Rational Compassionate Living

(Sorry; there’s nothing funny in this article, because this is a serious topic.)

According to Wikipedia:

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation.

Historically, slavery has often involved the cruelest stroke of all: the forcible separation of family members.

Starting way back in Genesis (9:25-27) an entire group of people were condemned to be slaves simply by virtue of their being descendants of Canaan (who himself had done nothing wrong other than be the son of Ham who had happened to see his drunken father naked.)

According to the Bible, when God laid down his “perfect” law, he did not outlaw slavery: he regulated it. He said that slaves could be beaten to death (as long as they took at least a day or two to die). He said that a slave’s children were his master’s property (if he got married while a slave) and that the children must stay with his master if the slave should ever win his freedom and leave:

If his master should give him a wife and she does bear him sons or daughters, the wife and her children will become her master’s and he will go out by himself. But if the slave should insistently say, ‘I really love my master, my wife and my sons; I do not want to go out as one set free,’ then his master must bring him near to the true God and must bring him up against the door or the doorpost; and his master must pierce his ear through with an awl, and he must be his slave to time indefinite.
And in case a man strikes his slave man or his slave girl with a stick and that one actually dies under his hand, that one is to be avenged without fail. However, if he lingers for a day or two days, he is not to be avenged, because he is his money.
—Exodus 21:4-6; 20-21

Under God’s “new deal” where love supposedly was the fulfillment of the law, slavery still was not condemned. Slaves are instructed to serve their masters obediently even if their masters are cruel! (1 Peter 2:19,19; 1 Tim. 6:1)

One of the works that makes up the “sacred Scripture” of the Bible is a letter from Paul to Philemon telling him how he had caught his runaway slave Onesimus, and (instead of assisting him in retaining his freedom) was sending him back!

In fact, the Bible is so pro-slavery that it was used by southern preachers in the U.S. back in the 19th century to perpetuate the practice of slavery long after most other civilized countries had abolished it. Mostly because of this it took a very bloody civil war to rid the U.S. of slavery.

Benjamin Palmer was one of those southern preachers. He was a “founding father” of the Southern Presbyterian church in New Orleans. Here are some of his words from that period:

“The descendants of Ham, in whom the sensual and corporeal appetites predominate, are driven like an infected race beyond the deserts of Sahara, where under a glowing sky nature harmonizes with their brutal and savage disposition…Let us say, with all the distinctness and emphasis with which words of destiny are ever uttered, that we will conserve this institution of domestic servitude, not only from the pressure of necessity and from the instinct of interest — not only from a feeling of trusteeship over the race thus providentially committed to us — not even at last from a general conviction of the righteousness of the course — but also from a special sense of duty to mankind… Upon Ham was pronounced the doom of perpetual servitude… The abolition spirit is undeniably atheistic… the decree has gone forth which strikes at God by striking at all subordination and law.”

Slavery is evil, pure and simple. Civilization has progressed to the point where most people now recognize this fact. However, back when the Bible was being written, its authors had not reached that level of ethical maturity. So, when they wrote the Bible they condoned slavery. This proves that at least those parts of the Bible are not inspired by any loving god of justice.

The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses proudly call themselves “the faithful and discreet slave”.  I guess I lied when I said there was nothing funny in this article, because that’s one of the funniest and stupidest things anyone has ever said — and believe me the GB has said a lot of really dumb things (as you’ll know if you’ve been reading my other posts).

What sane individual would be happy and proud to be a slave? Only someone who doesn’t understand what slavery is or doesn’t know what freedom is.

In what way is the GB a “slave”? Have they been kidnapped from their home, forcibly separated from family members, chained to a slave ship and forced to work for a cruel master? Have they been beaten and whipped to within an inch of their lives? Have they had their freedom yanked away from them? Do they live every day of their lives in weary, exhausted anguish?

I knew a member of the Governing Body when I served at Bethel: Bill Jackson (now deceased). He happened to be chairman of the GB the year that I knew him. He was in my New York congregation and had recommended me for Bethel service. I used to ride back and forth between Bethel and the Kingdom Hall with him and several other brothers in his car. I don’t know cars, but I know his was a nice, new, luxury car. Not the type of car you’d think a slave would be driving. Of the $20 a month I earned at Bethel for my full-time work in the bindery, $12 went to Bill Jackson to put gas in his car. I assume the other brothers were paying him the same amount. So I don’t think he was hurting on that account. But then again, maybe money really was tight with him; once out in service he refused to give a really interested person a Truth book just because that individual didn’t have the 25 cents that we were charging for books back then. (I accidentally called on the same person a few minutes later and gave him a Truth book. When I told this to Bill he claimed the placement since he saw him first — demonstrating the type of fairness that probably appealed to Jesus when he anointed Bill to be a co-ruler with him over the Earth.)

No, the GB members I saw didn’t fit the description of slaves; they were all nicely dressed in expensive suits without a trace of blood on their backs. Their appropriation of this term is an arrogant slap in the face to anyone with ancestors who experienced genuine slavery, as it is to anyone aware of the slavery that continues to this day.

Maybe some other people I saw in the congregation fit the description a little better, however:

The rank and file Witnesses are the ones who are forcibly separated from worldly and/or disfellowshipped family members. They are the ones forced to turn in a certain minimum number of hours of “field service” each month without compensation. They are the ones who have surrendered their will to their masters: the GB. They may not be “deprived of the right to leave” but they are threatened with eternal death and shunning if they do.

So much for being a “slave”. In another article we’ll see that the Governing Body’s claim of being “faithful and discreet” is just as ludicrous and insulting to our intelligence.

See also: Is the Governing Body a “Faithful & Discreet Slave?

