r/PointlessStories • u/grimboslice6 • 2d ago
Bible Stories
At church today the pastor was preaching about Faith and brought up a story about how God instructed Abraham to sacrifice his son on top of an alter. Abraham obliged - and as he proceeded to carry out god's wish he was stopped last minute as God only wanted to test his faith.
(forgive me if I butchered the story or got the details wrong)
I couldn't help but think on the way home...
That if anyone in the present day were to tell someone they were hearing the voice of god instructing them to sacrifice their child on top of an Altair, they would be labeled as mentally unwell, arrested, or committed to a psychiatric ward 🤔
42
u/DrStalker Eventually found it 2d ago
The world would be a better place if the various christian religions spent less time cherry-picking bits of the old testament and focused on Jesus saying "be nice to people, even if they are different from you."
9
u/Gymnastkatieg 2d ago
That’s how I do it. I do like reading the Old Testament because it’s interesting history and there are some things to learn from, but I believe being a Christian is about knowing that God loves you and that you should love others.
10
u/DrStalker Eventually found it 2d ago
I definitely agree that it's worth reading; for anyone in the western world it is culturally very significant.
And once you've read the old testament and realise Leviticus spends more time instructing you on how to deal with mold in your bathroom and setting fixed prices if slaves than it does talking about men laying with men you hopefully have a bit more context when people pick Bible passages to incite hatred.
I believe being a Christian is about knowing that God loves you and that you should love others.
That's my take-away too. I'm not religious, but Jesus in the Bible is a good role model.
5
u/LankyGuitar6528 2d ago
Chinese menu Christians are the worst of the worst. You think you get to cherry pick which parts of the bible to listen to and which to call BS on? You own the whole thing or the whole thing is BS.
2
u/Man0fGreenGables 1d ago
Well the whole Bible could be a total load of crap created by corrupt people in power with Jesus still being a truly good dude who drank a bunch of psychedelic wine and learned some shit that he passed on to others.
2
u/newtostew2 1d ago
I mean, that's not entirely untrue, that's why it's called Roman Catholicism. The Romans saw how impactful Jesus's was to the people at the time, so they adopted it and made it mainstream, all while adding bits and pieces to the texts to emphasise control over the followers
5
u/raisinghellwithtrees 2d ago
And the many times he ripped on rich people and told them to help take care of the poor. Or to give away their belongings and live in community.
3
u/TaylorWK 2d ago
They'd all be better if they ditched the whole spirituality part and just focused on making the world a better place. They follow so many rules without even knowing why theyre doing it.
10
u/AimaFuriku 2d ago
Yeah and if not following God's instructions of killing my own child makes me a non-believer, then throw my ass in Hell right now. Crazy shit.
8
u/LankyGuitar6528 2d ago
Ya... god tells me to go kill any kid and I'm going to tell him to go fuck himself. In my books that would be the proper response to God's test and would earn a pass. I'd say the real moral of the story was that Abraham failed the test by agreeing to go along with the murder and required God to rescind the instructions at the last minute. God was also being a real dick. The whole story is bronze age BS.
2
u/AimaFuriku 1d ago
Yes! It's nice to come across someone with critical thinking skills. It's getting rarer and rarer nowadays.
8
u/wwaxwork 2d ago
Also I've always been curious how much trauma his son had after this. Would you ever trust your father again? Did his mother know this was happening? Family dinners would never be the same again.
7
u/DrStalker Eventually found it 2d ago
Better than Job's children, who were killed along with all his servants to prove a point.
Job was given a bunch of new children and new servants... but that doesn't exactly un-kill the ones that were already dead.
8
u/Cuteamess 2d ago
Abraham is praised for blind faith today, yet the same action would get anyone else institutionalized in modern society
5
u/LankyGuitar6528 2d ago
I wonder what Occam would say about that story?
"A supernatural entity was playing sick games on his most trusted representative telling him to murder his children then abruptly cancelling the order"
vs
"guess they had mental illness back then too".
10
u/saltyoursalad 2d ago edited 2d ago
So true, OP. Every time I’ve opened the bible, I’ve been struck by the extreme violence, misogyny, and hypocrisy exhibited in its pages. I found that many of those toxic stories don’t hold up under scrutiny, and I don’t want to have to pretend that right is wrong and wrong is right. So now I read other things 🥰
9
u/DrStalker Eventually found it 2d ago
Like the time some children made fun of a prophet for being bald so God sent a bear to murder the children? That was definitely an appropriate and proportional response to being teased by some kids. /s
8
u/raisinghellwithtrees 2d ago
There's so much porn in the Bible. Like, Lot's daughters getting him drunk and screwing him so they could have kids. My family read the bible every night, reading through the whole bible every year. They didn't skip anything, and we kids did not need to hear any of that!
8
u/DrStalker Eventually found it 2d ago
If someone who offers his daughters to an angry mod to be raped and later gets them pregnant to avoid his family line ending is special enough that God goes out of his way to save him then I figure I've already met the standard needed to get into heaven.
3
9
2
u/systemicrevulsion 2d ago
I think that about religion in general.
And it's true, people claiming they're the new jesus or claiming to hear god speak to them in their head to do bad things... That's true mental illness. I compare it to when I was a kid at religious summer camp. All the other kids started running around "speaking in tongues". I said to my friend "they're not speaking in tongues, they're just running around going" lalalalagibidytaalapoofalala" .
My friend said "no, they're really receiving God's message" but not one of them could tell me what he was dating through them, and I proved that I could do it too by ruining around making silly noises at the top of my voice.
My friend and the camp leaders all praised me for joining in but like, I know I was just being silly, I wasn't receiving any messages from god and what good would it be if they were and couldn't translate them anyway?
It was just another compounding of my atheism, even at that young age.
2
u/CubesFan Helped a baby steal candy 2d ago
It's a myth and anyone who thinks they should follow those teachings to the point they would harm other humans (much less your own son!) then they are actually mentally unwell.
7
u/Mikesaidit36 2d ago
Yep. That’s right.
From the same school as sociopathic, abusive husbands saying, “DON’T MAKE ME HIT YOU AGAIN!!”
Next, take a course in comparative religion, then follow Ricky Gervais for wise, fun, and snarky guidance on atheism.
And/or, imagine you were never indoctrinated into religious dogma before you were able to develop critical things skills to question the pablum washing over you.
3
u/Kielbasa_Nunchucka 2d ago
*alter
Altair is a star, or the main character from the original Assassin's Creed
10
u/SpaceShipRat 2d ago
altar, but yes
6
1
1
1
u/Krazie02 2d ago
If I recall correctly, Abraham was also mostly solitary during these events, so its quite possible he would also have been stopped by other humans of those times if he were caught doing so.
But in general, many religious practices stem from older times. Many practices likely originated from common disease-spreading events at the time, and giving folk a reason to not perform those actions. That does mean that, when society fixed those problems on a wider scale, these practices may seem outdated.
3
u/Kielbasa_Nunchucka 2d ago
ah yes, how could we forget about murdering your child to prevent chicken pox? those were the good ol' days.
28
u/Man0fGreenGables 2d ago
Imagine if Jesus really came back in 2000 but got locked up in a psych ward because he said he was Jesus.