ExFundie

And so history began. Fundamentalists divide past history into two segments: the history of humankind in general, and the narrower, highly-focussed stream of history that God really cared about. The only “real” history is the part leading to the promised Redeemer, Jesus. The rest of history, and those millions of lives, were of no real importance except where they intersected the history God was working on and affected it somehow. When Christian fundamentalists view any history not directly connected to the project of producing the Redeemer, they dismiss it as a long fall into degradation. Any history or culture not connected to God’s historical project is regarded as degraded and evil by definition.

In this essay, we will look first at the part of history that is “really” important, the stream engineered by God to bring Jesus into existence as the redeemer. (In the next essay, we will examine the fundamentalist view of everyone else’s history.) It appears to have taken about 4000 years to get Jesus born. That may not be long for God, but it’s awfully long for humans. So what was he up to all that time?

Envision history as a sort of funnel on its side, very wide at the beginning, getting narrower and narrower till it finally reaches its point: Jesus.

Biblical history is portrayed like that. We began with the mass of people-in-general as the world population got fairly large (and yes, Cain and Abel and Seth did marry their own sisters). Man gradually developed culture, music, agriculture, cities, etc. He also committed the first murder, followed by others, as his inherent sinfulness began to manifest.

His sinfulness became so widespread, in fact, that God sent the Great Flood, saving only Noah and his family from the entire human population. (Fundamentalists take this Flood literally; it covered the world; and only eight people, and two of every animal, survived.) The historical funnel narrowed to a point, but this was a false start. So humanity began to grow again from this small group.

There are some interesting details in the flood story, though. There was another blood sacrifice to give thanks to God for the rescue from the flood. The habit of killing an animal to mark Man’s redemption was starting to develop in the biblical narrative. Additionally, it was only now that Man was given permission to eat animals. Nature was again given into his hands, but their relationship was harsher: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. And the fear of you and the terror of you shall be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given” (Genesis 9:1, 2 – New American Standard version).

As humanity re-multiplied, nations and races developed, taking their names from Noah’s three sons and their descendants. (Fundamentalists believe that “Semites” are descended from Noah’s son Shem, for example.) Eventually it was time for God to start the narrowing-down process in earnest, that would lead to Jesus.

First he formed yet another nation, beginning by pulling Abraham out of the ancient Babylonian city of Ur. This “pulling out” from one’s original setting is a motif repeated constantly in Christian fundamentalism. Their theology is very much about separating people from their original family, friends, and other ties, coalescing them into a new, God-based “family” with new allegiances. Abraham is considered the archetypal separation figure, because the Jewish nation starts with him.

Through Abraham, his son Isaac, Isaac’s son Jacob, and Jacob’s twelve sons, the Israelite nation was formed, with its twelve tribes descending from those twelve sons. God changed Jacob’s name to “Israel,” and the new nation took its name from him. During the course of his sons’ adventures, another “narrowing-down” occurred: the tribe of Judah, was designated as the tribe from which the promised redeemer would come. So this was the progression as the funnel of history and humanity narrowed:

General humanity --> One nation (Israel) --> One tribe (Judah)

After the Israelites found themselves enslaved in Egypt, and God miraculously delivered them, he promised them a homeland all their own. This was another separation, of an entire nation this time, and the nation would be an object lesson to the rest of humanity on the ups and downs of a proper relationship to God.

Along the way to the promised land, though, the concept of bloodshed for the sake of redemption was institutionalized. This is where the many rules we associate with Jewish observance originated: food laws, marriage and family relationships, financial laws, and most importantly, the laws about what animals one was to sacrifice to atone for which type of sin. Blood and death were crucial to the relationship with God. There were so many sacrifices designated for so many sins, great and small, that it creates the impression that these people were constantly living on the very edge of falling out of righteousness into eternal damnation. One begins to wonder just how big these people’s flocks had to be, to accommodate all this killing.

Remember that I am describing this from the Christian fundamentalist point of view. Many things in the historical account of the Israelites would be explained very differently by the adherents of Judaism. But for the Christian fundamentalist, the reason all these sacrifices were needed was that the promised Redeemer had not yet come. So technically, none of these people were saved from eternal damnation, because the Savior hadn’t come yet.

This is another logical outcome of the fundamentalist system described so far. If a person physically died in a state of separation from God, the state of their soul at that moment should have become permanent. That would mean that every single human being who lived in the four thousand years before Jesus came should have been lost and damned, irrevocably.

And they would have been, except that the loving God instituted the means whereby all humans who repented of their innate sinfulness could be put in a sort of “holding pattern” until the final transaction was complete that could save them. Since the sacrifice Jesus was to make involved blood and death, all sacrifices designed to point people’s faith toward that future sacrifice must also involve blood and death. Except, of course, that animals were only symbolic, and could not really remove sin. So the sacrifice had to be made over and over and over, for all sins, repeatedly. These sacrifices, when offered in a properly repentant state of heart, expressed the penitent’s faith in God’s promise of future redemption, and their reliance on it to save them.

