This is such a bad take that it might need to be framed for the history books.
Amazing.
Ed is one of the most prolific accounts over on X, and generates a lot of clicks with various hot takes. I'm not sure if he is actually this ignorant about the Bible, or if he is actually hostile to it.
I'm not trying to be mean to Ed. I would like my words to be seasoned with salt, as the Apostle Paul instructs us in Colossians 4:6. But the argument Ed presents is, quite simply put, foolish. We have had 2,000 years of Christian thought building Western civilization, along with 5,000 years of the Law of Moses. Therefore, the basic principles of what is written in the Bible should not be a mystery to anyone. As William Tyndale might have put it, there are plowboys in Medieval England who better understood the Scriptures than top-level social influencers.
Since King Solomon instructed us to answer a fool according to his folly so that he might not become wise in his own eyes (Proverbs 26:5), let me respond to Ed verse by verse and explain why he is thoroughly mistaken about everything.
Ed is responding to an antisemitism bill that passed the House that could, arguably, criminalize anything deemed anti-Jewish. The guidelines for that standard includes criticism of the government of the nation-state of Israel, as well as the teaching that Jesus Christ was killed by the Jews (more on that in a second).
Instead of tackling the descriptive passages showing the timeline of how Jesus was handed over to the chief Jewish priests, who then accused him of crimes worthy of death and handed him over to the Romans to be executed (because Rome did not allow them to carry out death sentences on their own), Ed decided to respond with prescriptive passages outlining God's moral law.
That is, he criticized historical passages dealing with events by providing legal examples of completely unconnected things. It's hard to show how wildly illogical this is, but let me take a stab at it:
"For people who think that anti-Japanese sentiment should be allowed because the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, then I assume you agree with this Florida law that outlaws abortion."
So right out of the gate, Ed's entire argument falls apart. Since we're here, let's look at the examples he gives though, because understanding how to address this is important. Ed is not my enemy. I want him, from the depths of my heart, to understand the good news about Jesus.
Ed gives 5 passages as evidence in his argument. These are, in his mind, archaic and barbaric passages from Scripture meant to made "enlightened" modern Christians squirm. But the Bible does not contradict itself, and if such glaringly illogical contradictions existed, it would have long been cast aside. The Bible does not, after all, have the Islamic concept of abrogation; that is, where the Quran and Hadith contradict each other, Muslim theologians argue that the later passages cancel out, or at least have more weight, than the earlier verses. For example, passages calling for holy war in the later chapters of the Quran "cancel out" earlier chapters advocating for peace. This is how Hamas, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Shabab, and Hezbollah interpret it, at least.
But for the Jew and the Christian alike, the Bible is a complete metanarrative. Christ said that not one letter of the Law would disappear "until all things are accomplished" (Matthew 5:18).
This means that believers in the Bible must believe everything that is written, otherwise, it is merely a book of human teaching that can be deconstructed as one wishes. This is the path many are taking. The United Methodist Church even made it official this week!
So yes, I believe every single verse that Ed puts forth here. They do not embarrass me in the least.
- Leviticus 20:13 - The wages of all sin is death. God has a specific design for sexuality and deviation from that is, like all sin, worthy of death. But because sex is such a powerful temptation to lead people astray, and because sexual sin causes a host of diseases and instability that a modern world full of antibiotics and birth control has forgotten about, God was explicit in the penalty for deviating from His design. Every nation around Israel worshipped fertility gods with orgies and temple prostitutes and child sacrifice. The point of the Mosaic Law was to set Israel apart (the literal meaning of the word "sacred"). They were to be an example for the whole world that God is holy, righteous, and all powerful: "Consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am the Lord your God. Keep my decrees and follow them. I am the Lord, who makes you holy." Leviticus 20 does not single out homosexuality, but also condemns adultery, sex with a stepparent or in-law, a man who marries a mother and her daughter, sex with animals, and close relatives. These deviant sexual practices not only lead to disease, but societal breakdown (see: America today). God was protecting Israel as much as he was purifying them so they could be an example for the whole world.
- Deuteronomy 22:28 - The use of the English word "rape" here is being used for a Hebrew word that means "to take hold of or seize" (think of how Potiphar's wife "seized" Joseph's cloak when she wanted him to come to bed with her). Sexually assaulting a girl would have been an instant death sentence in the ancient world. In Genesis 34, when Jacob's daughter Dinah was raped, her brothers burned down an entire town in revenge. This passage in Deuteronomy is a parallel to Exodus 22:16 - 17, which is translated: "If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride price for her and make her his wife." It is clear that this is not talking about violent rape on the street. This is discussing premarital sex, and it is a law that protected the woman by ensuring men could not simply use her and cast her aside. He must marry her or pay a steep monetary price to her family for the violation. This was a revolutionary concept in women's/human rights at the time.
