Incestuous sex is perhaps the most psychologically
destructive crime a parent can inflict upon a child. But the Bible is rife with
incest and supports it.
Let us begin with God’s example of the most righteous man on
Earth for his time: Lot. Lot is so good that he is the only man whom God saves
from the destruction of Sodom and Go-mor’rah. Putting aside, for a moment, the
notion that our Heavenly Father murdering all of the people in two cities, and
their babies, is a colossal parental overreaction that makes
The-Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He the greatest mass murderer of all time; let’s stay with
Gods fondness for incest.
After God’s decent, compassionate and irreproachable,
immolation of the area’s city dwellers, Lot’s daughters find themselves without
sexual partners. The two siblings do what any well-raised girls would do in
such circumstances; they “made their father drink wine that night: and the
first born went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay
down, nor when she arose” (Genesis 19:33). Righteous man? Let’s say your
neighbor returns your lawnmower one Sunday and starts telling you about a real
bender he went on the night before. “Man, I blacked-out, and when I woke-up
this morning I learned that I’d had sex with my daughter.” Okay, I’m a humanist
and I try not to be judgmental. But I think I’d probably fail in that
circumstance. A guy who drinks with his daughters until he blacks-out, then
claims he’s not responsible when he finds-out that he’s had sex with his
eldest, then later learns that he’s gotten her pregnant, is not blameless. Especially
if he does it two nights in a row; once with his elder daughter and once with
his younger daughter (Genesis 19:35). I would not want this guy coaching my kid’s
soccer team.
And where is God in all of this? He’s all-knowing. God’s
right there talking to Lot like some celestial weatherman: “Cloudy with a
chance of brimstone; bring an umbrella today in your commute from Sodom.” Why
isn’t the Holy One telling his pal Lot about the special wine tasting his
daughters have planned? Does God have a voyeuristic kink for watching incest?
He does permit a great deal of it in the Old Testament. He does see
everything. I would think that he’d prefer the ancestry of his chosen people a
little less inbred.
Sure, the Christians at this point may want to distance
themselves a bit from the Old Testament. “Those crazy Jews with their talking
snakes, genocidal floods and daughters gone wild, they’re the Banjo Boy in Deliverance
to our respectable New Testament. Not a chance. In their story, God actually
gets off the couch where he’s been watching the father-daughter monkey show and
becomes an active participant. You see, God is not the self-described “jealous
and angry” sky father deity of the Old Testament; he’s actually your father in
the New Testament. “And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your
Father, which is in heaven” (Matthew 23:9). Admittedly, this is a Supreme Being ad
campaign superior to that of the Old Testament, but it does open the Creator up
for a bit of criticism when he impregnates one of his daughters. Mary is told by an angel “the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power
of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which
shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). One would
think that an all-powerful being could bring his son into the world without
entering the womb of his daughter. But, as we have already seen, this is not
how God rolls.
Christians can argue all they want about how God entered
Mary without breaking her hymen. First of all, that does not mean that it’s okay
to put a baby into your daughter. Let’s say some dad walks up to you on the
playground. He says “see that kid with your child in the sandbox? He’s my son.
Funny story: he’s an in vitro fertilization of my sperm and my daughter’s ovum.
But don’t worry, nothing weird happened and she’s still a virgin. You see, my
daughter being a virgin is so important to me that the incision was abdominal
so that the procedure wouldn’t break her hymen.” I don’t know about you, but I’d probably move away from him. I am so
judgmental. Secondly, that little membrane of skin covering Mary’s vagina was certainly
demolished when her pelvic muscles blasted the Lamb of God onto the physical
plane.
How about the argument that this was a spiritual penetration and
conception with ethereal semen. Well, isn’t that a bigger deal to a group who
prizes the spiritual above the physical? Doesn’t that make the violation worse?
For those of a Judeo-Christian bent who like to pick and
choose their Bible stories, sorry, there is no room for ignoring or
interpreting actions in the Bible. Its words are divinely inspired. If God is a
perfect being owed unquestioning allegiance, then questioning or ignoring the
words he inspires is not within the ability of a common mortal believer. One’s
personal interpretation is actually a disobedient, blasphemous transgression. For a believer, the words must stand on their own as truthful testimony: Lot got
drunk on two separate occasions and impregnated both of his daughters. The
all-powerful, all-knowing deity did not intervene despite he and Lot being on
speaking terms. God himself put a baby in Mary. You can either accept that the
Bible is divine truth, or accept that it’s a bunch of myths that contain some repugnant activities on the part of God and his most pious followers.
The Holy Bible. King James Edition. Philadelphia:
National Publishing Company, 1978.
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