This Week's Testimony: Ayana's Quest for Love
Monday July 14, 2008
Ayana grew up never feeling her mother's favor, unless she did something to please her. This confusion about love spilled over into Ayana's relationship with God and developed into a compulsion to please and serve the Lord in an effort to win God's love. Eventually her quest for love was satisfied when illness brought her to a weakened place where the only thing she could do was receive the love of God.
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Comments
The “just and righteous” Noah (6:9, 7:1) plants a vineyard, gets drunk, and lies around naked in his tent. His son, Ham, happens to see his father in this condition. When Noah sobers up and hears “what his young son had done unto him” (what did he do besides look at him?), he curses not Ham, who “saw the nakedness of his father,” but Ham’s son, Canaan. “A servant of servants shall he [Canaan] be unto his brethren.” 9:20-25
“And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.”
What did Ham do? Did he just look at his naked father or was there something more to it than that? Some commentators have suggested that Ham committed homosexual rape on his drunken father, and that this was why Ham’s descendants were eternally punished with slavery. 9:24
Poor Pharaoh couldn’t resist the “very fair” Sarai, and he takes her into his harem. 12:15
Sarai is the first of a long line of barren women who were desperate for children. (In the Bible, it is the women who are barren, never the men.) She sends Abram into her handmaid, Hagar, so that she can “obtain children by her.” Abram gladly complies. 16:1-4
God establishes his covenant with Abram: “This is my covenant … every man child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin.” It seems that penises are supremely important to god. 17:10-11, 23-24
Sarah, who is about 90 years old and has gone through menopause, laughs at God when he tells her that she will have a son. She asks God if she will “have pleasure” with her “Lord” [Abraham], when both are so very old. God assures her that he will return and impregnate her at the appointed time. 18:11-14
The two angels that visit Lot wash their feet, eat, and are sexually irresistible to Sodomites. 19:1-5
God kills everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah. This was because, so say the Christian Right, some homosexuals lived there. 19:4-5, 24-25
Lot refuses to give up his angels to the perverted mob, offering his two “virgin daughters” instead. He tells the bunch of angel rapers to “do unto them [his daughters] as is good in your eyes.” This is the same man that is called “just” and “righteous” in 2 Pet.2:7-8. 19:8
Lot and his daughters camp out in a cave for a while. The daughters get their “just and righteous” father drunk, and have sexual intercourse with him, and each conceives and bears a son (wouldn’t you know it!). Just another wholesome family values Bible story. 19:30-38
“The Lord visited Sarah” and he “did unto Sarah as he had spoken.” And “Sarah conceived and bare Abraham a son.” 21:1-2
Abraham makes his servant put his hand under his thigh while swearing to God. Weird. Of course “putting his hand under his thigh” is just a polite euphemism for “holding his testicles in his hand.” Come to think of it, maybe it isn’t so weird at all — coming as it does from a god that is completely obsessed with male genitalia. (See Ex.4:25, Lev.15:16-18, 32, and Dt.23:1) for just a few examples.) I guess it’s sort of like swearing on the bible. 24:2, 24:9