Back in my Witnessing days there were a few publications that I considered the most important. Topping the list was the little blue “Truth book”: The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life. Second on the list was another little blue book: Did Man Get Here by Evolution or by Creation?

The “Evolution book” was great. It proved how silly the whole idea of evolution was by showing an illustration of an old wreck of a car sitting in a junk yard. The caption was something to the effect: “We don’t see lifeless things evolving into living things.” That settled it for me: evolution was a lie of Satan’s used to lure people into the idea that there was no Creator.

That’s really all I remember clearly from that book. The rest of it is a blur of “debunking” the fossil evidence and dating methods, and its insistence that animals could never breed across “kinds”. All of the scientific evidence for evolution was dealt with in similar brilliant strokes as the junk yard analogy. It was even more remarkable to know that this book was authored by men with little to no education! But somehow Jehovah’s spirit guided them into knowing what parts of quotations from scientists to include and which parts to exclude in order to make it sound like the scientists themselves didn’t believe in evolution! I remember that they even made it sound like Charles Darwin had serious reservations about the whole thing. Surely this shows that the writers of the book were being led by the God of all truth!

But something was missing, and it has bothered me for a long time. Sure, the Watchtower boldly took on the origin of man as best they could. But what about women? After all, the Bible details exactly how women “got here”:

And Jehovah God went on to say: “It is not good for the man to continue by himself. I am going to make a helper for him, as a complement of him.”

Now Jehovah God was forming from the ground every wild beast of the field and every flying creature of the heavens, and he began bringing them to the man to see what he would call each one; and whatever the man would call it, each living soul, that was its name. So the man was calling the names of all the domestic animals and of the flying creatures of the heavens and of every wild beast of the field, but for man there was found no helper as a complement of him.

Hence Jehovah God had a deep sleep fall upon the man and, while he was sleeping, he took one of his ribs and then closed up the flesh over its place. And Jehovah God proceeded to build the rib that he had taken from the man into a woman and to bring her to the man.

Then the man said:
“This is at last bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh.
This one will be called Woman,
Because from man this one was taken.”

That is why a man will leave his father and his mother and he must stick to his wife and they must become one flesh.

— Genesis 2:18-24 (NWT)

I remember in Catholic grade school [yes, I was in Babylon the Great™ prior to my conversion to the Watchtower religion] all the boys began counting their ribs when we were told this story — but we couldn’t induce the girls to count theirs. No matter; the nun told us that Adam had one less rib after this operation, but we didn’t inherit this condition from him. (When I was told that, I wondered why we inherited his sinful condition but not his missing rib condition. But I held my tongue.)

I find several things interesting in the Bible’s account.

The first item of interest is how God formed man, and formed the animals, but he built the woman.

I guess that’s what men must mean when they say that a woman is “really built”.

Secondly, note how Jehovah wanted to find a helpmate for Adam, and evidently looked first to the animals he was creating at the time. God brought each of these animals to Adam, and he named them. While he was naming them I guess he and God were also sizing them up as potential mates for Adam. But none were a good fit. (No sin was involved here because evidently the Mosaic Law with its prohibition against bestiality had not yet been thought of by God.)

The above experiment took considerable time. We know it took at least 37 years (since the time between Adam’s creation and building Eve corresponds to the number of years between 1975 and the start of Armageddon). So God and Adam really must’ve tried to make these relationships work. Given what we know about later male tendencies, I can imagine the trial marriages with the sheep and the primates lasting the longest before ultimately proving unsatisfactory.

In desperation God hit upon the idea of building a female of the species for Adam. Since God had already created male and female versions of all the other animals it’s sort of odd that he hadn’t hit upon this idea right away instead of having Adam try out other animals for so many years. Too bad he didn’t have the Watchtower’s Evolution book available back then; he would’ve known that animals only breed amongst their own “kind”. Just think of how much time that would’ve saved: we’d be in the throes of Armageddon right now rejoicing at the sight of worldly people dying right before our eyes!

But God was tired at the end of a hard day’s work: a “day” that had lasted at least 7,000 years! He longed to lie down on his bed of chubby cherubs in the clouds. But now he had to create yet another creature just to satisfy lazy, horny Adam.

Jehovah sighed.

Not wanting the bother of figuring out another complex DNA code, he decided to become “Jehovah the great physician” and perform the first operation ever, replete with anesthesia! Taking Adam’s rib (and hence his DNA) he formed a woman. In the process he noticed that in the DNA he took from Adam the pair of X chromosomes had a problem: one of them was incomplete! (Guess he was a little hasty in concluding it was all “good”.) He went ahead and patched this up in the new model human, which is why to this day women have two good X chromosomes while men have only one (the incomplete one being known as a Y chromosome).

But just fixing that chromosome  wasn’t enough. The end result was an ugly, hairy beast that looked like a female version of Bigfoot. Jehovah had to start Eve on injections of female sex hormones right away. At first Jehovah supplied the Estrogen, but after the fall, Adam could be seen running behind pregnant horses collecting their estrogen-rich piss. Talk about the sweat of your brow!

That’s why it took so long for Abel to be born; they had to wait till Eve was able (hence the name).

By the way: it is only a rumor that Adam, frustrated on being forced out of Eden, turned to Eve and said: “I think God made you from my sitz bone instead of my rib; you’re a real pain in the ass!”

Now, I ask you honestly: Doesn’t all of this just sound so much truer and more likely than the scientific explanation of evolution which requires some intelligence to comprehend?

I know that in my own case the Bible is so right: the reason I left my mother and father and went to live with a woman had nothing to do with love or lust; it was solely due to the nostalgia I felt for that missing rib.