations 21:8: “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death”. But, this is just metaphorical people, geez, god isn’t a mean god. He desires a personal and intimate relationship with each and every one of us. And, I spit on those atheists who would ever get the notion that the above scripture has anything to do with people actually “burning”. Everybody knows that habitual liars deserve some kind of never ending punishment but burning isn’t what it’s about. And we can just forget those stinking scriptures like Leviticus 20:14: “If a man marries both a woman and her mother, it is wicked. Both he and they must be burned in the fire, so that no wickedness will be among you”. You’ve got to understand the context of the time. In those days, people wouldn’t burn you to death. They would throw medium sized rocks at you that would prolong your agony, and then burn you AFTER you were dead (painless) as mandated by a loving father. This was society’s morality at the time, and god was just trying to accommodate and be a part of their culture to show how loving he really is.

Heck, sometimes god will do the hard work for you. God, being the loving and highly judgmental god that he is will take it upon himself to burn people to death so you don’t have to worry about getting your hands dirty. Like in Numbers 16:35, “And there came out a fire from the LORD, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense”. I bet you god didn’t leave any ashes behind for those guys to worry about cleaning up later either. He is always so accommodating, loving and justified in his actions. After all, he is god and you’re not.

Another great thing about god and the Bible is that there are no contradictory scriptures so we know exactly what to expect from this loving relationship. It’s very clear that we are saved by our works and not faith alone. Why else would Revelations 20:13-15 say this, “And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their WORKS. 14And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. 15And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire”. Idiotic atheists that say scriptures are quite unclear on how one is saved need to take a hard look at the above scripture and disregard older less reliable books in the Bible, and their accompanying scriptures like Ephesians 2:8-10, “8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”. Revelations is so weird and beyond our understanding. God intentionally makes things illogical because he is mysterious. This is how he most clearly articulates his desires and expectations for our relationship.

If god doesn’t love us than why do we have this beautiful story about Paul on the road to Damascus in the New Testament? The dude kills Christians for a living, and Jesus still reveals himself by speaking audibly to him and appearing before him. God may not give visions to other people but that’s beside the point. Adolf Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot were not so lucky but that’s simply because Jesus stopped doing stuff like that once the canon of scripture closed. Also, god stopped doing crazy things like parting the Red Sea, and turning water into wine after the closing of scripture because he finds it totally unnecessary to do that anymore. We’ve got the friggin’ Bible people, what more do you need. People should stop playing god and stop asking for absurd kinds of evidence!

In closing, I think it’s important that we look back and see how far we’ve come. God shaped up so why can’t we? The OT is all about eye for an eye, tooth for tooth but that was just a prelude to things that came much, much later. Conversely, the NT is all about every one of us loving our neighbor even if they’re going to “hell” for all eternity for being less than loving to god. The OT may have some icky stuff, but it’s really all about accommodation, culture, and context. It all becomes crystal clear when you take those elements and mix it in with understanding the laws and customs of the times plus the strange and mysterious ways god works. Infanticide, genocide, burning people alive or not so alive is a foretaste of a better god to come. Things sure did change too. He changed burning people alive on earth to burning them forever in hell for one. So, you at least get to enjoy yourself while you’re here. I think this speaks to a god that is ever evolving (no, not that ridiculous science kind of evolving) and ever revealing more and more of his love to us as time goes by. Until next time Christians, enjoy your shell fish and stay away from those maggoty homo queers… Amen and amen.

post partially inspired by the beautiful works of Edward Current of Youtube fame.