Special Comment: Us, Them, and using Us texts to make Them into monsters

Every now and then, one comes across an excellent example of how to make the Other so unpalatable as to be inhuman, and thus safely ignored, discriminated against, or even brought to physical harm without worry or twinge from the conscience. It's fairly established material that if you can dehumanize someone enough, you can do all sorts of things to them, morally abhorrent things.

So, let's have a look at one of the ways that you go about doing it - provide justification, using the sacred texts and philosophies of your in-group, that anyone outside your specific in-group is an amoral villain with no hope of a pleasant life or afterlife. By no means do we say everyone who has a sacred text or philosophy is guilty of this severe an Othering, just that this example is strident enough in its black-and-white paintings that it serves as a useful foil. It's apparent, right from the first paragraph, that this is exactly the intent of the writing:

Under no circumstance can an unsaved individual (an individual who is not a Christian) be a moral individual. Now, I may be criticized, but it is as Biblical a teaching as anything. If you are without Jesus Christ, you are wicked and immoral as you can be. This statement is not a matter of any opinion, philosophy, or ideal of mine; it is rather an indisputable fact of absolute truth, and I will prove it with the Bible, the final test of authenticity of all ideals.

"If you don't believe in the absolute authority of the Bible, you're clearly not saved and have no authority to question what will follow. If you do believe in the absolute authority of the Bible, then follow along and nod as I show you just how evil and amoral those other people are. It's all right there in the book you profess to believe in. Are you a real follower or a fake?"

So, the chosen standards for this particular proof are the Ten Commandments, according to non-Catholic ordering (Catholics group together the bits about gods and idols, Protestants group together the mitzvot about covetousness).

The first commandment reads this way: Exodus 20:3 – "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

This is the chief commandment, on which the others hang. It is the commandment forbidding idolatry. Every person who is not a Christian is guilty of idolatry, because God Almighty is not his god. And, if God is not your god, you will serve Buddha. Or, if not Buddha, perhaps Allah. Or, if not Allah, perhaps Baal. Or, if not Baal, perhaps Confucius. And, if you will serve no god, claiming that there is none, you always, in every circumstance, worship the god of SELF. As a matter of fact, most atheists boldly announce that MAN is god. God Almighty has commanded all men everywhere to repent and turn to His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. And to refuse this, you are doing what YOU choose to do, rejecting what GOD said to do. To do so is to be an idol worshiper, and everyone is not a Christian is guilty of breaking the first commandment.
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The second commandment forbids the making of images. This commandment is related to the first. The first forbids worship of any god other than God Almighty (the God of the Bible), and the second forbids any image depicting these so-called "gods." If you make no literal image depicting a god, it is certain you contain images of the mind. You bow to your own images (II Corinthians 10:5); you serve your own philosophies, rather than the word of God. If you are not saved, you not only have gods in your life other than Jesus Christ, making you an idolater; you also bow down to them and serve them. Everyone who is not a Christian has broken the first two commandments, simply because Jesus Christ is not your God.

Shall we look at context first? "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, and out of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me." Seems like a fair deal for the freedom of the people of Israel - their primary god will be the one that brought them out of their miserable conditions. Moving forward, it is nonsense to say "serve Buddha", as Buddha attained nirvana, not godhood (although some strains of Buddhism do allow for godhood, despite it not being the actual goal). Allah, well, that's a title, not a name. Confucius is a mortal philosopher. Out of the list, only Baal might count as another god to worship, and I don't think the extant documents have much about how he was worshiped. Might be a lost art. And atheists worship men or themselves as gods? Uh, not quite. I think that was Levey's Satanists, who were being rather deliberate in their Take That to Christian theology. Atheists are rather insistent on the point of no gods - a-theism and all that.

At least he recovers and says that people doing what they want is contrary to God's will, which is more mainstream and established theology and the general idea behind the concept of free will and sin. That part can go through, although it's just sin, not idolatry, necessarily.

Pay attention, too, to the insistence that physical worship/idol-making is not a requirement to break the commandments. If you've created something in your mind that could conceivably be called an idol by the loose standard here, then you must worship it on a level equal or greater with the Christian God. The mental aspect will come back later - along, likely, with a quote from President Carter. But for now, the point to note is that anyone who doesn't follow Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior is by definition an idol worshiper, because The Bible, God's Word, says God is the only real God here. Our writer is reading in the later parts of the codex to the earlier here as well, asserting the only-one-God-and-I'm-him conclusion of the Christian Foundational Writings into the I'm-the-God-you-should-follow-you-ungrateful-bastards of Torah. In doing so, though, he restricts the authoritative texts to only those that have the preferred conclusion.

Enough about logic follies here - I'm sure there are plenty more to be had. Moving on.

Then, we come to the third commandment: Exodus 20:7 – "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain."

Every person who is not a Christian, who has said a prayer to God or sung a song containing God’s name, has used His name in vain. Unless you are praying a prayer of faith, believing in Jesus Christ for your salvation, Proverbs 28:9 states that even your prayer is an abomination.

