“‘But if you do not obey Me, and do not observe all these commandments, and if you despise My statutes, or if your soul abhors My judgments, so that you do not perform all My commandments, but break My covenant, I also will do this to you:
I will even appoint terror over you, wasting disease and fever which shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.
I will set My face against you, and you shall be defeated by your enemies.
Those who hate you shall reign over you, and you shall flee when no one pursues you.
‘And after all this, if you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.
I will break the pride of your power; I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze. And your strength shall be spent in vain; for your land shall not yield its produce, nor shall the trees of the land yield their fruit.
‘Then, if you walk contrary to Me, and are not willing to obey Me, I will bring on you seven times more plagues, according to your sins.
I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and make you few in number; and your highways shall be desolate.
‘And if by these things you are not reformed by Me, but walk contrary to Me, then I also will walk contrary to you, and I will punish you yet seven times for your sins.
And I will bring a sword against you that will execute the vengeance of the covenant; when you are gathered together within your cities I will send pestilence among you; and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.
When I have cut off your supply of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall bring back your bread by weight, and you shall eat and not be satisfied.
‘And after all this, if you do not obey Me, but walk contrary to Me, then I also will walk contrary to you in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins.
You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.
I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars, and cast your carcasses on the lifeless forms of your idols; and My soul shall abhor you.
I will lay your cities waste and bring your sanctuaries to desolation, and I will not smell the fragrance of your sweet aromas.
I will bring the land to desolation, and your enemies who dwell in it shall be astonished at it.
I will scatter you among the nations and draw out a sword after you; your land shall be desolate and your cities waste.
Then the land shall enjoy its sabbaths as long as it lies desolate and you are in your enemies’ land; then the land shall rest and enjoy its sabbaths.
As long as it lies desolate it shall rest—for the time it did not rest on your sabbaths when you dwelt in it.
‘And as for those of you who are left, I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; the sound of a shaken leaf shall cause them to flee; they shall flee as though fleeing from a sword, and they shall fall when no one pursues.
They shall stumble over one another, as it were before a sword, when no one pursues; and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies.
You shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. And those of you who are left shall waste away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; also in their fathers’ iniquities, which are with them, they shall waste away.
‘But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, with their unfaithfulness in which they were unfaithful to Me, and that they also have walked contrary to Me, and that I also have walked contrary to them and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if their uncircumcised hearts are humbled, and they accept their guilt—then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham I will remember; I will remember the land.
The land also shall be left empty by them, and will enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them; they will accept their guilt, because they despised My judgments and because their soul abhorred My statutes.
Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, nor shall I abhor them, to utterly destroy them and break My covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God.
But for their sake I will remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the Lord.’” Leviticus 26:14-45
One of my biggest complaints with Christianity (and most religions for that matter) is how fear-based it is. I mean, I get it. Fear is the easiest tool in our human tool box to take out and use to control massive amounts of people at one time. But, that doesn’t make it right. The Bible is FULL of passages like the one above from Leviticus. In fact, for every comforting/loving thing god says in the Old Testament, there is either a completely unrealistic demand attached to it and/or an incredibly violent and scary threat if you don’t comply.
And if I hear one single person say, “But Missy, that’s why Jesus came down and died for us so that his daddy wouldn’t be mean to us anymore and we wouldn’t have to suffer as he intended us to if we were bad like we are.” I’m gonna say, “BULLSHIT”. If that were actually the case, then wouldn’t hell be non-existent? Why would anyone go to hell if Jesus loved everyone no matter what and “saved” us all? Why is there a planned apocalypse/rapture coming to swoop up all of Jesus’ favorite people if he died to save us all from god’s irrationality and anger?
He’s not going to save me because I believe in a different god? God was going to kill me for that anyway, so why delay the process? He’s not going to save me because I believe in no god at all? Again, why would Jesus die to protect me from the sins god threatened to kill me for if he intended to leave me behind in fire and brimstone for the rest of eternity later on anyways? This ‘You have to believe in him/it or it doesn’t work’ argument completely contradicts the entire purpose for Jesus supposedly dying for my sin of not believing (which by the way, he knew I would commit). Which therefore completely contradicts the idea that Jesus came to save us from the sins we were told we would die for, which therefore makes passages like this one, in Leviticus 26, open for complete legitimacy in the Christian religion (despite what some apologists would argue). Which therefore makes my argument that Christianity is a fear-based tool used to scare and control huge portions of the population through psychological and emotional violence completely legitimate. I’ll bet you $10 the CDC would agree with me.
