When God created humankind
And said that they were free
He showed nothing’s more important than a choice.
He could save us from damnation
In a heartbeat, but you see,
It’s important that He’s given us a voice.
If eternity in torture
Is acceptable to God
As the risk you take for freedom while on earth
If the right to choose is sacrosanct,
I guess I find it odd
That the church would fight with women over birth
See, if self-determination
Is the most important fact—
More important than salvation of your soul
Why would women be disfavored
For a self-determined act?
Cos the goal is not salvation—it’s control.
Give me liberty, or give me death
Ελευθερία ή θάνατος (“Freedom or Death”–the national motto of Greece)
Live Free Or Die
Humankind has (as you can see) elevated freedom to an equal (if not greater) status with life itself. If this seems extreme, consider that [some of] Christian theology claims that the threat of eternal damnation is balanced by free will; that, because we have been given the gift of being able to choose to believe, it is acceptable to punish non-believers for all eternity.
Equating freedom with life is, it seems, a less stringent standard than it could be; we could easily make a biblical case for freedom being far more (infinitely more) important than life. The ability of human beings to make free choices is an important part of modern theology; if we did not choose our sinful path–if an omnipotent, omniscient God chose it for us–how could that God justify punishing us at all, let alone eternally? No, it is crucially important that humans have the ability, and the right, to choose.
Human beings. Not women. For some reason, the theology all seems to fall apart when it comes to women being able to freely choose. Not because life is important–if that were the case, God could choose to infringe on the freedoms He grants to all of us. An omnipotent, omniscient being could easily make it such that men would not choose to rape, or that parents would not disown girls, or that birth defects would not happen. An omnipotent, omniscient God could easily make every pregnancy wanted. But of course, He did not. Because human choice is more important.
Unless, of course, a woman chooses for herself. Because even more important than humankind’s ability to choose, is… what? A woman’s inability to choose?
God is clearly pro-choice. But it seems equally clear that God is anti-woman.
I wonder why anyone would be pro-god.
The bible is expressly pro-abortion and anti-choice for the woman, and even provides a recipe for an abortifacient. Note that the choice for this belongs to the “jealous” husband in collusion with his priest, and that abortifacient–as it includes dirt from the temples where the blood and excrement of sacrificial animals has been rotting–is not at all safe for the woman. Numbers 5:12-31
OMGs. This is – I am struggling for words here.
You’ve put your finger on something I’ve been trying to grasp for ages. Not only have you pointed to it, but you’ve explained it extraordinarily clearly. And the verse! The verse is perfect.
This was a lightbulb post for me. Thank you, dear Cuttlefish!
Well, we aim to please, here at the Digital Cuttlefish…
I like the concept, but I think this argument is too easily toppled. A christian can simply say, “yes, god gave us free will, but he also gave us rules about how he’d like us to use our free will. God doesn’t want us to kill (except when he does) and he also doesn’t want us to remain silent when people are being killed in a manner he disapproves of, so he gave us the free will to set up government and laws and such, and to arrest (and, I suppose, execute) murderers.”
This hypothetical christian could then go on to say that they think an embryo or fetus is a life and that abortion is murder, and so by the same justification that we prosecute murderers we should prosecute abortionists…illegalization of abortion is not inconsistent with the “freedom over life” philosophy.
Which is not to say that the Abrahamic god is a feminist, by any means. God’s directives clearly state that while men are given free will, if men don’t use their free will to subjugate women, they are doing it wrong. The passage from Numbers clearly illustrates this – a man is encouraged to subject his wife to the bizarre and unsanitary “jealousy offering” ritual merely on the suspicion of adultery. But what are women are supposed to do if they suspect adultery in their husbands? For women, the bible might as well simply state: “just shut up and bear it.”
So, God gives all of us an equal amount of free will, but he’d like us to use our free will to arbitrarily and unequally restrict freedom.
But then Calvin rears his ugly visage.
I think the key is that “god” gives free will to people – but at the time of writing, certainly, people only meant men. e.g. in the ten commandments, women/wives are referred to as things to be coveted alongside animals, not as people in their own right, and this is rife throughout the old testament at least. So the logic is that women couldn’t possibly choose, as we are lesser beings – who would dare suggest a sheep or goat has free will? “Man” has free will but dominion over others, which includes women.
The problem is the idea that all expressions of the religious impulse must be Christianity, Trinitarian Pauline Christianity to be precise. It’s akin to saying Soviet Realism represents all Art.
Quite right. And as soon as the Trinitarian Pauline Christians concede that other views are just as likely as their own to be true, I’ll begin adding that nuance. And yes, there *are* Christians (my sister is one of them) who will say “it doesn’t matter what you believe, just that you believe”… but for each of them, there is another calling the first “no true Christian”.
Honestly, in my own personal experience (I have no idea how well it generalizes) that the stereotyping and overgeneralizing of religion X is far more often done by members of religion Y–atheists have been ignorable and ignored until only very recently.
In other words, when the Blood Drinkers stop acting like Soviet Political Officers :)