Friday, August 28, 2015

RUTHLESS: Dissecting the Book of Ruth with The Fierce Humanist


Those of you who are familiar with this blog may be familiar with my series of posts aimed at preparing the Atheist camp for using Biblical Chemical Warfare back on Thumpers. If not, here: Genesis 1: 6-10 and Genesis 1: 26 And those of you familiar with me from twitter ( @adriananyway ) have undoubtedly seen my back and forths with my favorite twitterer (sorry @pooroldkilgore ) known ironically as The Fierce Humanist ( @humanistfury ). The most ironic part is that he really is fierce about his humanism. In this post, that bad, bad dude was willing to knock out The Book of Ruth for me. And he did so in miraculous fashion. Enjoy. 






If it weren’t for the Bible, church services would’ve been unbearable.  As my faculties of reason matured, it became clear that actually participating in worship services did not impact my happiness or chances of success.  As a teenager, the only acceptable diversion was reading one of the Bibles placed along the ancient oak pews.  Doing so, I didn’t have to feign Give-A-Fuck for the gospel reading, the prayer requests, or the preacher’s strained, awkward attempt to make Bronze Age Jewish folklore pertinent to our suburban lives in what was probably the most boring decade of the past century.


I rarely read the Bible, but when I do, I go for the Good Stuff.  Fortunately, the Old Testament is dense with dick jokes, instructions on how to fuck, and all sorts of advice on how to manage willful women.   The most absurd stuff – apart from all the magic – was the casual exchange of women, almost as a denomination of currency.  Of course, the objectification and devaluation of women in the Old Testament is widely acknowledged, even among many conservative Christians.  Usually, they use the topic as a springboard to discuss the New Testament’s “grace” and “salvation,” whatever that is.

Whatever.  It’s still there, it’s still vile, and it’s still the inspiration for immeasurable human misery over the past two millennia.  There’s a reason the Council of Nicaea, or King James, or the Holy See, or anyone else hasn’t edited out that shit: They believe it.  They accept it as the revealed Word of God.  Pointing out misogyny in the Bible is to religious scholarship like T-Ball is to Major League Baseball: Insultingly easy.

Far more difficult, of course, is the converse: Identifying Old Testament stories that celebrate female independence and agency.  I’m familiar enough with the first five books of the Old Testament to know looking there would be a fool’s errand.  Since I’m not afflicted with the intellectual masochism necessary to read the entire awful, jumbled anthology of myths, I decided to focus my efforts on the first book of the Bible titled after a member of the fairer sex: Ruth.


Truth be told, the most attractive aspect of the Book of Ruth is its brevity.  The entire text can comfortably be read over the course of a lunch break, or during a protracted, leisurely bowel movement.  There is no God Magic, a bare minimum of Who-Gives-A-Fuck genealogy, and absolutely zero genocides or attempts at genocide.  There are only a few deaths and just one instance of sexual assault (Canaanite Date Rape? You decide.)  The story reads like an uninspired, formulaic chick flick: women find themselves alone, support each other, form a deep friendship, and eventually help each other get laid.  I’m surprised the Lifetime Network hasn’t adapted Ruth as a mini-series.

Summary: Lady (Naomi) gets married, has two sons who grow up and get married.  Naomi’s husband and then her two sons die in short succession.  Naomi seems to inherit her dead sons’ wives, her daughters-in-law.  The book seems to imply that the two women are in some sort of status of indentured servitude to their mother-in-law.  Naomi decides her best bet is to return to her ancestral homeland in Judah, and she departs with the two young widows in tow.  Soon after, she decides to release them from their apparent obligation to her.  One splits soon thereafter, but the other, Ruth, wants to stay with her mother-in-law.  Naomi pleads with Ruth to abandon her:

Turn again, my daughters: why will ye go with me? Are there yet any more sons in my womb, that they may be your husbands?

So, we need to understand that one of the possible courses of action for the women was for the mother-in-law to get herself pregnant and give birth to two sons, who would presumably be betrothed to grow up and marry their dead brothers’ wives, who’d be at least 15 – 20 years older than them.  In comparison to the rest of the Old Testament, this is some heavy, RadFem thinking.  Where else can we find a woman independently offering sons as “payment” to fulfill an obligation to two other women?  Admittedly, Naomi doesn’t think the scheme is viable, given her old age, but it’s remarkable nonetheless.

Accepting the unlikelihood of Naomi’s ability to manufacture her a new husband, Ruth nevertheless opts to accompany her on her return to Judah.  Here, our story becomes more… involved.  Consider:

And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.

Remove this passage from the context of the story.  Were we to erase the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law background, how would we characterize the speaker’s feelings towards her subject?

She’s in love.  Ruth 1.16-17 is a tender, unequivocal expression of one person’s lifelong commitment to another.  She will follow her anywhere.  She wants to start a new life with her.  She wants to become part of her family.  She will change the most fundamental aspects of her identity to become part of her life.  Ruth wants to be with Naomi for the rest of her life, and in death: Absolute, Eternal Commitment.


The sentiment hasn’t gone unnoticed.  Ruth 1.16-17 is a popular scriptural reading in Christian weddings.  Somewhat amusingly, this includes those between believers holding staunchly “traditional” (read: “bigoted”) positions in our “debate” over “same-sex marriage” (read: “marriage”).  The fact that this striking expression of undying love is expressed from Ruth to a much older woman is apparently lost on those whose politics would have Ruth and Naomi’s love remain invisible, denied, and sequestered on the fringes of society.

