Tag Archives: Exodus 22:16-17

My Reasons and My Reason, Part 7

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I am persuaded that the primary meaning of πορνεία in the New Testament refers to ancient idolatrous worship practices.  It can be stretched to mean adultery in general (1 Thessalonians 4:3-7 NET Table):

For this is God’s will: that you become holy, that you keep away from πορνείας (a form of πορνεία), that each of you know how to possess his own body in holiness and honor, not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God.  In this matter no one should violate the rights of his brother or take advantage of him, because the Lord is the avenger in all these cases, as we also told you earlier and warned you solemnly.  For God did not call us to impurity (ἀκαθαρσία) but in holiness.

At least I hope Paul meant that one should not violate the rights of his brother by committing adultery with his wife, rather than that he should simply pass by her at a cultic festival (though I admit that ἀκαθαρσία sounds a lot like demonic worship here).  Paul may have used πορνεία to mean the list of sins found in Leviticus 18:6-23 (1 Corinthians 5:1 NET):

It is actually reported that πορνεία exists among you, the kind of πορνεία that is not permitted even among the Gentiles, so that someone is cohabiting with (ἔχειν, a form of ἔχω) his father’s wife.

If the man’s father was alive this is simply another instance where Paul used πορνεία for adultery.  (Remember πορνεία was almost the only word Paul had for sin as long as he accepted the gutting of the law at the Jerusalem Council.)  If the man’s father was dead πορνεία meant: You must not have sexual intercourse with your father’s wife; she is your father’s nakedness[1] or, A man may not marry his father’s former wife and in this way dishonor his father.[2]

In contemporary Greek πορνεία translates as prostitution in the headline Παιδική πορνεία.  If I select “Translate this Page” Παιδική πορνεία is rendered “Child prostitution.”

The one thing I am persuaded now that πορνεία does not mean in the New Testament is what two teenagers might do in the backseat of a Chevy on a Friday night.  They are not committing πορνεία but marriage by performing the only wedding ceremony yehôvâh ʼĕlôhı̂ym ever created, authorized or honored: If a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged and has sexual relations with her, he must surely endow her to be his wife.  If her father refuses to give her to him, he must pay money for the bride price of virgins.[3]

When I was young it angered me that God gave such undue authority to an autocratic father.  Now that I know Him better and have lived with, and loved, a daughter, though the autocratic father may always be a possible type, I think the point was to give that authority to the one most attuned to his daughter’s heart on the matter in an uncomfortable social situation.  One reason for rejecting this law is the embarrassment a contemporary person feels over its companion legislation (Deuteronomy 22:28, 29 NET):

Suppose a man comes across a virgin who is not engaged and overpowers and rapes her and they are discovered [Table].  The man who has raped her must pay her father fifty shekels of silver and she must become his wife because he has violated her; he may never divorce her as long as he lives [Table].

A scene in the movie “Fury” cast this legislation in a different light.  In April 1945, days from the end of the war in Europe, First Sergeant Collier—Wardaddy—an American tank commander, spies a woman peeking down at them from an upstairs window in the German town they have just conquered.  Wardaddy calls to Norman, Private Ellison, and the two men, armed with machine guns, head inside and up the stairs.  I have every reason to assume that Wardaddy is continuing Norman’s indoctrination into the ways of war.

Norman, a clerk trained to type 60 words per minute, was assigned to Wardaddy’s tank crew as a replacement assistant driver.  His failure and refusal to pull the trigger endangers the rest of his crew and everyone around him.  Wardaddy has already forced him to kill a German prisoner in a macabre hand-over-hand imitation of a mother teaching a child to form letters with a crayon.  I can only imagine what new lesson Wardaddy has in store for him, though the two German women have no illusions that they are anything to their armed invaders but spoils of war.

Wardaddy puts down his weapon, and tells Norman to do likewise, once he has determined that the two women are the only occupants of the apartment.  It’s a clear sign to the women, beautiful young Emma and her older cousin, that they may survive their ordeal if they comply with Wardaddy’s wishes.

