Suffer, Little Children

From *The Skeptical Review* Jan/Mar 1993:

by Farrell Till

If you couldn't believe what you were seeing while reading the foregoing article [in The Skeptical Review, kwh] you probably have no background in Christian fundamentalism. A Christian writer who believes that the massacre of entire civilian populations in time of war, even to the point of genocide, is morally good! Is it possible that anyone living in a modern civilized society could really believe such a thing? Well, I assure you that your eyes weren't playing tricks on you. Bible fundamentalists really do defend all the bloody deeds that were presumably ordered by the Hebrew god Yahweh. Standing by this ancient war-god, even to the point of defending his commands to massacre babies, is an albatross that they must wear around their necks or else surrender their belief in Bible inerrancy. Apparently unable to bear the thought of life without their Bible-inerrancy security blanket, they choose to take a stand for killing babies.

Child Abuse Yahweh's Way

Number 16 of 17 in the *Twilight Zone* series:
A great "hero of faith" considered loyalty to an oath more important than the life of his own daughter.

by Farrell Till

Only in the Twilight Zone of biblical times could one become a "hero of faith" by killing his daughter in order to keep a foolish oath. In in our last trek through the twilight zone, we saw that vows were serious business in those days. None of the Israelite fathers, for example, felt free to give their daughters in marriage to the 600 males who had survived the massacre of the Benjamites, because "the men of Israel had sworn an oath at Mizpah, saying, `None of us shall give his daughter to Benjamin as a wife'" (Judges 21:1). In the law of Moses, it was written, "When you make a vow to Yahweh your God, you shall not delay to pay it; for Yahweh your God will surely require it of you, and it would be sin to you.... That which has gone from your lips you shall keep and perform, for you voluntarily vowed to Yahweh your God what you have promised with your mouth" (Deut. 23:21,23).