A priest’s most critical need, is to control his flock.
To keep the religious racket going, not only must the priest avoid competition from other faiths, he must prevent his own adherents from trying to go around him and access the deity themselves. It’s all about control. Moses claimed that no one could see God’s face and live (the con man who founded Mormonism used the same dodge regarding the original texts for his holy book – “Only I can see them!”), and that people really preferred Moses (and then other prophets) to talk to God on their behalf anyway. Moses said that even touching Mount Sinai (which might entail seeing God) would be fatal, and later on a man who touched the Ark of the Covenant accidentally was allegedly killed by God. Much later, Ezekiel claimed he saw a god of metal and fire, and John in the book of Revelation describes seeing God himself on his throne, which must have really weirded out any Jews who read the account.
Another way for a priest to lose control of his flock, is to let them start thinking for themselves. Not many people realize that in Genesis, God planted not one but two dangerous trees in Eden: the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. Genesis specifies that Eve ate the apple because she sought wisdom. God said that since Adam had eaten from the tree of knowledge, he could not be allowed to eat from the tree of life also – otherwise he could live forever, and essentially be on the same level with God. Any rational explanation of Genesis must fail on the pivotal question: why did God plant the tree of life and the tree of knowledge, both, right in front of the people who could threaten God’s supremacy by eating from them?
But the key thing is that God told Adam and Eve it was bad to reach out for wisdom – using reason leads men to question the priests and question the faith itself, and faith can never stand up under the scrutiny of reason. Later in Genesis, God made men speak different languages, so that they could no longer reason together and work together to do impossible things (the tower of Babel). In Deuteronomy Jews were told to teach their children to think in terms of obedience rather than reason – obedient children grow up to visit the priest each week, donate, and do what they are told, but people who think are…trouble. In the Book of Sirach, the Bible tells us that the way to find wisdom is not to think and use logic, but to fear God and obey; wisdom is a yoke to lead you into the right path, not a tool for figuring out the world. In the book of Wisdom the Bible tells us that wisdom is a goddess who tells us what to do – again, obedience, not reason. Under the priests, even the quest for wisdom became a tool for control.
Just
savor that for a moment – deep in the Bible, mention of a goddess that Jehovah
doesn’t want to kill, or deny her existence.
For
a thousand years the Catholic Church worked to prevent believers from owning
their own Bibles or translating the Bible into their native language so they
could read for themselves, and analyze and interpret what was in it. The Church
confiscated and burned such Bibles and also burned their owners including the
ground-breaking Bible translator William Tyndale; his work ironically was used
by the same king who had him killed, to publish the king’s own Bible in
English, and later used again as a basis for the King James Bible. This of
course ran hand in hand with the Reformation, wherein many of Rome’s cherished
rules were overturned. And soon, as Bibles spread across Europe, the worst
fears of the priests were realized: believers, totally outside the control of
the priests, could read and analyze scripture for themselves and decide what it
meant and what they believed – the priests’ role as mediator between God and
man was compromised. Or as Shaw said in his praise of Saint Joan, whom he tried
to portray as a proto-Protestant heroine -- “The girls in the field praise
thee, for thou hast raised their eyes, and they see that there is nothing
between them and heaven.” Nothing, and no one, between the believer and the
deity, if the believer could read God’s book for himself. Which is the outcome
that priests fear most -- their own irrelevancy exposed.
Control,
control, control. Book of Numbers, challenge the priest and you die.
Deuteronomy, kill anyone who shows contempt for the priest. Epistles to the
Romans, you must obey like a slave to righteousness. Hebrews, endure God’s
discipline like a child. James, never doubt the priest.
And priests don’t only like to control religious issues – they want to get their fingers into everything. Just as today’s preachers stick their noses into all sorts of political issues, such as national security, immigration, guns, medical ethics, so did the priests of ancient Israel. The Torah granted the priests authority to rule on all sorts of issues: marriage and sex, medicine and hygiene, food, agriculture, real estate law, crime, science, the works. David expanded that even further, giving the priests more control over legal issues. The theme in the Old Testament was “Got a difficult problem? Ask the priest! Any topic at all!”
A key aim for the priests in all this is of course the priest’s well-being. The Torah is loaded with lengthy instructions for the Jews, to build the priest a fabulous temple and bring him a ton of food every day. And Paul’s letters sometimes had that PBS-Pledge-Week quality, exhorting believers to donate money for the “saints” and get God’s reward for it.
So, an impressive racket: invent a scary deity and pretend that you (the priest) are the only one who can protect people from the deity; control the flock by controlling access to the deity, by preventing other religions from competing with the priest, by stopping people from thinking for themselves, and then branching out the tentacles of power into other areas and figuring out how to keep the money rolling in.
If it wasn’t constitutionally protected, it would be felony fraud.
It is these con-artist priests who have been lying to us, controlling us, exploiting us for 3000 years….these are the people who insist that even today we must uphold a 3000-year-old prejudice against gays. That we must keep alive a hate that should have been allowed to die centuries ago.
And priests don’t only like to control religious issues – they want to get their fingers into everything. Just as today’s preachers stick their noses into all sorts of political issues, such as national security, immigration, guns, medical ethics, so did the priests of ancient Israel. The Torah granted the priests authority to rule on all sorts of issues: marriage and sex, medicine and hygiene, food, agriculture, real estate law, crime, science, the works. David expanded that even further, giving the priests more control over legal issues. The theme in the Old Testament was “Got a difficult problem? Ask the priest! Any topic at all!”
A key aim for the priests in all this is of course the priest’s well-being. The Torah is loaded with lengthy instructions for the Jews, to build the priest a fabulous temple and bring him a ton of food every day. And Paul’s letters sometimes had that PBS-Pledge-Week quality, exhorting believers to donate money for the “saints” and get God’s reward for it.
So, an impressive racket: invent a scary deity and pretend that you (the priest) are the only one who can protect people from the deity; control the flock by controlling access to the deity, by preventing other religions from competing with the priest, by stopping people from thinking for themselves, and then branching out the tentacles of power into other areas and figuring out how to keep the money rolling in.
If it wasn’t constitutionally protected, it would be felony fraud.
It is these con-artist priests who have been lying to us, controlling us, exploiting us for 3000 years….these are the people who insist that even today we must uphold a 3000-year-old prejudice against gays. That we must keep alive a hate that should have been allowed to die centuries ago.
