There were two ANGRY MALES in our house, Dad and our Jewish/Christian “God.” | Frank Schaeffer
There were two ANGRY MALES in our house, Dad and our Jewish/Christian “God.”
November 29, 2014 by Frank Schaeffer
There were two ANGRY MALES in our house, Dad and our Jewish/Christian “God.” November 29, 2014 Frank Schaeffer
Unlike Jesus, my father tried to follow the Bible. So there were two ANGRY MALES in our house, Dad (Francis Schaeffer) and our Jewish/Christian “God.” I grew up trying to do the best I could to hide The-God-Of-The-Bible’s and Dad’s true character from myself and from their followers and help my parents convert people to believing in this “God” by pretending that our “Deity” was nicer than he is.
The sexual dysfunction and anti-feminism that unleashed the culture wars sprung from the heart of the Bible. When Wheaton College went to the Supreme Court to ask to be allowed to deny women insurance for contraceptives they were just the next institution to do to women what my father did to my mother when he hit her. Christianity breeds violent misogynistic men. When Wheaton decided to attack women’s rights they were “doing what the Bible says.” When Dad hit Mom he was just being the “head of the home” just like the Bible says.
The more Christians believe that the Bible is without error, the worse they treat women. That includes the self-loathing women who want to “submit” to their husbands. And the more they follow the Bible the less they can follow Jesus who was pro-woman as I explain in my new book WHY I AM AN ATHEIST WHO BELIEVES IN GOD: How to give love, create beauty and find peace. In the Chapter 9 I write:
Every time Jesus mentioned the Torah [the “Bible” of his day], he qualified it with something like this: “The scriptures say thus and so, but I say…” Jesus undermined the inerrancy of the scriptures in favor of his version of pragmatic empathy. Every time Jesus undermined the scriptures it was to err on the side of non-judgmental co-suffering love.
No one in our Evangelical circle (in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s) thought that “spanking” children was wicked (let alone criminal) because they, too, were following our dreadful, vengeful little God, Who “inspired” pro-torture child-smashing garbage such as Proverbs 13:24: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes (diligently).” And Proverbs 19:18: “Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying.” Or take Proverbs 23:13: “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.”
The “God” Who “said” these things—because we believed God “inspired” (i.e., virtually dictated) the Bible—wanted us to beat our children so severely that a reasonable parent might worry that the child would die. I never even came close to doing that because, like most people, I was much nicer than the so-called God-Of-The-Bible, but that’s not saying much.
So much for my kids.
In case you’re wondering, here’s what I was taught by example about how to treat women: I lay in my bed at night listening to Dad’s voice screaming at Mom and hoping he would keep yelling because when his voice fell silent, sometimes the next sound I heard was the thud of his fist. Given what the Bible says about women a pastor hitting his wife was no big deal. No wonder that Jesus confronted and contradicted this terrible book.
“Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days; according to the days of the separation for her infirmity shall she be unclean.” (Leviticus 12:2) … “But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying threescore and six days.” (Leviticus 12:5)
“If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;” (Deuteronomy 22:22)… 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.” (Deuteronomy 22:24)
The sexual dysfunction of the Evangelical and Roman Catholic communities that my wife Genie and I grew up in is evident in the larger world as surely as that dysfunction was built into both Genie’s and my childhoods. The moralistic denial of healthy heterosexual and homosexual sexuality has also unhinged the Evangelical leadership as much as it long ago unhinged the Roman Catholic “celibate” popes and bishops and those body-fearing nuns who “instructed” Genie.
I mean when the Gordon College president D. Michael Lindsay, wrote to President Obama demanding exemption from civil rights laws protecting gay men and women from discrimination, he was just mirroring the sexual dysfunction of all those Evangelicals who refuse to follow Jesus and believe in the Bible instead.
After learning what sane humanity was about from my wife Genie, I eventually left the insane Evangelical/Jewish/Christian netherworld of violence and sexual dysfunction and slowly changed for the better. I decided that one can follow Jesus or be an Evangelical “Bible Believer” but not both.
Jesus was right to reject the Bible (Torah) in favor of (as I put it in my book, “Planting and empathy time bomb.) No matter what the Bible says about itself, it is an unreliable book and that if there is an actual God—say, one who made loving, lovely, strong, intelligent, and forgiving females like my wife, daughter and granddaughters, and endowed them with levels of common sense, altruism, and mercy beyond description—He, She, or It must want us to use our brains to discern barbaric lies from truth.
November 30, 2014 Is It Time to Dump the Word “Evangelical”?
