Achan teaches us stealing is wrong, but wanton genocide A-ok?

by BU2B 15 Replies latest watchtower bible

  • BU2B
    BU2B

    This week on the TMS, there was a talk about Achan. How I didnt see how out of wack the JWs moral compass is earlier I do not know. Achan stole some valuables from Jericho and for this him and his whole family was murdered in a brutal fashon and burned up by fire. This is always used as a moral lesson on how much God hates a thief.

    What were the circumstances in Jericho? A genocide and massacre had just taken place. The whole city was destroyed. Everyone in it was brutally dispatched with the sword. Imagine with your minds eye, innocent pregnant women were ripped open with their fetuses spilling out. Cute little toddlers were run through, guts spilling out. Elderly men and women, unable to move cowering in their homes were slaughtered like pigs. The streets ran red in rivers of blood. The screams would make any normal humans skin crawl in horror.

    After all of this brutal carnage, the moral lesson is dont steal? Is stealing a greater evil than the brutal, bloody murder of an entire city full of innocent men women and children? The bible teaches a twisted morality, and produces people with a twisted, sick moral compass. Just to hear JWs and other religious fundamentalists talk makes me want to throw up. It makes me sick to know I once thought the same way.

  • OneEyedJoe
    OneEyedJoe

    Not to mention the claim that god made them lose battles (and innocent isrealites where killed) because of the secret sin of Achan.

    So let me get this straight. God knows Achan sinned, but doesn't mention it to any of his prophets. Instead he just starts passive aggressively kills isrealites until they start asking questions? What kind of asshole god is this?

  • sir82
    sir82

    It always horrified me, in this account, how quickly Joshua turned on Achan.

    Joshua 7:19 (RNWT):

    Then Joshua said to A′chan: “My son, please, honor Jehovah the God of Israel and make confession to him. Tell me, please, what you have done. Do not hide it from me.”

    Joshua 7:24, 25 (RNWT):

    Joshua and all Israel with him then took A′chan+ the son of Ze′rah, the silver, the official garment, and the bar of gold,+ along with his sons, his daughters, his bull, his donkey, his flock, his tent, and everything that was his, and they brought them up to the Valley* of A′chor.+ 25 Joshua said: “Why have you brought disaster* upon us?+ Jehovah will bring disaster upon you on this day.” With that all Israel stoned him,+ after which they burned them with fire.+ Thus they stoned all of them.

    At first, Joshua is all "please, my son" and "tell me, please". You can almost picture his eyes brimming with tears as he pleads.

    But as soon as the confession is wrought, he turns brutal, and leads him to be tortured to death and then his corpse burned. Oh, and his family, too.

    What a psychopath.

    The lesson to be learned? Don't bother telling the truth to psychotic religious leaders, they'll kill you anyway. A lesson to be applied for current day doubting JWs as well.

  • jgnat
    jgnat

    A tribal god.

  • jgnat
    jgnat

    "As soon as the confession is wrought, he turns brutal..."

    Isn't this part of the code of honor of the Mafia today? A kiss on the cheek; the kiss of death.

  • whathappened
    whathappened

    I appreciate you posting this as this account is in the My Book of Bible Stories and I may get to discuss this at one point with my 6 year old grandson. I want to wake him up at a young age. His mother, my daughter, is staying a JW "to cover my ass" she says, afraid that the big bad Armageddon is coming soon.

  • bigmac
    bigmac

    us atheists just laugh at this sort of nonsense. loving god--my arse.

  • 88JM
    88JM

    I always thought it was strange with Achan that he stole garments - it seems like kleptomania.

    Presumably they would be immediately identifiable as not being Israelite garments, perhaps in their quality, but very likely lacking in the fringes and blue thread.

    There is no way he could ever have worn the garments in public, and he couldn't really trade them with Isrealites either, so what was he planning to do with them?

  • suavojr
    suavojr

    88JM

    He was planning to do a striptease for his wife....

  • OneEyedJoe
    OneEyedJoe

    That's a good point about the garments, I never thought about that. The only thing he could've hoped to do was sell them to a non-isrealite, and he'd probably have to make quite a trip to do that, or hold on to incriminating evidence for a long while...

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