This is quite the assertion to make. The quoted part of Proverbs: "He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be an abomination." Or, rather: Those who pray to me that don't actually follow me are getting the cold shoulder. Depending on your interpretation of what G-d and Jesus said were the requirements for his followers, there could be a lot of people who claim to follow them who will find themselves regularly frozen out on their prayer requests. Also, while this G-d is a jealous one, do you want to claim that he's such a dick that he hates it when people who might not be his followers sing songs of praise to him or turn to him when things get tough? (If so, then this screed about how unholy and unworthy everyone else is makes more sense - one must establish that the club is exclusive, and you aren't in it, so that you will be moved to beg for inclusion once you see the benefits of being in the club.)

Here is the fourth commandment: Exodus 20:8-11 – "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."

The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week. Unless you have worshiped the Lord and abstained from work every Saturday, you have broken the fourth commandment. The command to work six days is just as sacred as the command to rest on the seventh. If you have not worked six days every week, and rested on every seventh, you have broken this commandment. And, giving you the benefit of the doubt, let me say this. Even if you have worshiped in a church every Saturday and worked six days every week, the unsaved has still broken this commandment. Regarding the Sabbath day, we are commanded to "keep it holy." The man who is unsaved is incapable of keeping anything holy, for Titus 1:15 says, "Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled." So, everyone who is an unbeliever has not kept the Sabbath day holy; nor is he even capable of doing so.

Ah, so the weekend prevents us from being proper Christians, because we get that extra day off from our work. This is the one that allows you to sweep anyone otherwise not covered under the rug of the unbelieving and then make sweeping statements about their ability to follow the commandments. It also disallows the presence of the "virtuous pagans" of Dantean Hell, who could follow the proper precepts and avoid the torment, but would otherwise still be separated from the pleasures of heaven. I suspect, had the order not been established in the scrolls, this particular mitzvot and its reasoning would go up to the top, so as to cement immediately the proof-texting that makes everyone not in his group part of the evil group.

Now, for the fifth commandment: Exodus 20:12 – "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee."

If you are unsaved, you dishonor your natural parents, bringing them shame. Not to mention, you dishonor the heavenly Father, who is ready to save you right now, making you part of His family.

...well, there's not much more here to say other than assuming that one's natural parents are saved Christians is remarkable hubris on his part. Stick instead to the God-Daddy if you don't want to be laughed at by a significant portion of the population. A far better tack would be to take the conventional interpretation - that one's parents deserve respect because they raised you and did you many favors by allowing you to grow up without throwing you out to the elements or requiring you to work for your keep from when you became old enough to do so. Moving on...

At this point, we veer heavily into mental territory, as the following mitzvot are either mostly mental, or most people have not physically done the act named in the mitzvot.

How about the sixth commandment: Exodus 20:13 – "Thou shalt not kill."

Now, you may say, "I’ve never killed anyone." Oh, but you have. I John 3:15 says that if you hate your brother (meaning, your fellow man), you are a murderer. And, just in case you feel that you have never hated anyone, you killed the Son of God Himself. Jesus died, not for any wrongs of His own, for He had none. He died for your sins and mine. You killed Jesus Christ the Son of God. If Jesus is not your God, you are a murderer of the worst kind.

The quotation is accurate - those that hate their brother men are murderers, imagining harm and possibly death to others. Which, if you extrapolate from there, is a command to not get cliquey and exclusionary and otherwise create the kinds of situations where you can hate some other group for any reason. After that, there is the standard rhetoric about how the sins of mankind required the death of Jesus Christ, and that every sinner, past and present, is personally responsible, through that sin, for the death of the perfect being, created to be a sacrifice to purge the world of that sin. It's a guilt-trip of the highest order - just by being who you are, you're responsible for a man's death, a man you've never met, but who luckily transcended death and now offers you the chance to be forgiven for killing him.

The seventh commandment: Exodus 20:14 – "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

Anyone who has been unfaithful to his/her spouse is guilty of adultery. If you clear yourself in this accusation, let me point out that Jesus Christ said in Matthew 5:28 that if you look upon a woman to lust after her, you have committed adultery with her IN YOUR HEART. And, even if you are not guilty of looking with lust, the scriptures declare that if you are an idolater, you are guilty of spiritual adultery (Ezekiel 23:37). I have already shown that every unbeliever is guilty of idolatry because God is not his god, and is therefore guilty of adultery.

Carter strikes! (At least, I think it is he who famously said that he had committed adultery in his heart.) So, anybody who thought someone other than their spouse was attractive is an adulterer. This one also looks like it should move up the list to box in people who might think they can navigate some way of being a non-believer and still be heaven-bound. I think it also means that anyone who's been single and thought of someone as being attractive is an adulterer, despite not having a spouse to cheat mentally on. The point is to make sure that nobody escapes being branded an Other who should be rightly shut out in the cold when Jesus returns.

The eighth commandment: Exodus 20:15 – "Thou shalt not steal."

If you have ever taken something that was not yours, you are a thief. Even if you have never stolen from another person, if you have not given 10% of your income to God Almighty, you have robbed God, according to Malachi 3:8. But, even more so, if Jesus Christ is not your God, and you trust in anything other than in Him, Jesus said in John 10:1 that you are the same as a thief and a robber. If you do not know Jesus, you are, by definition, a thief.