There were two ANGRY MALES in our house, Dad and our Jewish/Christian “God.” | Frank Schaeffer
There were two ANGRY MALES in our house, Dad and our Jewish/Christian “God.”
November 29, 2014 by Frank Schaeffer
There were two ANGRY MALES in our house, Dad and our Jewish/Christian “God.” November 29, 2014 Frank Schaeffer
Unlike Jesus, my father tried to follow the Bible. So there were two ANGRY MALES in our house, Dad (Francis Schaeffer) and our Jewish/Christian “God.” I grew up trying to do the best I could to hide The-God-Of-The-Bible’s and Dad’s true character from myself and from their followers and help my parents convert people to believing in this “God” by pretending that our “Deity” was nicer than he is.
The sexual dysfunction and anti-feminism that unleashed the culture wars sprung from the heart of the Bible. When Wheaton College went to the Supreme Court to ask to be allowed to deny women insurance for contraceptives they were just the next institution to do to women what my father did to my mother when he hit her. Christianity breeds violent misogynistic men. When Wheaton decided to attack women’s rights they were “doing what the Bible says.” When Dad hit Mom he was just being the “head of the home” just like the Bible says.
The more Christians believe that the Bible is without error, the worse they treat women. That includes the self-loathing women who want to “submit” to their husbands. And the more they follow the Bible the less they can follow Jesus who was pro-woman as I explain in my new book WHY I AM AN ATHEIST WHO BELIEVES IN GOD: How to give love, create beauty and find peace. In the Chapter 9 I write:
Every time Jesus mentioned the Torah [the “Bible” of his day], he qualified it with something like this: “The scriptures say thus and so, but I say…” Jesus undermined the inerrancy of the scriptures in favor of his version of pragmatic empathy. Every time Jesus undermined the scriptures it was to err on the side of non-judgmental co-suffering love.
No one in our Evangelical circle (in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s) thought that “spanking” children was wicked (let alone criminal) because they, too, were following our dreadful, vengeful little God, Who “inspired” pro-torture child-smashing garbage such as Proverbs 13:24: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes (diligently).” And Proverbs 19:18: “Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying.” Or take Proverbs 23:13: “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.”
The “God” Who “said” these things—because we believed God “inspired” (i.e., virtually dictated) the Bible—wanted us to beat our children so severely that a reasonable parent might worry that the child would die. I never even came close to doing that because, like most people, I was much nicer than the so-called God-Of-The-Bible, but that’s not sa
ying much.
So much for my kids.
In case you’re wondering, here’s what I was taught by example about how to treat women: I lay in my bed at night listening to Dad’s voice screaming at Mom and hoping he would keep yelling because when his voice fell silent, sometimes the next sound I heard was the thud of his fist. Given what the Bible says about women a pastor hitting his wife was no big deal. No wonder that Jesus confronted and contradicted this terrible book.
“Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days; according to the days of the separation for her infirmity shall she be unclean.” (Leviticus 12:2) … “But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying threescore and six days.” (Leviticus 12:5)
“If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;” (Deuteronomy 22:22)… 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.” (Deuteronomy 22:24)
The sexual dysfunction of the Evangelical and Roman Catholic communities that my wife Genie and I grew up in is evident in the larger world as surely as that dysfunction was built into both Genie’s and my childhoods. The moralistic denial of healthy heterosexual and homosexual sexuality has also unhinged the Evangelical leadership as much as it long ago unhinged the Roman Catholic “celibate” popes and bishops and those body-fearing nuns who “instructed” Genie.
I mean when the Gordon College president D. Michael Lindsay, wrote to President Obama demanding exemption from civil rights laws protecting gay men and women from discrimination, he was just mirroring the sexual dysfunction of all those Evangelicals who refuse to follow Jesus and believe in the Bible instead.
After learning what sane humanity was about from my wife Genie, I eventually left the insane Evangelical/Jewish/Christian netherworld of violence and sexual dysfunction and slowly changed for the better. I decided that one can follow Jesus or be an Evangelical “Bible Believer” but not both.
Jesus was right to reject the Bible (Torah) in favor of (as I put it in my book, “Planting and empathy time bomb.) No matter what the Bible says about itself, it is an unreliable book and that if there is an actual God—say, one who made loving, lovely, strong, intelligent, and forgiving females like my wife, daughter and granddaughters, and endowed them with levels of common sense, altruism, and mercy beyond description—He, She, or It must want us to use our brains to discern barbaric lies from truth.
November 30, 2014 Is It Time to Dump the Word “Evangelical”?