“Psychological/emotional violence involves trauma to the victim caused by acts, threats of acts, or coercive tactics. Psychological/emotional abuse can include, but is not limited to, humiliating the victim, controlling what the victim can and cannot do, withholding information from the victim, deliberately doing something to make the victim feel diminished or embarrassed, isolating the victim from friends and family, and denying the victim access to money or other basic resources. It is considered psychological/emotional violence when there has been prior physical or sexual violence or prior threat of physical or sexual violence. In addition, stalking is often included among the types of IPV. Stalking generally refers to “harassing or threatening behavior that an individual engages in repeatedly, such as following a person, appearing at a person’s home or place of business, making harassing phone calls, leaving written messages or objects, or vandalizing a person’s property” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Common Sense 
The idea of revenge also comes into play here. There’s a comforting element for the theist to think their god is going to kick the living shit out of people who have (or think they have) wronged them. The whole cosmic big brother thing is a mighty powerful drug for the ignorant and gullible.
I agree completely. That’s why us atheists are treated like shit — god’s about to treat us that way anyway so why not get a jump start on it and have a little fun? It is difficult to have faith in humanity when so many of them are ignorant and gullible.
That just reminded me a comment i saw last week. Forgot where, but the person proclaimed that god won’t let climate change happen. Phew, and here i was thinking we were in some serious trouble!
Ha! Seriously?! Yesssss! Now I can go back to using my Aqua Net hairspray and driving to my next door neighbor’s house!
That’s the only passage from the Bible you ever need to read to decide if that’s the kind of god you want to worship.
Right?! What an awful, awful god…
This post, and the quotations in it, remind me of the imprecatory prayers and prophecies from David and some of the minor prophets.
“Let death take my enemies by surprise; let them go down alive to the grave.”
“O God, break the teeth in their mouths.”
“May they be blotted out of the book of life and not be listed with the righteous.”
“May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.”
“How blessed will be the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”
I tend to think passages like these exist for the sake of contrast. We, like David, appeal to moral intuition and absolute justice in our desire to see retribution for wrongs done to us. It’s not hard to justify. An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth. It makes sense to us, too; if God’s law is so absolute, as shown in the Torah, it helps us to feel justified in our anger and hatred.
It makes the contrast with passages like these all the more startling:
“Do not resist the one who is evil. If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
“If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.”
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. If you love those who love you, what good is that?”
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
I’d argue that without the former, we wouldn’t recognize the depth of the latter.
It’s one thing to say, “Ah, forget about what was done to you. It’s not a big deal.” It’s another thing to say, “You’re perfectly justified in feeling angry and resentful and vengeful. Love them instead.”
I stumbled on your blog, while googling some Biblical stuff.
You truly don’t understand scripture, and your soul is in very real danger. It’s not my place to say whether you’ll be in hell or in Yahweh’s kingdom. I myself have been in a place of severe unrighteousness – I’m still working on perfecting myself, a journey that never ends in this life. The LORD, Yahweh, the one true God and Most High of His chosen people Israel, has very high expectations for His people. To be clear, his people are NOT Christian, Catholic, Jewish, etc….they have stolen Israel’s history and used it to back up their evil, blasphemous, lawless, poor excuse for faith.
Yahushua (Jesus) came to die for our sins, yes, but only for the lost sheep of Israel (His words, not mine). He came to give us warning. Our time is running short, and all this world’s natural disasters, violence and evil is happening because it’s written that it will. Read through Isaiah…Revelation…read through Matthew 24 and tell me that none of what He warns us about is happening. I dare you.
Yahweh sent us His Son to redeem those of Israel who could keep true faith and keep commandments, keeping themselves from worldly and fleshly lusts. There are very many commandments, yes. They are difficult, sure…for those who don’t have the faith. For those who haven’t discovered the biggest love ever – the love of our Father, who will reward us for staying faithful and obedient to Him.
No, I am not one of those Israelites who believes only black folks can be Israelites. It was also written that Israel would be made as many as the sand of the sea – with all the racial mixes, all the generations until now…how could we ever know who really has Israel in their blood? We don’t…but He does. And He will seal 144,000 of those Israelites who keep His law and love Him and the Lamb, in the day of His fury. There will be many who burn, and it’s my goal not to be one of those.
I pray for your soul, and the souls of those who read your blog. And the souls of atheists everywhere, that some of you may come to His truth and grace. It is never my hope that any of my fellow man may burn in the eternal lake of fire. But I can’t change His prophecy. Not many will join Him in the Kingdom…..and I never thought I’d believe what I do, now. He truly IS Salvation!
Glory to the King…He’s on His way, soon. May Yah bless you with an open and understanding heart.