Let's play the context game here. First, the relevant part of Malachi is not 3:8, but later on, when God commands the chosen people to bring full tithes to the storehouses, so that there is food in the house of God. What kind of tithe? Proverbs 3:9 says: "Honor the LORD with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce" - suggesting that first harvest was to be given to the house of G-d, and some amount of the wealth made was also to be given. The 10% figure is a number decided on later by interpretation. Later on, in a parable, Jesus also commends the poor woman who gives all that she has and trusts in God, as opposed to those rich people that gave from their surpluses. So lacking the tithe might be a thieving offense - and the tithe goes to the house of G-d, not to the deity himself, by the way. But the tithe is only asked of those who claim to follow G-d - anyone outside there isn't obligated to pay tithe, only taxes. Render unto Caesar, and all that.

And as for John - "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." The person who tries to bring people to God through some other method than Jesus should not be trusted and should be treated as thieves and robbers. It's a warning about other possible prophets and priests. It takes quite a stretch to turn it into an admonishment that anyone who doesn't believe in God and Jesus is a thief and robber, unless, that is, you're trying to turn all the people in your in-group afraid of the people outside the group, so as to stop them from looking at the world from an outside perspective. Y'know, standard cult practices.

The ninth commandment: Exodus 20:16 – "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."

Perhaps you feel that you have never lied. The scriptures, however, declare otherwise. Romans 3:3, 4 tells us that if you do not believe Jesus Christ, God is true, and you are a liar. The person who refuses to place their faith in Christ, is a liar.

Context ahoy. In this part of the letter to the Romans, Paul says: "Then what advantage has the Jew?...Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar..." -it's about the great nature of G-d. If our writer wants to say everyone who doesn't believe is a liar, he is better-suited to look a little further down, as Paul says that everyone, Jew or Greek, is equally a sinner, and that nothing people do, excepting through faith in Jesus, will erase their status as a sinner. Not a liar, just a sinner.

The tenth commandment reads this way: Exodus 20:17 – "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's."

The tenth commandment forbids covetousness. Covetousness is the root of all sin. Therefore, since you have broken the first nine commandments, you are guilty of covetousness. Furthermore, Colossians 3:5 states that covetousness is idolatry. Since every unbeliever is guilty of idolatry, everyone who is not a Christian is also guilty of covetousness.

I think our writer is tired at this point, as his justification hangs entirely on all the previous work. Having already done the adultery route, it would have been no effort to cut and paste there and then point out that this is just the more expanded form of what was going on there, saying that mental acts that would lead to things like adultery, stealing, or lying for gain are also prohibited, and thus anyone who does those things is Biblically ineligible of being a moral person. The Colossians reference is excellent support if this is the point being made, rather than going back to the "you're all idolaters, and you've broken all the other commandments, too, I proved this, so you lose" well. (Also, we thought our idolatry was the root of our sin, not our covetousness. Perhaps that's why most people settle on Seven?)

And thus, the Big Finish, having slogged through this attempt at exegesis that misses wide much of the time...

What the Bible Concludes - The Bible concludes that every person who is not a Christian is an idol-worshiping, image-making, Sabbath-breaking, parent-dishonoring, cursing, lying, stealing, killing, coveting adulterer. The unsaved man or woman is far from moral. Yes, I am sure there are men and women who are good to their neighbors, faithful to their spouse, and wouldn’t do anything to hurt anyone. But, notice – these people have already hurt Jesus Christ. Although you may be moral regarding your treatment of others; you are immoral in your treatment of Jesus Christ if you are not a Christian.

Galatians 3:22 sums it all up – "But the scripture hath concluded ALL UNDER SIN, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe."

Believing on Jesus Christ is the only thing that will make you a moral person. Outside of this, man is filthy in the sight of Almighty God.

Having already conflated that mental actions are equivalent to physical actions, then it remains only to accuse the people who are outside the in-group as having done all the physical actions that define them as sinners and amoral, evil people. And any time you run into someone who looks for all the world to be a decent human being, remember that even if they're good humans, they commit continual offense to God, and are thus amoral, evil people who just look like they're good people. Anyone who isn't part of the in-group is evil and should be shunned, or possibly killed. Trust only the people in the group. The cult are the only moral people. Everyone else must have the message carried to them until they accept it, whether they do so willingly, or they do so because the government requires them to, or they do so because they wish to live instead of being killed for their unbelief.

This post is a good look inside how a message that is at least nominally about loving one's neighbor and paying fealty to the God that brought the chosen people out of slavery can be twisted to be a message of exclusivity, snobbery, and possibly even violence, if taken out to one of its possible ends. Proof-texting out of context and firing lines like weapons makes for interpretations that are not possible if read in their wider relationship to other parts of the text. This is a fairly ludicrous example, all told - the problems are big and easy to spot. Most of the time, if there are ways that the message is being corrupted, it's a lot more subtly, but the ends that it allows for can be just as devastating. Especially if one of the corruptions of that message is that there is only one authority and one interpretation that can be considered to be the right one, and all discussion must be squelched.