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The Bible: Rated R?

Feb 20th, 2010
by Michael Krahn.

There’s a good post over at iMonk.com by Chaplain Mike about Bible stories. This is timely since I just finished reading Genesis again this morning. Some excerpts below… read the whole thing here.

Most of us have the idea that the Bible is a nice book for nice people about nice folks who said and did nice things, where everything leads to a nice and happy ending.

Take the first book in the Bible, the book of Genesis, for example. It’s likely that many people have Sunday School images in their minds when they think of Genesis—they picture God creating the world, Adam and Eve frolicking in the Garden of Eden, Noah gathering cute little animals onto the ark and God putting a beautiful rainbow in the sky, Abraham and Sarah having a baby in their old age, and Joseph wearing his coat of many colors. Nice.

But here’s what’s in the real, unedited version:

  • A man and woman standing in nakedness and shame, blaming each other for what they did wrong.
  • An angry and envious man, lures his brother into a field, brutally murders him, and then tries to cover it up.
  • The world becomes so corrupt and violent that God decides to virtually wipe out the human population and start over.
  • Noah gets drunk, and one of his son dishonors him by committing an immoral act in his father’s bedroom.
  • Abraham twice tries to pass his wife off to another man to save his own skin. Later, his son Isaac does the same thing.
  • Abraham sleeps with one of the household servants so he can have an heir. This was his wife’s idea, but she becomes so jealous after it happens, that she angrily throws the woman and her son out of house to live in poverty and shame.
  • Lot offers to let a violent mob gang rape his daughters. Lot’s daughters later get their own father drunk and sleep with him so that they can have children.
  • Jacob, Isaac’s son, is a deceitful mama’s boy who tricks his father and brother out of important family legal rights. He has to run away from home so his brother won’t kill him.
  • He goes to work for his ruthless uncle, who keeps him in virtual slavery for decades. Jacob escapes by tricking him and running away.
  • Jacob’s wives live in constant jealousy and competition, continually tricking Jacob and each other in an ongoing battle for supremacy in the family.
  • Jacob’s sons loathe one of their brothers, sell him into slavery, then lie to their father and tell him he died.
  • Jacob’s daughter Leah is raped. Her brothers exact revenge by deceiving and then murdering the perpetrator, destroying and looting his city, and taking all his family members captive.
  • Judah refuses to find a husband for his widowed daughter-in-law, Tamar. So she disguises herself as a prostitute, tricks her father-in-law into sleeping with her, and becomes pregnant.

I had a pastor friend who once told me he was planning to do a family teaching series from Genesis. I’m afraid I wasn’t very kind. In fact, I laughed out loud and said, “What are you going to talk about, how to be a complete bum and still have God bless your family?”

He didn’t think it was funny. He had a overly pious view of the Bible that didn’t allow for the ugly stuff. However, that’s what Genesis (and the rest of the Bible) is like!

I encourage you to read the Bible for what it really is and says. It’s not very nice, but it’s real, and I believe it puts broken things back together.

Read the whole thing here.

Posted in: Bible.

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  • http://www.rootedradical.wordpress.com Jason Postma

    This raises two questions for me:

    1) Why do we insist on “censoring” the “X-rated” components of the Bible, especially when it comes to children’s Sunday School lessons? Are we too polite? Too easily offended? If so, I would suggest we need to reevaluate the foundations of our faith – if nothing else, Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ” demonstrated the graphic and even distusgting roots of our faith.

    2) Why do so many Christians get all in a bunch over some depictions of sex and violence in movies and music when these depictions are realistic and integral to the story?

  • http://caughtnottaught.blogspot.com/ ED…

    It’s important to read the bible remembering that Jesus is the hero.

  • http://www.michaelkrahn.com/blog Michael Krahn

    @Jason Postma: Agreed on The Passion. Some say it is too violent… what?!? Removed 2000 years from the event, how can you understand its significance without an historically faithful recreation of it?

    We do protect our children too much, which is why we have so many weak dispassionate adults sauntering through their lives void of either ambition of holiness.

    To answer #2 – agreed on the violence issue. On the sex issue, there is of course… lust.

  • http://www.rootedradical.wordpress.com Jason Postma

    @Michael Krahn – undoubtedly lust is the primary modus operandi of much contemporary cinema. However, what about movies that celebrate sexuality (and I’m not talking about Fireproof or anything in that vein)? Moreover, what about movies than look at the complexity of our sexuality, including those movies that question of probe the accepted sexual ethics of Christians?

    Should we not look for “resurrection moments” in pop culture, even (and especially) when they go against the Christian grain?

  • heather

    great post. one small correction, though: jacob’s wife was leah. his daughter’s name was dinah.

    funny story about this subject: i remember back in the day when i taught grade 6 sunday school. my friend and i were discussing veggietales and how they present stories to kids, but that there are some that probably just aren’t “child appropriate,” like David and Bathsheba. the next month, “King George and the Ducky” was released. and oddly enough, it’s my fave video. i wonder how they would do the story of Ehud in Judges 3 or Deborah and Jael in Judges 4… actually, just about any story in Judges is gruesome. LOL

    and in response to Jason’s question about why people “censor” the Bible for their Sunday School kids… that same year i gave the kids in my class a 13-week Bible reading assignment. i firmly believe that there’s something in the Bible for everyone, so, knowing the boys in my class as i did, i had them read judges. they loved it!! for the girls, i gave them several stories about women, b/c we often forget to teach the important part women have in God’s story. and yes, they got to read about ruth and mary and elizabeth and tabitha (you know, the “good” ones), but they also read about deborah and jael, zelophehad’s daughters (numbers 27. these women don’t fit the “christian” ideal of women, but they stood up for women’s rights and God changed the rules), pricilla (who, you’ll note, is always named before her husband and did most of the teaching), and esther, who won a beauty pageant and saved her people.

    these aren’t the part of the bible most people want to think about, though. and you’ll note that, other than jael who hammered a tent peg through a man’s skull, these women are rarely (if ever) taught about. go ahead. ask most people how many noah’s there are in the bible. they’ll say one. they don’t know about the other one, who is a strong, independent feminist-type who stood up to God and Moses on behalf of women. and she and her sisters were right.