Wardaddy wishes to wash with hot water, shave and eat a fried egg.  Norman plays a piece of sheet music at the piano.  Emma, delighted, sings the song and turns the page for him.  She stops when she notices the scars on Wardaddy’s back.

“She’s a good clean girl,” Wardaddy says to Norman.  “If you don’t take her in that bedroom, I will.”

Emma doesn’t need a translator to know what’s expected of her.  Given the opportunity to choose her rapist, she leads her young accompanist into the bedroom.  Norman retrieves his machine gun on the way.  Emma’s older cousin attempts to follow them, whether to intervene or to serve as a substitute is unclear.  Wardaddy stops her with a gesture and a word in German:

“No.  They’re young and they’re alive.”

As a rapist Norman is patient and gentle as a lover.  He and Emma, representing the human beings least degraded by war, exit that bedroom as husband and wife.  They know it.  Wardaddy knows it.  And so does Emma’s older cousin.  As they sit down to a wedding feast of fried eggs the rest of his tank crew—Coon-Ass, Gordo and Bible—knock at the door, calling for Norman.

Coon-Ass and Gordo have cajoled or coerced a “whore” to “entertain” them, and others, one at a time in the tank downstairs.  They have come to share her with Norman.  I get the impression that if Norman were not already married to Emma, Coon-Ass and Gordo would make it very difficult for him to refuse his share.  But seeing Emma, Coon-Ass in particular, representing the man most degraded by war, wants his share of her.  Now, however, even Coon-Ass isn’t likely to take her without Norman’s acquiescence.

“Don’t touch her!” Norman says with the all the force of a petulant child.

“Anyone touches the girl,” Wardaddy says, putting not only his rank but his personal power and authority on the line, “they get their teeth kicked in.”

Coon-Ass and Gordo are deeply hurt.  Even Bible, though apparently powerful enough in the pecking order to abstain from the women without suffering personal repercussions, is hurt to have been excluded from the wedding feast.  They remind Wardaddy that they have been together, brothers in arms, since the Normandy invasion.  Norman has not.

I suspect that Wardaddy would not have denied his brothers, Coon-Ass and Gordo, if they had gotten to Emma first.  He, as degraded by war as any of them, could not risk his rank, personal power or authority except for Norman’s or, if necessary, his own new bride.

And for those who think it might have been a better film, or Emma might have been a better woman, if she had fought to the death to defend her honor, a stray shell kills her in the next scene.  Norman grieves like a widower, though duty calls and limits his opportunity to do her justice.

If one or both of the teenagers in the Chevy come back Saturday night to perform the same ceremony with different partners, they would be guilty of adultery as long as the other lives.  The point was never to make adultery—or divorce, for that matter—the unpardonable sin.  The point was to get religious people to acknowledge that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  But they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.[4]

Other reasons for rejecting the view of marriage described in the law are 1) that a daughter who acted so precipitously may have robbed her father of a better bride price.  Or, 2) in more contemporary terms she may rob herself of a more lucrative match.  And 3) governing bodies, both secular and religious, want to regulate marriage.

Do they have that right (Matthew 16:19; 18:18 NKJV)?

And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

This certainly sounds like Peter and James had the authority to gut the law.  Were they the only ones?  In the United States of America a woman is free to couple or uncouple as she pleases because she is “endowed by [her] Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”[5]  I often wonder why the lawyers, legal historians, philosophers and ministers who signed the Declaration of Independence didn’t forsee that the pursuit of personal happiness would come to dominate and define both life and liberty.

I’ve been taught to think like John Miller in his March 7, 2015 response to comments and an essay on happiness on blog.dictionary.com:

Everyone here really doesn’t understand the colonial meaning of the phrase.  Pursuit of happiness referred to the pursuit of holiness or godliness.  It had nothing to do with personal pleasures.  Our founders understood that morality and religion were required for a republic to succeed and in those times when someone pursued happiness it was a pursuit of that which is godly.  Sadly, that’s something very few Americans do these days and will be the source of our nation’s demise.

