[I had originally planned a series on historical inaugurations this week, but I don’t imagine too many of us want to be thinking about the inauguration any more than we have to. So instead, I’m gonna go with a suggestion from my wife, using the occasion of MLK Day to highlight a handful of historical quotes, from him and others, that our conservative commentators and politicians tend to get very wrong!]
I’m no religious
scholar, but I have read every word in the Bible (for a college class), and here
are three quotes therein I think conservatives get wrong:
1)
Leviticus: I don’t think
I can say it any better than Jed Bartlett did in that hyperlinked scene. But he’s
quoting a ton of different Old Testament Books, and I would argue that simply
reading all of Leviticus
makes it far more difficult to single out the single verse (18:22) about men
lying with men as some sort of particularly significant prohibition. After all,
Leviticus dedicates something like twenty straight verses to which animals the
people of Israel can
and can’t eat, and I would be willing to bet that just about everyone who
references Leviticus to excuse homophobia regularly eats many of the prohibited
meats. A little consistency please, bigots.
2)
“An eye for an eye”: Hammurabi’s Code,
to my understanding the origin point for the “eye for an eye” argument for the
death penalty and similarly retributive punishments, is already far lengthier
and more complicated than that simplified phrase. But for conservative Christians
who seek to support the death penalty, it’s the Book of
Exodus to which they turn. It’s true that Exodus 21:24-25 does delineate
such punishments with that “eye for an eye” phrase, but that’s in response to a
very specific situation: “If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that
her fruit depart from her, and mischief follow” (meaning I believe death or
other grievous injury to the woman). Even if we want to use the Bible to
influence our justice system (and I do not want that), this section ain’t an
overarching frame for that effort.
3)
Jesus: Mostly I
want to ask you all to read that blog post, written by what seems to be an
ardent believer, making the case for Jesus as at least anti-capitalist and ultimately
(and this is where I would land as well) quite overtly socialist. I know those
frames didn’t exist a couple thousand years ago, but the ideas behind them have
always been part of human societies, as has for example the debate between a
more individualist and a more collectivist way of thinking. If Jesus was
anything, he seems to have been thoroughly collectivist, and I believe if
conservative Christians were truly to follow his model, they and we would be in
a very different place today.
Last misread
quote tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think?
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