- Deuteronomy 21:8 - Also echoed in Leviticus 20:9, this is talking about a child who is willfully and continuously wicked. We're not talking about a child who gets in trouble at school for bullying. We're talking about young adults or grown children who are violent and criminal in the most unruly ways. Verse 20, if Ed had read it, outlines this continued rebellion as a "drunkard and a glutton." Israel was living in the desert at the time, tent camping with millions of people. Not only was criminal mischief a violation of the holiness that God was teaching Israel to follow, but it would disrupt the ability of the nation to operate.
- Exodus 21:20 - Hundreds of books have addressed how the Bible deals with slavery. I'm not going to summarize everything here. The reason this looks strange to us today is because the Bible planted the seeds for slavery to be destroyed, and passages like this are the proof. Slavery was practiced by everyone, everywhere, for nearly all of human history. Public school failed you if think white slavers in the 16th to 19th centuries were the only ones out there. Everyone tried to enslave everyone else for the same reason jobs outsourced and politicians want migrants over our borders: Cheap labor. Ancient slavery looked drastically different in each culture and was not the same as the chattel system of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Let's look at a few quick distinctions: The Bible prohibited the Israelites from kidnapping people (Exodus 21:16), which was what African tribes did before selling fellow Africans to Muslims and Europeans: "Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death." In Exodus 21:20, it was made apparent that the slave was under the jurisdiction of a master, but had human rights, and that to kill him would be murder. This was a huge deviation from the norm for most of history. Immediately following this verse is where God lays out the death penalty for someone who hits a woman and causes her to miscarry, showing in context how He is assigning value to the lives of slaves and the preborn. We still devalue one of those groups in our "enlightened" American society today.
- Judges 11 - This is the most laughable group of the bunch. Nowhere in the story of Jephthah does it say that God condoned his vow or required him to make good on it. Ironically, this point actually connects in to my earlier comment about abortion AS WELL AS Ed's attempt to use Leviticus 20 as a gotcha. In multiple places like Leviticus 20:2, God condemns and outlaws child sacrifice, which was routinely done in the attempt to get a better harvest (a better payday) or new opportunities or good health. What Jephthah did was another example of the issue in the Book of Judges: The people had forgotten the Law of Moses and "everyone did what was right in his own eyes." This is the same problem facing Ed and so many others today!
But here's the good news for Ed.
The penalty for disobeying any of God's designs is death. He is the standard of good, but we are rebellious. Because he is all-good, he cannot abide evil. He must judge in order that justice be upheld.
All the rules and laws of the Old Testament were used as a refining fire to set apart one people group on earth - a small, stubborn people group in God's own words - in order to demonstrate his power, love, and plan for salvation for the entire world.
We can't live up to that law; in fact, trying to live up to it only further increases the judgement against us, because a man who violates the law willingly is even more guilty than one who does not.
But God's plan was not to use the law to save us. The law showed us what was right and demonstrated that we cannot save ourselves. We cannot change our nature.
Instead, God Himself became the man Jesus Christ in order to atone for our sins. Our crimes, He placed on himself. He substituted His perfection and obedience for our wickedness. He took the penalty due us.
And because Jesus claimed to be God, the Jewish leaders wanted to kill Him.
In John 8, fellow Jews even picked up stones to kill Jesus! As for the Jewish leaders, because they believed He was leading the nation into a cult, they organized a plan to kill him for the good of the nation. From John 11:
One of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all! You're not considering that it is to your advantage that one man should die for the people rather than the whole nation perish." He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to unite the scattered children of God.
Like good politicians today, they justified their actions by saying it would be for the common good.
Then, because they did not have the authority to kill Jesus on their own without getting in trouble with their Roman overlords, they organized a mob protest (that sounds familiar too!) to call for Jesus's death.
This heaped judgement on the Jewish leaders and the people, yes. They called for Jesus's blood to be on their heads and the heads of their children, yes. They missed the Messiah that was prophesied about in all their holy books, yes.
But that was always God's plan. Psalm 118:22-29, written a thousand years before Christ:
The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This came from the Lord; it is wondrous in our sight. This is the day the Lord has made; let's rejoice and be glad in it.
You've probably heard that last verse before. Did you know the day it was talking about was the day Jesus was killed?
Why would that be a day to rejoice??
When Jesus's disciple Peter spoke to Caiaphas and the other top Jewish leaders in Acts 4, he explained:
Rulers of the people and elders, If we are being examined today about a good deed done to a disabled man, by what means he was healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified and whom God raised from the dead — by him this man is standing here before you healthy. This Jesus is 'the stone rejected by you builders, which has become the cornerstone.'
There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.
The Jews did kill their own Messiah and God. The good news for them is that He didn't stay dead, and He has offered them an honored place at the table before all others, if they are willing and if they believe.
Because of Jesus, now all have a place at God's table. Everyone has the ability, as CS Lewis so beautifully said, to see death turn backwards. Everyone has the opportunity to change their own nature.
Jesus was not embarrassed by the Scripture that Ed quoted, and neither am I. Instead, it is for our benefit, so that everyone can know who God is and what He has done!
Praying for ya to know Him, Ed.