But the Declaration of Independence did not say “that all men are…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are” the pursuit of Christ and his righteousness.  It said, “pursuit of Happiness.”  And I think I can say on the authority of Scripture and a bare knowledge of American history that “the pursuit of Christ and his righteousness” would never have gained consensus.

That, I think, is what I witness in both the Jerusalem Council and the Declaration of Independence.  They are prime examples of the achievements of committee work and consensus building.  They happened.  They are there for all to see.  I don’t believe these particular results of either exercise.  They are not my faith.  I think what Jesus meant was that those who trust Him would be led by his Holy Spirit (Matthew 16:19; 18:18 NET):

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.  Whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you release on earth will have been released in heaven.

I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you release on earth will have been released in heaven.

One of the ways to know what has been bound and released in heaven is to know God’s law, not because one is declared righteous before him by the works of the law but because the law discloses what displeases Him: through the law comes the knowledge of sin.[6]

I should clarify my thoughts on happiness: I had my ticket home.  I was ready to go.  I would have been happy to sit and watch my daughter’s graduation ceremony from college.  But my twenty-three-year-old daughter had a stroke before I arrived.  Then I was happy to sit and watch as she chewed food and swallowed without choking on it.

I am grateful for happiness.  I think it is essential to the ongoing occupation of living here and now.  But I don’t have a clue how to pursue it.  When I’ve tried, the people, achievements, occupations and possessions I thought would make me happy, did not, not any more or any less than the normal ebb and flow of when I had not pursued happiness.  I will pursue Christ and his righteousness instead.

And to the wag who may say I only do that because it makes me happy, I can honestly answer, not always, my friend, at times it is a sad or a painful thing to do.  Still, it has its moments.

[1] Leviticus 18:8 (NET) Table

[2] Deuteronomy 22:30 (NET)

[3] Exodus 22:16, 17 (NET)

[4] Romans 3:23, 24 (NET)

[5] Declaration of Independence

[6] Romans 3:20 (NET)

My Reasons and My Reason, Part 4

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My first dates were all about driving—driving and not killing us, and talking to a girl when I wasn’t driving (and while I was for that matter). Then I met A. I’ll call her A. Girlfriend has a meaning I don’t want to imply, more like wife, or concubine I suppose. (In most States a girlfriend can’t take half of everything a man owns when she leaves him or is sent packing.) My mother had warned me about A, how she would seek male affection. A had grown up without a father.

Her mother was divorced, and could never remarry. Today, Jesus’ saying—everyone who divorces his wife, except for immorality (πορνείας, a form of πορνεία), makes her commit adultery‎[1]—sounds to me as if He assumed she would remarry. But then, I understood it as a prohibition. Besides, whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery,[2] Jesus continued. That pretty much assured her that no one at my church would marry her.  Marrying someone “outside of the faith” (someone who believed that a divorced person could remarry) was frowned upon there.

When I began to squeeze A’s breasts and fondle her nipples, I didn’t realize that God might have something against it. At sixteen I don’t recall knowing the word of the Lord that came to Ezekiel [Table] (Ezekiel 23:1-3 NET):

“Son of man, there were two women who were daughters of the same mother [Table]. They engaged in prostitution (zānâ, ותזנינה) in Egypt; in their youth they engaged in prostitution (zānâ, זנו). Their breasts were squeezed there; lovers fondled their virgin nipples there” [Table see Addendum].

I’m not sure what difference it would have made. I knew that breast squeezing and nipple fondling was frowned upon. I thought that was because it would lead to the sin of premarital sex. As it turned out, A’s nipples weren’t so virgin. She and her former boyfriend, a friend of mine from church, had committed the sin of premarital sex. They only did it once. Then they stopped seeing each other and never did it again.

