ExFundie

Before going on, let’s review the situation so far, as Christian fundamentalists see it. Their belief addresses two issues: first, what the Big Problem is in the world and how it got that way; and second, the Promise of a solution and how it is to be implemented.

We’ve pretty much covered the Big Problem now. For almost all fundamentalists of any religion, the Big Problem is that humans and the world are not running according to the Real Truths of the universe. These Real Truths have usually been explained to humans in the past by a divinity of some sort, since people are incapable of discovering them on their own (e.g. in Hinduism, Ganesha the elephant god breaks off a tusk and uses it to write the sacred Vedas [Hindu scriptures]; or Allah visits Mohammad to bestow the Qur’an; or Yahweh dictates the Torah to Moses and later inspires several prophets and apostles with more of the Real Truths). Fundamentalists virtually always have a book that they refer to for their beliefs about the world. These Truths, since they came from God, are not modifiable, as we have seen in past essays.

In some fundamentalist systems (e.g. strict Hinduism) the problem of the world not running according to the Real Truths, although unfortunate, is part of a larger repeating cycle through the history of the universe. You should fight the decay, but if you’re in the final, most evil stage in the current cycle, it’s going to proceed almost inevitably to a very bad end before starting again with a pristine beginning. For other fundamentalist systems, which believe that history only happens once, in a straight line rather than in repeating cycles, all this badness should never have happened in the first place, and the divinity in charge (e.g. Allah or Yahweh) has had to go to a lot of trouble to mop up the mess, and boy, is humankind in trouble because of it.

In Christian fundamentalism, as we have observed, the Big Problem is that God created a perfect world and perfect human beings, and gave the first human a lot of control over the nature and future of the world. But Man (the correct word, for fundamentalists, even though the initial choice was made by the Woman) chose to make himself the ruler of his life rather than God. Therefore Man and all his descendants fell into inevitable sin, which separated them irrevocably from the holy God, and also plunged the physical world into entropy and corruption.

And so. This must mean that Man is a lost cause, right? God should just write off this creation and try another one to see if it will go better. Right?

Actually, no. This is where another big fundamentalist belief – that “God is love” – begins to come into its own. We may scoff at this idea, coming from them of all people. We do have many good reasons to think that oppressive, rigid, frequently hateful Christian fundamentalists have a lot of nerve trying to tell us that all their spleen and vindictiveness come from God’s love. But once again, things are not as simple as we might try to make them out for our convenience. We must at least try to understand how a vast group of people can simultaneously believe that love is a prime characteristic of their God, and yet perpetrate all sorts of nastiness in the name of that love. If we don’t get some understanding of how they can hold these contradictions in their minds, we will never unravel them in actual society.

For the fundamentalist, God demonstrated his love by not punishing Man with death as he deserved. True, Man was in a state of spiritual death and separation from God. But God, in his mercy, kept him physically alive, so this separation had not become irrevocable.* While Man was alive in the flesh, things could still be fixed. (*In the Christian fundamentalist view, and I believe the Islamic view as well, your spiritual state at the moment of death becomes permanent. Catholics have some leeway in the concept of Purgatory, where the sin that still weighs you down at death may be worked off, but after that, your spiritual state is also permanent. I suspect that Sikh fundamentalists have a similar view of the soul’s permanent state at death, but Hindus believe you can improve your state in your next incarnation by living a better life in this one. Their view of the soul’s primary goal, however, is very different from the western fundamentalists’ view: Hindus seek the individual soul’s blissful absorption into the one ultimate Soul.)

When God kept Man alive, it was so Man could still be restored to an eternal relationship with God. But the solution to the sin problem – which we will deal with when we talk about Jesus Christ – was going to take many years to work out. Therefore, Man’s survival had to be ensured in the meantime.

First, God clothed the Man and Woman in animal skins rather than the vegetation they had used. This act, incidentally, constituted the very first blood sacrifice toward the salvation of Man. Bloodshed is a constant element of the salvation plan in Christian fundamentalism. Theologians view even the sacrifice of these animals for the first clothing as an object lesson God made for Man, to demonstrate just how serious the sinful choice really was. There would be many more of these object lessons before history was done and salvation was accomplished.

This is the first instance of something we see over and over again in fundamentalism. God basically says this: “See how awful you are, having sinned. But see how I love you and take care of you. But see how awful your sin was, because I must kill to save you. But see how much I love you as I kill for you anyway. And by the way, the clothes you made yourselves were garbage; only things that I provide are valuable.” And so on. This wrenching mixture – professed love simultaneously mixed with utter condemnation – keeps fundamentalists in an abject state, teaching them to hate themselves while magnifying God’s love even though they are so worthless they don’t deserve it. The fundamentalists who most sincerely and genuinely believe their own doctrines hate themselves most completely.

This is also probably one root of their hatred of people who don’t view God as they do: “those nasty sinners who deserve death but who reject the life offered by God!”

