Leviticus

^“‘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

“If a woman has a discharge, and the discharge from her body is blood, she shall be set apart seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. Everything that she lies on during her impurity shall be unclean; also everything that she sits on shall be unclean. Whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. And whoever touches anything that she sat on shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. If anything is on her bed or on anything on which she sits, when he touches it, he shall be unclean until evening. And if any man lies with her at all, so that her impurity is on him, he shall be unclean seven days; and every bed on which he lies shall be unclean. ‘If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, other than at the time of her customary impurity, or if it runs beyond her usual time of impurity, all the days of her unclean discharge shall be as the days of her customary impurity. She shall be unclean. Every bed on which she lies all the days of her discharge shall be to her as the bed of her impurity; and whatever she sits on shall be unclean, as the uncleanness of her impurity. Whoever touches those things shall be unclean; he shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening. But if she is cleansed of her discharge, then she shall count for herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean. And on the eighth day she shall take for herself two turtle-doves or two young pigeons, and bring them to the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of meeting. Then the priest shall offer the one as a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering, and the priest shall make atonement for her before the Lord for the discharge of her uncleanness. “Leviticus 15:19-27

Ok god, you got me. Now I am really stumped. How is it that you “created” me in your image (even if only to help pacify the dude you just created), made all of my parts and functions and now you are telling me that what is happening to me naturally is a sin?? Not only is it a sin, but I should feel embarrassed and ashamed about it and to take my embarrassment and shame one step further, I am to be set apart from everyone and everything because I am a dirty, dirty creature and everything I touch or come into contact with must be cleaned as if I am spreading some communicable disease! Why not just create a cleaner, more efficient way of disposing of our unused eggs, or create our bodies so that we never have to dispose of them in the first place? Why not just create us more to your liking so that you won’t look at us with such contempt? Why claim me to be unclean when my actions did not create the uncleanliness, yours did?! And why must we kill those two poor birds because of your poorly planned and executed creation? More innocent creatures felled by the hand of the all-powerful, all-loving god….

To me, these verses in Leviticus are written by some poor, ignorant, uneducated man that is confused and disgusted by the natural workings of woman. You know, the kind of guy that “doesn’t trust anything that bleeds for seven days and lives”; the kind of guy that won’t take a woman camping because she might attract the bears. Don’t go swimming in the ocean, you’ll attract the sharks! …Yeah, you know the kind. It is so blatantly obvious that the Bible was written by man, especially in this book, that I find it shocking that others have not yet caught on to the rouse. Especially women. The Bible expresses a TON of hate for women- this is merely a small piece of that.

On another note, did anyone catch this jewel of a verse?

“If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, other than at the time of her customary impurity, or if it runs beyond her usual time of impurity, all the days of her unclean discharge shall be as the days of her customary impurity. She shall be unclean.” Leviticus 15:25

Let me repeat that first part again: “If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, OTHER than that at the time of her customary impurity… She shall be unclean.” Now, correct me if I am wrong here, but if a woman is bleeding for days at a time other than her time of “customary impurity” wouldn’t she be DYING?! I mean, god should be less worried about how unclean she is, she could have been stabbed, she could be suffering from kidney failure, she could be bleeding internally somewhere! This woman needs help, not seclusion from the world for her uncleanliness!

That kind of shit really makes me hope, not for my sake, but for the sake of believers everywhere, that my previous point about the Bible being created by man is true. Man is likely to make a mistake like that. One that surely, back in the day when people took the writing of the Bible more literally, was responsible for the loss of many female lives. But a god? It wouldn’t be so stupid, would it? And if it was/is, people wouldn’t be so stupid as to believe in it or trust in it, would they??