I enjoyed squeezing A’s breasts and fondling her nipples. I think she enjoyed it, too. I found it very hard to believe that I was just a surrogate for the father she didn’t have. It seemed like she really loved me, as me, not as a symbol of something else. It all felt very real. And I was happy and satisfied squeezing her breasts and fondling her nipples. I had no intention of committing the sin of premarital sex. She didn’t want to do that again either.

At sixteen I didn’t study the Bible. I was flying blind. I read only the minimum that was presented in church services and Sunday school. There were moments when I was in a particularly religious mood that I tried to read more, but then I was in the wrong frame of mind, expecting, hoping that the Bible would confirm and applaud my religiousness. So I didn’t recognize the Lord’s ἐγκράτεια standing between A and me and the sin of premarital sex.

I hadn’t heard the fruit of the Spirit. I’m not saying no one ever talked about it. I’m saying I hadn’t heard it yet. I certainly wasn’t taught that I was strong, and the word of God resides in [me], and [I] have conquered the evil one.[3] That would have stood out amidst all the teaching that any contact with a young female would lead inexorably to the sin of premarital sex.

I didn’t know a thing about ἐγκράτεια. It was literally “all Greek to me.”[4] I didn’t have a Bible that translated ἐγκράτεια self-control, which I might have related to sexual matters. My Bible read temperance. I was sixteen; I didn’t drink. But even if I had considered the fruit of the Spirit I would have considered the works I was required to do to please the Spirit of God.

Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me:[5] It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality [KJV, to avoid fornication], let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.[6]

I am fairly sure now that squeezing A’s breasts and fondling her nipples qualifies as sexual immorality (NKJV). I wasn’t so sure then (nor am I now) that it qualified as fornication (KJV). And I sincerely doubt that it qualifies as πορνείας (a form of πορνεία; translated sexual immorality [NKJV] or fornication [KJV]). I don’t say this to justify myself but to know God. There is no way that my understanding of πορνείας at age sixty can justify my behavior at age sixteen.

Children,obey your parents in the Lord for this is right, was Paul’s understanding of the law: “Honor your father and mother,”which is the first commandment accompanied by a promise, namely, “that it may go well with you and that you will live a long time on the earth.”[7] I was clearly disobeying my parents, squeezing A’s breasts and fondling her nipples. For the one who obeys the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.[8]

God, for better or worse, has entrusted (or abandoned) children to the mercy of parents. And I don’t say abandoned for my sake, but for the many women I know molested as children by their fathers. My childhood was idyllic by comparison. My travails were my struggles to understand biblical words and concepts, my troubles were not understanding them.

At the same time, however, knowing God is not simply a matter of semantics but a uniquely profound intimacy. Did He intend for me to understand that the two women in the allegory He gave Ezekiel engaged in prostitution in Egypt because their breasts were squeezed there; lovers fondled their virgin nipples there? Or was the breast squeezing and nipple fondling incidental to engaging in prostitution (zânâh)? I have a fairly good idea how pre-modern Jews answered that question:

Jews in the pre-modern world lived, with few exceptions, in Jewish communities and under the yoke of Jewish tradition and halakhah. This affected every aspect of their lives, including sexual relations. As stated above, every sexual act between a man and woman outside marital relations was considered as coming within the definition of prostitution (be’ilat zenut), and the rabbis strongly condemned manifestations of sexual license in the Jewish community. Many regulations were issued by the various communities to fight prostitution in all its forms.[9]

If they were correct, then I was guilty of πορνεία when I squeezed A’s breasts and fondled her nipples. I was one of the πόρνοι by definition: Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! The sexually immoral (πόρνοι, a form of πόρνος), idolaters, adulterers, passive homosexual partners, practicing homosexuals, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, the verbally abusive, and swindlers will not inherit the kingdom of God.[10] Today, forgiven by the grace and mercy of God in Jesus Christ, that verdict against me is bearable. What is too hard to bear, then as now, is that this particular understanding of πορνεία makes a πόρνῃ (prostitute) of A by definition. My emotional aversion to that gains some spiritual credence if I plug this behavior into Jesus’ statements regarding divorce and πορνεία:

Matthew 5:32 (NET) Matthew 19:9 (NET)
I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for “her virgin breasts were squeezed and her nipples fondled,” makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Now I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except for “her virgin breasts were squeezed and her nipples fondled,” and marries another commits adultery.