The Genesis story displays a typical mixture of condemnation and love, as he takes care of the undeserving sinners. He gives Man a livelihood (tilling the soil) – but promises that “[c]ursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground” (Genesis 3:17, 18 – New American Standard version). He also makes the complete subjugation of women a divinely decreed institution now: “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you shall bring forth children; yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Gen. 3:16, NAS version). Fundamentalists insist this was a loving decree, for women’s protection, to prevent their going off on their own and bringing trouble to their male leaders, the way Eve did to Adam when she ate the fruit and gave it to him [apparently he had no will power to refuse of his own accord]. This rationalization must be read into the decree, however, because the literal command is very harsh.

God makes another surprising move: he kicks Man out of the garden, “lest he stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” (Gen. 3:22). This sounds like the harshest move of all. Isn’t death now the problem? Why wouldn’t it be a good thing for Man to regain eternal life?

The problem is that Man is now in a spiritually sinful state of separation from God. If he were to gain eternal life now, it would be a life of permanent separation from God. His condemnation could never be rectified, and his sinfulness could never change. So in fact, this was indeed an act of love.

All of these provisions to keep Man alive were enacted because God had made a Promise of redemption that had yet to be worked out in history. At least, that’s how the fundamentalists interpret the following verse, as God speaks sternly to the serpent who had tempted the Woman to eat the forbidden fruit in the first place:

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel” (Gen. 3:15).

There. Makes everything clear, doesn’t it? This is obviously a Promise that all of man’s sinfulness would be taken care of eventually and everything would be perfect again. Got it?

Neither did I, the first time I was told about it. But I’m going to demonstrate how the fundamentalists interpret every phrase, because this is the first verse they use to make the claim that the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus were planned from the beginning of time, and that therefore there are no “other ways” to God and no other valid religions. (It is also “proof,” for them, that the Jews have been misunderstanding their own scriptures, and God’s plan for them, almost from the beginning.)

The “enmity between you and the woman” is pretty clear. Humans and serpents often have an iffy relationship, and it stands to reason that if the serpent tempted humans to fall into sin, and the consequences will reverberate to all future generations, then future serpents and future descendants of the Woman will continue to be at odds. (Though I have to interject that there isn’t even the slightest raising of an eyebrow at the purely folkloric element of a talking animal being essential in this account. And this isn’t the only talking animal in the scriptures either. But on we go…)

It’s where the enmity is prophesied “between your seed [the serpent’s] and her seed [obviously the Woman’s]” that the fundamentalist interpretation gets interesting. Supposedly, in the Bible, the “seed” is always described as the man’s seed (and is plural). Man is the biblical source of the next generation, not the woman. Except, apparently, this once. So why is that?

Silly. It’s obvious! This is a prophecy of the virgin birth of Jesus! Duh. The one time when the man didn’t provide the “seed,” but the human birth comes entirely from the woman – well, there you have the virgin birth. See?

And you thought the verse was talking about all future generations [“seed’] of humans. Nope. It’s talking about one person only: Jesus Christ. Which suggests that “thy seed” (meaning the serpent’s “seed”) may be…who? Sort of the diametric opposite of Jesus, in Christian theology. Satan, probably? (Mentioning the serpent’s “seed” is actually inaccurate, since the future “seed” is apparently the same being who appears in Genesis. The reasoning goes that it wasn’t the literal serpent, the animal, acting in Genesis but the serpent possessed by Satan, meaning that yes, Satan will reappear later in history. But the text never says that. In fact, in the temptation scene, the serpent is called “more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made” [Genesis 3:1], making it pretty clear that it is the actual animal we’re talking about. So many interesting problems trying to take this story literally, and still try to claim that the interpretation comes directly from the text itself!)

Anyway. The result of this enmity through the ages, between the serpent and the man. The man will bruise the serpent’s head, and the serpent will bruise his heel. The New American Standard version offers “crush” as an alternate word to “bruise” when talking about the man’s deed, by the way, but still doesn’t offer it as the primary translation, keeping “bruise” in the text.

But what’s with all this bruising? Well, that’s obvious too, surely. The serpent will “bruise the heel” of the man – meaning a temporary injury, but nothing too bad. Whereas the man will bruise (or crush) the serpent’s head. This is seen as a fatal blow, which will destroy the serpent. Head injury vs. heel injury – fatal injury vs. not-so-bad injury (although…tell that to Achilles! But anyway…). This is where Jesus permanently defeats Satan (say the fundamentalists, though if the original word really does carry the meaning of “bruise” more than “crush,” one might argue that the defeat surely isn’t as permanent as they want to claim).

And there you have it. This is the great Promise that was made to the primordial human couple. Go back and re-read the verse and see if you can see it now: Jesus will be born of a virgin (where does it say he will be part-God, though?), and although he will suffer a temporary “bruising” or setback (this would be the crucifixion in case you hadn’t guessed by now), in the end he will utterly defeat Satan (this would be the resurrection and everything that follows from it).

Fundamentalists are very clear on the Big Problem, and now they have their Promised solution. For them, this is the real beginning of history, and the sole purpose of human history is to bring this Promise to complete fruition. Everything that ever happens in human history is not in fact about human beings at all. The whole show is simply the working-out of the Promise, and once it is fulfilled and all the ramifications worked through, history ends. Poof.

So let’s go have a bit of a look at history, and see how it all works out, shall we?

Next: History -- The Part God is Interested In

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