During my Christmas holiday Grandmother described her simple faith to me: Jesus died to save us from the god of the Old Testament.  She didn’t want me or any preacher or any church or the Bible to confuse her simple faith in her simple gospel.  It was an eerie inversion of Paul’s admonition to the Galatians: if any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be condemned to hell (ἀνάθεμα)!^[1]  I reaffirmed my belief that y^ehôvâh/Jesus (John 8:56-59 NET) died and rose again from the dead to save us from sin (1 John 2:1, 2 NET).

Daughter asked me to pray for the fruit of the Spirit for her as she dealt with Mother.  I reaffirmed that the fruit of the Spirit was not detachable from the Holy Spirit who is given (John 7:37-39 NET) to those who believe that Jesus is the Christ [Messiah] who has come in the flesh (Matthew 16:15-17 NET).  I also told her that the Old Testament never actually questioned the existence of the two goddesses and one god she had chosen to worship instead of Jesus (y^ehôvâh come to earth in human flesh) but referred to them as demons (Deuteronomy 32:16-18 NET) y^ehôvâh opposed.  I assured her I would pray that she would turn to Jesus, receive his Holy Spirit and bear the fruit of his Spirit.  As I remember she had an ugly encounter with Mother.

Mother lost her job recently.  Ever the optimist she consoled herself with the idea that it would be easier to file for bankruptcy.  During my business trip as I read Luther’s “Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians” she texted a question: is pedophilia mentioned in the Bible?  I texted back that I was working everyday but wanted to give her question the attention it deserved: “I don’t know exactly what your question is,” I wrote, “but mine is why?  Why was an eight-year-old girl sexually assaulted by her father, not just any eight-year-old girl, but you.  If it’s okay with you I’ll share my thoughts as they come.”

She texted back: a green heart emoji.

As I studied the law I was reminded of my wife’s words when she wanted a divorce: “I don’t like your [masochistic] sexuality, and when I do I don’t like myself.”  I used it as a kind of preface to my remarks to Mother: “It wasn’t malicious, but somewhere I strayed from a desire to love her into a selfish desire to use her to satisfy my own sexual desires.  So human (male) selfishness is probably as good an answer to why as any.  It doesn’t answer the larger question of why did God allow me, or your father, to carry out those selfish desires, but it’s a start.”

Then I continued with a brief survey of the law:  The concept pedophilia doesn’t appear as a class of sins.  Skeptics take that to mean that God approves or, more likely, doesn’t exist.  I assume that laws were meant to prohibit sins practiced at the time the laws were given, though I find it somewhat difficult to believe that pedophilia never came up.  “God’s attitude revealed in the law is that…a man is married to the woman he has sex with – period.  This is even true in the case of rape (Deuteronomy 22:28, 29).”

“Women take offense at this because they see it as forcing them to marry their rapists.  (Actually a woman’s father could refuse the marriage—Exodus 22:16, 17—and I think he would make that determination according to his daughter’s heart.)  Remember the point of Scripture: For if a law had been given that was able to give life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law (Galatians 3:21b NET).  Law gives us knowledge of sin, prohibits and punishes sin and, if possible, inhibits sin.  Men rape women.  Being married to one’s victim defeats every advantage of rape and might inject a moment’s pause into all but the most heinous acts.”

I quoted Leviticus 18:22 [Table] to cover male on male pedophilia, and men are not “to approach any close relative to have sexual intercourse with her” (Leviticus 18:6 NET Table), especially not a woman and her daughter (Leviticus 18:17 Table).  I found no age of consent in the law but quoted y^ehôvâh’s allegory from Ezekiel 16.  He raised the people of Jerusalem like an abandoned baby, first as a daughter and “later” as his bride.  “Later” was sometime after, Your breasts had formed and your [pubic?] hair had grown (Ezekiel 16:7b NIV).  “I assume,” I texted, “that this reflected the ideal of captured female children.  Sinful men probably did not live up to this ideal in all cases.  So, yes, unequivocally, your father’s actions are sin in God’s eyes.”

Then I got really personal:  “Why you?  I have some thoughts developing, none of which have anything to do with some defect in you that makes you deserving of such treatment.”  (I knew she had gotten some advice like that from a Christian psychologist.)  “Give yourself a break.  You got a skewed view of life at a very young age.”  I promised to continue studying and to share what I discovered.

She was taken aback that I had compared myself to her father.  She informed me then that she was getting involved in bringing awareness to the issue of pedophilia and simply wanted some biblical info.  She thanked me and wrote that there was no need for any further information.  Then I regretted using the word molested for the way I had treated my wife.  The only coercion my wife had felt was the compulsion of spouses not to deprive each other.  I hadn’t intended to minimize what Mother had suffered as a child, but had recalled my own understanding of masochism (fig. 3) and realized I had become a sadist by my own definition.

fig. 3

As I read her text again something else caught my ear: “I am not sure where that came from but it was not from me.”  Mother thought she had triggered some painful memory in me, or that I was accusing her of doing so.  “No, you didn’t do anything to cause me to recall these things,” I texted back.  “When I think about the law I can’t help but think about where I have fallen short as well.  Your Dad and I are different in degree perhaps but as I thought about cause, selfishness seemed readily apparent.”