I don’t think any of the women at my church who considered themselves holier than God would have called A a prostitute because I squeezed her breasts and fondled her nipples, though I am fairly sure they considered it sexual immorality forbidden by Paul in the Bible. Committing the sin of premarital sex was the primary meaning of fornication there.

Matthew 5:32 (NET) Matthew 19:9 (NET)
I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for “the sin of premarital sex,” makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Now I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except for “the sin of premarital sex,” and marries another commits adultery.

This interpretation of πορνεία has some precedent in the practice of the righteous in first century Israel (Matthew 1:18, 19 NET).

Now the birth of Jesus Christ happened this way. While his mother Mary was engaged to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph, her husband to be, was a righteous man, and because he did not want to disgrace her, he intended to divorce her privately [Table].

It seemed plausible that Jesus meant the sin of premarital sex for πορνείας (a form of πορνεία) as recorded by Matthew, until I considered his law.

Exodus 22:16, 17 (NKJV) Deuteronomy 22:28, 29 (NKJV)
If a man entices a virgin who is not betrothed, and lies with her, he shall surely pay the bride-price for her to be his wife.  If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money according to the bride-price of virgins. If a man finds a young woman who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are found out [Table], then the man who lay with her shall give to the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has humbled her; he shall not be permitted to divorce her all his days [Table].

At sixteen when I believed in the sin of premarital sex I thought that A and my friend did the right thing by breaking off their relationship. In the light of God’s law however I hear Jesus say, Having no regard for the command of God, you hold fast to human tradition…You neatly reject the commandment of God in order to set up your tradition.[11] In others words, to accept the sin of premarital sex as Jesus’ meaning for πορνείας in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9 is to liberate young men from any sense of obligation to the young women they seduce or date-rape. (In fact, they were encouraged to send those young women away, to divorce them, that is.) At the same time it offers men a ready excuse to divorce their wives who have been seduced or date-raped, at any time men choose to play that card. Viewed in the context of God’s law the sin of premarital sex sounds like a man-made religious belief with no relationship to the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

I don’t think the people who enacted this legislation intended any of that any more than Caiaphas intended to condemn Yahweh come in human flesh to death. I assume that my religious forbears were shotgun-wedding-type of folk. Without wasting a lot of time tracking down documentary evidence it’s not too difficult to imagine that their children thought that was too harsh or even hypocritical. After all, people should confess their sins and turn from them. (I’ll ignore the timing with a political need to delay baby boomers’ entrance into the labor force as coincidence only.)

At sixteen I didn’t mistake the Lord’s ἐγκράτεια, keeping A and me from the sin of premarital sex, for my own righteousness. I didn’t feel very righteous. Though it’s probably an exaggeration I felt like I was always at odds with my parents over A. So I simply discounted the credibility of my counselors, those who assured me that “familiarity breeds contempt,”[12] that was “that familiarity leads to the sin of premarital sex.”

I did have a vague sense of an overarching dishonesty to my life. I may have called it hypocrisy at times, but I was destined to go much deeper into that hypocrisy before I recognized what it was. In the spring of my junior year of high school after I had turned seventeen, I made a conscious decision to reinvent myself. I moved away from the “straight” world of my parents, my church, even my friends at school, to turn toward the “hip” world. It seemed more honest somehow. And A was caught up, and discarded, in that self-reinvention. The tension at home was eased.

Over the summer I took up with B. She was not “hip” precisely, but she was an accomplished musician. We enjoyed hours of arty conversations, went to ballets, operas and musicals together. And, fully clothed, we aped all the motions of the missionary position until we both achieved orgasms. We could do it openly in a public park on a Sunday afternoon, surrounded by “hip” people who knew exactly what we were doing and blessed and approved it.

