How Can Religion Be So Cruel?
Modern-day Joseph and his coat of many colors, beaten by his brothers.
I just don’t get it.
When did the lies begin?
You may or may not have any connection to a religious faith. I’m not sure anymore whether I want one, but I can’t shake a belief in counter-cultural personified for me, in Jesus.
I grew up with simple Christian Sunday School teaching and preaching that emphasised the love and kindness of Jesus to others as something for us all to emulate. The story of Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers and the grief of his father was part of my childhood.
Ah, but how things change. The message then was to emphasise the triumph of good over evil, love over hate.
Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild?
Today, there are times when you would think that was all lies and “Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild” was nothing of the sort. Especially so, if you believe some “K-K-Kristians” — (no apology for the KKK reference — unfortunately hard right believers have a lot in common with white supremacists and religious extremists.
To some, Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild seems to have gone Rogue and Wild.
We need to remember a hateful God is not really the story the Gospel writers told, even though the God of the old testament seemed to be into genocide. Saving a few people and animals in a wooden boat with Noah, and drowning the rest is not a really nice example for my grandkids to follow.
However, right-wing conservative fundamentalists love it all. But not the generous and kind people I know, some with faith in God and some, not.
Marginalised people don’t always receive a loving message from Christians. Certainly not the hard right (wrong) kind. Hateful preaching is bad enough in Australia or America but in Africa it costs lives.
Modern-day Joseph
Recently, one of the people who manages a safe house in Nairobi for hated LGBTIQ+ refugees pleaded with us for help to travel to Uganda for his father’s funeral.
I asked the question of whether he would be safe. After all, he had barely escaped with his life when his father and community turned on him violently for being gay.
He assured me that he would be safe and so we helped him make the journey. Only a few days later he contacted me — his brothers had attacked him, broken his phone and violently beaten him. He barely escaped with his life yet again, and this time only with the help of his younger brother who defended him and thus put himself in danger.
Humanity in Need then assisted both of them to escape back to Nairobi.
So terribly sad. Where is love in that?
I was deeply grieved for my friend and his brother. Then, it reminded me of the ancient Biblical story of Joseph celebrated by Disney in Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and his amazing coat of many colors.
In the Biblical story, ((Genesis 37:1–4, 12–28) Joseph’s father presents him with a special coat that signified just how specially he favoured this particular son. His brothers, however, are so jealous and resentful that they sell him into slavery in Egypt and tell the broken-hearted father he is dead.
There is a curious aspect to the robe the father gave his son.
In the story, we are told Joseph’s father, Jacob, loved him more than any of his other children, so he had a special robe made for him. In Hebrew the robe is called “ketonet passim.” Its meaning is considered unclear by many traditional Bible scholars. Various translations use terms such as “a robe with long sleeves,” “an elaborately embroidered coat” or “a varicolored tunic.”
“The only other use of the term is in II Samuel 13, where princess Tamar wears a “ketonet passim” and the author helpfully explains that this is “how the virgin daughters of the king were clothed in earlier times.”
That is interesting. When our modern world seems filled with religious people who condemn what we term LGBTIQ people, this story prompts questions about how people of difference were viewed in pre-Christian times.
Researcher, writer, and ordained queer minister Kittredge Cherry writes:
Even before birth, there was something queer about Joseph. According to ancient commentaries known as midrash, Joseph and his half-sister Dinah were miraculously switched in the womb, meaning that they changed gender even before they were born.
Of course, this was only commentary and not in the literal text. But then theologians will tell us that of all faiths it is only Christians who don’t read their texts in the original languages. When there are often no equivalent words in English to concepts in Hebrew, Ancient Greek or Aramaic much of what fundamentalists consider literal can only be seen as commentary, right or wrong.
To read more, Cherry’s website is here: https://qspirit.net/joseph-queer-biblical/
Our friend and his brother are safely in Nairobi but like all queer refugees they cannot legally work and so cannot survive without the support of kind people from other places.
To save the lives of good people whose failure in life is who they love, please support us if you can.
www.patreon.com/nosexplease or No Sex Please — Chuffed Appeal
My blog here, and my podcast @nosexplease on YouTube and giggling on audio apps like iTunes, Audible, Spotify, and others, tell the story of the abuse people have received through the church’s sex shaming that in recent years specialises in LGBTIQ+ people.
This blog and the podcast seek to support queer refugees in East Africa who need our help simply to survive. Many of them are killed or die from disease or hunger simply because homophobic cultures don’t merit them as human. So sad.
