Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Stoning

I don't like this story very much. Like many of the biblical stories we have been studying, I find this disquieting...another tale of an attempted destruction by God, an intervention by a wise human, and the subsequent carried out holy destruction. I am not sure why God, if he is so all-powerful would not be able to figure out on his own that there was a way around the blind destruction of the cities. (Sorry for saying destruction so much). Destruction. Instead he let his angels get into a rape-y situation. Which was weird because the town leader offered up his daughters to be raped instead (who were apparently not rape-worthy). In this situation I feel that maybe he should have put his foot down and said no to raping anyone, but hey, maybe he had just gotten into the habit of giving the horny townspeople their rapee of the day and going on about his business.
Unfair punishment....I think that being stoned to death sucks. Don't be fooled, it is actually worse than it sounds. In the middle East, often "criminals" or discontents are buried from the shoulders down in sand and as their family and friends spectates, some authority figure hurls rocks at their head, splitting their skin, denting their skull, crushing their nose and cheekbones until their face is noting but a pulpous mass of misshapen, torn flesh.  Often this is a consequence faced by Muslim women for adultery, or showing too much skin, a pnishment inflicted by extremist believers.
Pulpous. cool.
This is not a fair punishment for anyone. But then again, that is only one of thousands of horrible punishments inflicted on undeserving folks erryday. It's just not fair.

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