A and I had taken it for granted that we would grow up and get married. We talked about it all the time. I didn’t share that with B. I’m not sure what she thought about it. She knew that she would go away to school to pursue a music degree. I knew that I already had my sights set on C, the young woman who became my high school girlfriend/wife/concubine that fall.

At a party in C’s basement the spring before my junior year ended, I had sat at the bar watching her. She was the queen bee of “hip” at school. I found out later she had dropped acid for the first time that night. She had broken up with her boyfriend, a senior. But a couple of other seniors buzzed around her all night. I was nobody, a “straight,” a “hip” wannabe—and a junior.

“You must be a real head,” the long-haired guy next to me said as he looked up from his cheap wine.

Head had no negative connotations in my mind at the time. It was the exalted appellation reserved for the long-haired Jesus-like bodhisattvas who ran the head shop. I had short hair! I didn’t know what he was talking about, and said so. As it turned out, he was impressed that I wasn’t drinking (part of “straight” culture) but was holding out, apparently, for dope (part of “hip” culture).

Looking back now I wonder what more I needed to perceive that “hip” culture could be as superficial and status conscious, as “dishonest,” as “straight” culture. At the time what I heard was a long-haired disciple of the long-haired Jesus-like bodhisattvas saying, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile[13]—to me! I was grateful that (so long as I kept my mouth shut) I could be accepted into the kingdom of “headom” even before I had my bona fides in order. And later that night, after the cops broke up the party, I shared my first joint. It did absolutely nothing for me, except to make what hair I had and my clothes smell funny.

[1] Matthew 5:32a (NET) Table

[2] Matthew 5:32b (NET) Table

[3] 1 John 2:14b (NET)

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_to_me

[5] The Stephanus Textus Receptus and Byzantine Majority Text had μοι (KJV: unto me) here.  The NET parallel Greek text and NA28 did not.

[6] 1 Corinthians 7:1, 2 (NKJV) Table

[7] Ephesians 6:1-3 (NET)

[8] James 2:10 (NET) Table

[9] http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/prostitution.html

[10] 1 Corinthians 6:9, 10 (NET) Table

[11] Mark 7:8, 9 (NET)

[12] http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_said_Familiarity_breeds_contempt; “Familiarity breeds contempt–and children.” http://www.twainquotes.com/Familiarity.html

[13] John 1:47 (KJV)

Torture, Part 4

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Suspecting that my antipathy (and objections) to Jonathan Edwards’ contention that God is the Superlative Torturer are rooted in my personal history, I need to revisit the long name of God for perspective.

The Long Name of God
The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and abounding in loyal love and faithfulness, keeping loyal love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.

Exodus 34:6, 7a (NET)

 But he by no means leaves the guilty unpunished, responding to the transgression of fathers by dealing with children and children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.

Exodus 34:7b (NET)

Intellectually, I can see that the things I’ve been looking into in Revelation fall under the heading of not leaving the guilty unpunished.  Rationally, I can see that this long name is an accurate description of who God is, one unified God.  But I don’t know the One who by no means leaves the guilty unpunished, responding to the transgression of fathers by dealing with children and children’s children, to the third and fourth generation, not experientially.  I deserve to know Him that way.  I’ve earned the right, so to speak.  But I don’t know Him like that.  I know the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and abounding in loyal love and faithfulness, keeping loyal love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.