By the time Mother sought retributive justice^[2] against her father she was a rebellious, promiscuous teen girl; he was an adult male, retired police officer and Sunday school teacher.  He and his defenders all but convinced her she had imagined the whole thing.  The National Child Traumatic Stress Network quoted a 2005 CDC study, Adverse Childhood Experiences Study: Data and Statistics: “as many as 1 out of 4 girls and 1 out of 6 boys will experience some form of sexual abuse before the age of 18.”^[3]  Is it any wonder Mother thinks she might fare better in this world with a more feminine deity? 

In “Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians” Luther/Graebner wrote: “The Law reveals guilt, fills the conscience with terror, and drives men to despair.”  I was once alive apart from the law, Paul wrote believers in Rome, but with the coming of the commandment sin became alive and I died.^[4]  He wrote this after affirming that the law is lord (κυριεύει, a form of κυριεύω) over a person as long as he lives.^[5]  I think Paul meant that he could live and feel fairly good about himself if the law was not foremost in his consciousness but when it became foremost again sin became alive and I died.  So I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life brought death!^[6]

Tempting as it is to speculate how a retired-police-officer-turned-Sunday-school-teacher responded to law when his teenage daughter attempted to prosecute him, I’ll stick to something I know—my own reactions while perusing the law to the memory of abusing my wife.  I didn’t feel guilt, terror or despair.  Jesus died and rose again from the dead to save me from my sins.  I have confessed my sin, he is faithful and righteous, forgiving us our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness.^[7]  I’ve apologized to my ex-wife.  Now I feel nothing more or less about it than as a fact.

In the past five years I’ve blogged over a thousand pages about the religious mind.  Luther/Graebner dealt with it in one paragraph^[8]:

Those who do not know God in Christ arrive at this erroneous conclusion: “I will serve God in such and such a way. I will join this or that order. I will be active in this or that charitable endeavor. God will sanction my good intentions and reward me with everlasting life. For is He not a merciful and generous Father who gives good things even to the unworthy and ungrateful? How much more will He grant unto me everlasting life as a due payment in return for my many good deeds and merits.” This is the religion of reason. This is the natural religion of the world…There may be a difference of persons, places, rites, religions, ceremonies, but as far as their fundamental beliefs are concerned they are all alike.

In my own defense I’m not trying to base my insights into the religious mind on my own authority or Martin Luther’s or Theodore Graebner’s.  Mine is an “attempt to distinguish the mind of Christ from the ordinary religious mind” using “the sharpness and precision of Scripture.”

Historian Yuval Harari described how the religious mind has helped human beings find meaning in their lives^[9]:

You can think about religion simply as a virtual reality game. You invent rules that don’t really exist, but you believe these rules, and for your entire life you try to follow the rules. If you’re Christian, then if you do this, you get points. If you sin, you lose points. If by the time you finish the game when you’re dead, you gained enough points, you get up to the next level. You go to heaven.

People have been playing this virtual reality game for thousands of years, and it made them relatively content and happy with their lives.

Mr. Harari went on to predict the eventual triumph of the religious mind: “In the 21st century, we’ll just have the technology to create far more persuasive virtual reality games than the ones we’ve been playing for the past thousands of years. We’ll have the technology to actually create heavens and hells, not in our minds but using bits and using direct brain-computer interfaces.”  But these computer simulations will never grant a continuous infusion of Jesus’ love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and control, the righteousness that fulfills the law, to any player of any virtual reality game. 

Again, I’m tempted to speculate whether a retired police officer became a Sunday school teacher to “get points,” hoping “God will sanction [his] good intentions and reward [him] with everlasting life…as a due payment in return for [his] many good deeds and merits.”  But I only know that he has never granted his daughter the dignity of acknowledging that she was sexually abused by him.  And I’m reminded of Jesus’ distinction between those who have been born from above and those who have not (John 3:19b-21 NET):

…light (e.g., Jesus Himself, God’s one and only Son, John 3:16-18 NET) has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil (πονηρὰ, a form of πονηρός).  For everyone who does evil deeds (φαῦλα, a form of φαῦλος) hates the light and does not come to the light, so that their deeds will not be exposed.  But the one who practices the truth comes to the light, so that it may be plainly evident that his deeds have been done in God.

Without a confession everything I’ve written about Mother’s father would be hearsay in a court of law and potentially libelous.  Apart from God’s direct intervention (Joshua 7:10-22) law is so weakened by the sinful flesh of human beings (Romans 8:3, 4) it can’t even provide retributive justice for the weakest among us.

Mother attended a rally in Washington, DC recently encouraging lawmakers and law enforcement officials to investigate what is now being called pedogate.  I heard the tale of a presidential candidate’s involvement with child sex cults last fall and dismissed it the same day as electioneering.  (In the U.S. citizens are asked to distinguish and vote for the lesser of two evils.)  Though Mother’s belief in this conspiracy theory surprised me at first, I realize she is one of the 1 in 4 women for whom the unthinkable is also the actual.  As I began to look into the tale myself I found only a story^[10] so far, a potboiler of a political thriller but a story all the same.  I hope it’s not a true story.  If true it is πορνεία,^[11] perpetrated against enslaved children, practiced on a scale inconceivable since Israel’s army entered Canaan.

If I begin to believe this story my persistent prayer for justice may need to change.