Summary: Through his prophet Micah, God promises rewards for the faithful, punishment for the disobedient, and a brighter future for Israel. Also, he promises that Israel is totally doomed if they don’t stop fucking up.
My favorite line from the entire Bible is in Numbers. The LORD talks to this guy Balaam and gives him a message. Here’s part of the message:
“I foresee that Israel’s future
Will bring her no misfortune or trouble.” (Nm. 23.21)
Nailed it!
And that brings us to the predictions in Micah. And there are several: the corrupt leaders of Israel will pay for their sins, God will change the world so that everyone lives in peace, the people of Israel will return from exile, they will have a ruler from Bethlehem, and that God will bring salvation to the people of Israel who remain faithful.
But we’ve heard all this before (maybe not the Bethlehem thing). There’s always better times around the corner, and there’s always a wonderful and merciful God who cares deeply about every person, and there’s always promises of justice meted out from above upon a sinful populace.
But why believe it? It’s never happened, at least not without people doing any of these things. When corrupt leaders go down, people are responsible. The world has never known peace, when the chosen people of Israel returned to their Promised Land, it was other nations of the world who put them there (and that’s going great, by the way). I admittedly haven’t read the Jesus part of the Bible yet, but my understanding is that while he was alive he didn’t really rule over anything so much as impart love and Godliness upon the people he converted, so the Bethlehem thing is still pretty much unproven. And promises about salvation are just plain empty.
The reason I say they’re empty is that there’s no way to prove whether they happened. It’s the old “Russell’s Teapot” thing that us nonbelievers use – if I say there’s a tiny teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars, it’s up to me to prove it. If you say there’s a God, it’s up to you to prove it. And if you say that some people experience salvation and some don’t, then that’s also up to you. Saying that they did without any corroborating evidence is just a way to brag about how powerful your religion is without having to witness any of your religion’s power.
In the end, those words are just as empty as a bunch of bad predictions. And what it all comes back to – what everything in this book comes back to – is that this is a book written by men doing their best to understand the world. And as much as I approve of attempts to understand the world – I am a big fan of science, after all – we do not need to settle for their best attempts. We have new best attempts, and they are much better.
And despite what some of the religious folks want you (and me) to believe, these empty words are the difference between science and religion. Religion expects you to unquestioningly and dogmatically believe in unprovable assertions and then to rationalize away when there is any evidence to the contrary. Dinosaur bones? God’s testing our faith! Science is about questioning and finding the truth. Scientists have no problem abandoning an idea when they find evidence that it is not true. For example, back in the late 1800s, the common school of thought was that there was this thing called the luminiferous ether that filled all space and was necessary for light to move through. When an experiment disproved this idea, it was abandoned. Scientists had to find a new theory to explain the properties of light, and Einstein (ever heard of him?) came up with relativity.
Do you think that hardcore Muslims or fundamentalist Christians or Orthodox Jews would have been able to do that? Or would they have stuck with the old explanation against all reasonable science because the new one was confusing and complicated? Would they have sided with the evidence or their pretty words? I think we all know because we see people do it every day – we see people claim silly things like that the speed of light is changing, or that there’s no evidence for evolution.
Apparently, when I talk about empty words, I’m talking about words so divorced from reality that they cause people who believe them to lose their grip on reality. They’re words so hollow that for them to make sense, the entirety of reality needs to be reorganized. This is far worse than just saying the sun revolves around the earth. This is a redefinition of the way the universe works. This is a corruption of the entire human thought process.
This is crazy, but in a way that’s socially acceptable. This is approved insanity. And that’s the craziest thing of all.
Some other notes…
- In 6.8, Micah says “No, the LORD has told us what is good. What he requires of us is this: to do what is just, to show constant love, and to live in humble fellowship with our God.” To be honest, I don’t think that’s all he requires. He requires constant credit for any good thing that someone does. He requires animal sacrifices and offerings of money. He requires the Israelites to obey many laws and commandments (this is not to pass judgment on whether those laws are just, just to point out they exist). That’s much more than showing love and doing what is just and living in humble fellowship. That’s devoting your life to someone who’s not devoting his life to you. If there was a religion that told people to take all of that energy and pour it into improving the world and making it a better place, into helping the poor without condescendingly telling them “You will inherit the earth one day,” to actually improve their living conditions and make people believe that yes, you alone can make a difference if you really want to be someone great, that’s a religion I could get behind.
- The only real problem with that is there really couldn’t be any money in it. So it would never grow. Oh well.
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