Asaph[1] apparently knew God as the One who by no means leaves the guilty unpunished.  I suffer all day long, he wrote, and am punished every morning.[2]  Of course he acknowledged that he felt that way when: my feet almost slipped; my feet almost slid out from under me (Table).  For I envied those who are proud, as I observed the prosperity of the wicked (Table).[3]  And I most felt like Asaph as “a philosophical and legalistic young man fighting my way back from atheism,”[4] obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.[5]

I don’t think I was particularly obsessed with money.  I was giving money and continually amazed that I always had enough.  I wanted some fame or power or prestige or position, and thought that “obeying” God by striving to keep the law, or the love that is the fulfillment of the law[6] as if Paul’s definition were a list of laws, was a means to that end.  I was “punished” constantly then.  But all I really meant by God’s “punishment,” or his “blessing” for that matter, was how things worked out according to my hopes, my dreams, my plans or my schemes.  When things went my way I was “blessed,” and I was “punished” when they didn’t.

This wasn’t always the case, however.  Though I didn’t think in these terms then, at seventeen He who by no means leaves the guilty unpunished, responding to the transgression of fathers by dealing with children and children’s children, to the third and fourth generation was the One I worshiped and loved as much as it is possible to love such a One.  Punishment is the currency of childhood.  It’s how one pays for what he wants.  I didn’t actually know this God in any experiential way.  I believed in Him.  He made sense to me.  I claimed to believe in Jesus’ salvation.  And I suppose I did to some degree, but that was heaven.  Heaven was as far away as Disneyland.  And my family couldn’t afford Disneyland either.

I don’t recall knowing the long name of God, but I knew the Ten Commandments: I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me [Table], but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments [Table].[7]  I had no clue that the ones who loved Him and kept his commandments were the ones He had shown mercy.  If you had told me it does not depend on human desire or exertion, but on God who shows mercy,[8] I wouldn’t have believed you, not by seventeen.  I “knew” I didn’t love God enough or keep his commandments enough to “earn” his mercy.  That’s why I trusted Jesus for a place in heaven rather than in hell.  But as for the rest of it, I “knew” I would pay in punishment.

At seventeen I don’t think I knew the law that reads, If a man entices a virgin who is not betrothed, and lies with her, he shall surely pay the bride-price for her to be his wife.  If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money according to the bride-price of virgins.[9]  I would be hard-pressed to confirm that anyone I knew had ever heard of this law.  We believed in the sin of premarital sex.  I knew the law about rape (Deuteronomy 22:28, 29 NKJV).

If a man finds a young woman who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are found out [Table], then the man who lay with her shall give to the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has humbled her; he shall not be permitted to divorce her all his days [Table].

This law was impossible to avoid.  I read it on different occasions in anti-God and antinomian polemics.  I even checked the reference in the Bible to see if it was true; that is, that it was actually in the Bible as the polemicists claimed.  One might argue that I should have inferred the former law from the latter.  I can’t disagree.  I wrote[10] that I had a “philosophical bent of mind.”  While true, it doesn’t mean that I was any good necessarily at doing philosophy.  I was embarrassed and frustrated by this law.  Why did God force women to marry their rapists?!  But neither my embarrassment nor my frustration raised a single question in my mind regarding the validity of the sin of premarital sex.  I believed in the sin of premarital sex with all my heart, the laws of God notwithstanding.

Such was the state of my “faith” when my highschool girlfriend and I fucked[11] for the first time.  I don’t use the term fucked to be insulting, demeaning or derogatory but in the hope of finding a word in English that will carry the weight of eros in Greek.  Sexual intercourse is about inserting an erect penis into a vagina and thrusting and relaxing to stimulate the nerves in the head of the penis and the clitoris until an explosive pleasure sensation called an orgasm is achieved.  What I mean by fuck, fucked or fucking has everything to do with sexual intercourse, and nothing to do with it except as an entry portal or an ongoing celebration of a wondrous and unimaginable relationship with another person of the opposite sex, a relationship that artists have spent their lifetimes attempting to capture, celebrate or recreate in music, dance, art, sculpture, poetry and drama.

Before we fucked, my girlfriend and I were two teenagers too shy to remove our underwear as we crawled under the covers.  Afterward in the bath together a Bible verse came to mind, And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.[12]  I felt like I understood that verse for the first time.  But it didn’t dissuade me that I would be punished for the sin of premarital sex.