When God eventually brought this raucous nation to the promised land (after a lot of sin, judgement, and wandering through the desert), the land unfortunately had long-standing inhabitants already. But this is God we’re talking about; nothing is an obstacle for him. He authorized many invasions, and genocide on a staggering scale. Men, women, children, even animals – he frequently ordered every single one slaughtered. (Sometimes exceptions were made for female virgins; we can pretty much imagine where they ended up, can’t we?) But this was okay, you see, because they were all eeeeevil. God is good by definition, so if he said this particular mass genocide was good – why, it was good. Period.

If you question that, well, we already know it’s because your mind is corrupted by sin, and your reasoning doesn’t work properly. Remember?

During the years of establishing the Israelites in the promised land, another narrowing-down occurred, designating the family of Jesse (through King David, its most prominent member), of the tribe of Judah as the family from which the promised redeemer would come.

General humanity --> One nation (Israel) --> One tribe (Judah) --> One family (Jesse, through David)

The rest of the Israel’s history, until Jesus finally arrived, was mainly an object lesson for us in the future. Stories from these centuries support some favorite fundamentalist motifs. For example, Israel frequently abandoned its relationship to God and misbehaved, for which God always judged them. Twice, in fact, he did so by having a heathen empire invade and take most of the population captive. Ancient Assyria came first, hauling away most of ten Israelite tribes, which were so decimated that they never existed as coherent tribes again, and are known even today as the “lost tribes of Israel.” Later, the Babylonian empire did the same thing to the tribe of Judah, taking them into captivity.

Judah, however, had a different fate from the lost ten tribes, for these people were brought back to Israel after a generation or two of captivity. This plays into the fundamentalist motif of “separation” – those who repented and reconciled with God were called out of both their place of captivity, and out of the mass of the twelve tribes, to become a distinctive God-serving entity of their own. Another name for this, in fundamentalist terms, is the “righteous remnant.”

Any time you hear a fundamentalist talking about a “remnant,” this is the motif they are referring back to. The “remnant” motif has been used throughout Christian history, and not just by fundamentalists. Any time the established church is seen as having fallen into sin and fallen away from God, so that people who want to serve God break away and form their own church or community, they think of themselves as another manifestation of that “righteous remnant.” Protestants breaking away from the Catholic church – a remnant, called to separate, by God. Parents taking kids out of secular schools and teaching them in private Christian schools – another “righteous remnant.” Modern American fundamentalists looking back at the Pilgrims and the founding of the United States – they view this history as another instance of God calling the “righteous remnant” out of the mass of unrighteous humanity, to start a godly enterprise.

It all goes back to these biblical examples where God judged Israel but saved the righteous few and started something new and divine with those few people who remained loyal to God.

Another fundamentalist motif supported by the history of Israel is the subjugation of women. This may sound far-fetched, until you realize that the image of Israel as either Bride or Whore is used incessantly by many of the prophets whose writings make up most of the Old Testament. When Israel is obedient to God, she is God’s Bride. When Israel abandons God and the people become interested in other deities – she is “whoring after other gods.”

Here is another reason why Christian fundamentalists insist on women’s subjugation to their husbands. This relationship is supposed to model humanity’s proper relationship to God. If women are independent or equal, this destroys the object lesson. Fundamentalists believe that deep down inside, even if we are not aware of it, we know what the proper hierarchy is: God above Man above Woman above Children. If we deviate from this, we have sinned, and subconsciously know it. And if we allow a deviation from this hierarchy to become normal in society, we send a message that it’s alright for humans to be independent of God, rather than his subjects. So women must be kept subjugated to men, to keep the object lesson clear and keep society functioning properly. The Bride/Whore motif also gives fundamentalists the justification they want, for holding independent women in utter contempt and describing them in the most insulting terms.

The final narrowing-down in history – and the final example of how obedient women are supposed to be – is Mary, the mother of Jesus. She was a good woman, evidenced by her willingness to accept God’s will even though it could potentially ruin her reputation in society (and indeed, her pregnancy upset her betrothed so much that God had to send him a special message to reassure him that she was still a virgin and the baby was divine). And with this final object lesson of female humility, Jesus was finally born.

General humanity --> One nation (Israel) --> One tribe (Judah) --> One family (Jesse, through David) --> Mary --> Jesus

We will examine the nature and role of Jesus, in the fundamentalist view, in a later essay. But first we will take a quick peek at the rest of world history, and what the fundamentalists make of it.

Next: All Will be Revealed

Back to: Promises, Promises