I had some very specific punishments in mind.  Pregnancy was top of that list.  Obviously children were God’s primary punishment for fucking.  My Dad had warned me to watch out for women who would trick me into caring for their children.[13]  Protestants were a little wishy-washy on the sin of birth control as a way to avoid God’s punishment for fucking, but Catholics were strong and on target on this issue.  My girlfriend and I were well-versed in the “Brave New World”[14] and had our Malthusian drill[15] down pat.  We never fucked without at least one method of contraception, and often two.  The idea that a couple might become so impassioned they forgot their Malthusian drill was inconceivable to us.

Venereal disease was number two on God’s list of punishments for fucking.  But we were both virgins when we started fucking.  I had the desire to expand this fucking relationship to others, until I actually tried to initiate it.  Though I didn’t know the law about seducing virgins intellectually, I felt that law written in my heart when I attempted to fuck another virgin.  “I returned to [my girlfriend] quite contrite actually, confessed my sin and asked for her hand in a much more traditional marriage.”[16]  But even that didn’t alert me that I might not be punished for the sin of premarital sex.  I really don’t think I recognized my aversion to committing adultery as God’s law written in my heart anyway.  I probably just thought it was my idea, or that I “loved” my first girlfriend more.

Finally, death was the punishment I thought most likely for the sin of premarital sex, given that we had outsmarted God twice before.  I didn’t think God would, or maybe could, kill me outright.  Miracles, God breaking the laws of science, were kind of a sketchy issue in my thinking at the time.  But Vietnam was a very real possibility.  And it would be quite easy for Him to kill me there.  When the draft lottery all but guaranteed that I would never be drafted, I still didn’t suspect that God had no intention of punishing me for the sin of premarital sex.

One more opportunity comes to mind.  Every time we fucked in my girlfriend’s bedroom she put three albums on the stereo: Every Picture Tells a Story,[17] Rod Stewart; Who’s Next,[18] The Who; and Aqualung,[19] Jethro Tull.  I tolerated Rod Stewart because I loved her.  Secretly, I called the album “Every Picture Tells a Story Donut,” after the repeated line in the title track.  Who’s Next became more important after she left me for someone else.  Aqualung made a deep and immediate impression.

The song “Wind-Up” spoke particularly to me.  I learned years later that the only required subject in English public schools was the Bible.  That explained why British progressive rock was obsessed with biblical themes.  It also made more sense to me why Ian Anderson[20] left school with “their God tucked underneath my arm.”[21]

So I left there in the morning
with their God tucked underneath my arm —
their half-assed smiles and the book of rules.
So I asked this God a question
and by way of firm reply,
He said — I’m not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays.
So to my old headmaster (and to anyone who cares):
before I’m through I’d like to say my prayers —
I don’t believe you:
you had the whole damn thing all wrong —
He’s not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays.

Looking back now, I clearly had everything “all wrong.”  I remember entertaining the notion that God was trying to communicate to me through the words of this song.  I even went back to the Bible to see if I could find what I had gotten “all wrong.”  But the Bible said the same thing to me it always said: “God’ll getcha if you don’t watch out!”  I decided that there was no way anyone who looked like Ian Anderson could possibly know anything that could stand up to two thousand years of Christian theology (no matter how catchy the tune).  And there was no way I was going to get out of being punished for the sin of premarital sex.

Nothing could persuade me otherwise.  Even when I wasn’t punished for the sin of premarital sex, nothing clicked, no light bulbs went off.  Instead, I felt rationally obligated to become an atheist because God would have punished me for the sin of premarital sex.

[2] Psalm 73:14 (NET) Table

[3] Psalm 73:2, 3 (NET)

[5] 1 Timothy 6:4b, 5 (NKJV)

[6] Romans 13:10b (NET)

[7] Exodus 20:5b, 6 (NKJV)

[8] Romans 9:16 (NET) Table

[9] Exodus 22:16, 17 (NKJV)

[12] Genesis 2:25 (NKJV)