Our Traditional Marriage neighbors need not despair.  A mature, wealthy male capitalist soon enters the story.  Boaz is ostensibly a farmer, though he almost certainly hasn’t pulled a weed in his adult life.  In her characteristically submissive dedication to Naomi, Ruth volunteers to find work at one of the nearby farms.  She meets a group of women working on Boaz’s farm, and they let her work alongside them in return for a portion of the harvest.  Making his rounds, Boaz notices the young woman, and asks,

Whose damsel is this? And the servant that was set over the reapers answered and said, It is the Moabitish damsel that came back with Naomi out of the country of Moab. And she said, I pray you, let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves: so she came, and hath continued even from the morning until now, that she tarried a little in the house.  

Ah, yes.  There’s that Good Ole’ Testament Misogyny: “Whose damsel is this?”  Ruth is a commodity.  It’s not difficult to imagine Boaz as a warehouse manager asking a foreman, “Where’d this extra forklift come from?”  Boaz is, after all, a successful businessman.  He’s a job creator.  He keeps track of his resources.  Boaz allows Ruth to stay at his farm and work with his servants.  She’s understandably grateful, but confused.  She doesn’t understand his compassion for her:

Then she fell on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and said unto him, Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger? And Boaz answered and said unto her, It hath fully been shewed me, all that thou hast done unto thy mother in law since the death of thine husband: and how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore.

The relationship between Ruth and Naomi already makes the Book of Ruth plenty awkward for social conservatives.  Boaz certainly doesn’t make it any easier on them by using his personal wealth to promote socially responsible behavior.  Ruth made personal sacrifices to care for a “senior citizen.”  Boaz recognizes her sacrifice and effectively gives her a job on the condition that she continues to do so.  Furthermore, he’s actually thanking Ruth for immigrating to Judah.  Take a moment to fully digest that: A wealthy, prominent citizen is thanking an unemployed recent immigrant for coming to start a new life in his homeland.

Ruth recounts her fabulous day to Naomi, who’s delighted.  Boaz, it turns out, is one of her close relatives.  Even better, he’s unmarried.  Being the devoted in-law she is, Naomi gives Ruth detailed instructions on how to fuck Boaz while he’s drunk, seemingly obliging him to marry her.  In contrast with the rest of the Old Testament, all the relationships in this story thus far have been uncharacteristically consensual.  Carefully following Naomi’s instructions, Ruth waits until Boaz is good and sloppy drunk, then sneaks into the “threshing floor” where he’d passed out. 

And it came to pass at midnight, that the man was afraid, and turned himself: and, behold, a woman lay at his feet. And he said, Who art thou? And she answered, I am Ruth thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman.  

If you interpreted “spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid” to mean “Fuck me now,” you got it right.  That does seem to be the consensus.  Shockingly, the old, rich, drunk man actually is willing to lay his impoverished young employee.  In a touching love scene, they fuck in a barn in the middle of the night.


The rest of the story consists of a dull and confusing real estate deal between Naomi and Boaz that’s somehow contingent upon his marriage to Ruth.  The only interesting aspect of the transaction is that we learn that Old Testament women – Naomi, in this case – are just as willing to use other women as a form of currency as are men.  An ad-hoc commission of village elders validates the transaction and the marriage, and Boaz and Ruth get hitched.  Ruth gives birth to – you called it! – a son less than a year later.  While we might assume that a rich dude like Boaz wouldn’t have any trouble arranging child-care for his young bride, such turns out to not be necessary.  In an act of civic generosity that has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to remain an indispensable part of Ruth’s life, Naomi volunteers to be the nurse to Ruth’s son.  Everybody seems fine with this arrangement.  Boaz scores a hot, loyal young wife that’s somewhat out of his league, Ruth has a son and lives out her life in comfort with the constant, devoted companionship of her… dead first husband’s mother?  Right.  That’s the story, and they’re sticking to it.


Acknowledgements:

The Skeptics Annotated Bible, annotated by Steve Wells, is an absolutely invaluable resource for anyone at all interested in understanding the Good Book past the various party lines.  You can buy it on Amazon or access it online at http://skepticsannotatedbible.com.  I used it as my primary biblical reference in writing this post.

Adrian Fort is a good dude.  I appreciate his invitation to write this guest post.  If you’re reading this, you know he writes about humanism, secularism, reason, and other worthwhile stuff at The Secular Superhumanist.  You should also follow him on Twitter at @AdrianAnyway.

All images are understood to be in the public domain.  If that’s not the case, please contact me at humanist.aggressor@gmail.com, and I’ll remove them promptly.



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Thursday, August 6, 2015

Arian Foster Comes Out Atheist



The odds of a black man, who was raised Muslim, spent some of his late teens/early twenties in Tennessee, and most of his adult life in Houston, Texas, being an Atheist are mind numbingly low.

Throw in the fact that he is a professional football player, and I would have to imagine the odds dwindle even more.

But that is the case.

Arian Foster, all-pro running back for the Houston Texans has "confessed" to being an Atheist. Though he won't use the term Atheist, preferring to "remain open" to the possibility. Though I think this might be due to confusion on his part about the term "Atheist." Every Atheist on earth would be willing to admit their folly in the face of evidence. Even if most of us would still refuse to kowtow.

So what? Big deal. Right?

Sort of.

Here's why this is a big deal:

1. He's a celebrity. Lots of people know who he is, and lots of people talk about him. While and whereas someone like Sam Harris may indelibly be more worthy of listening to on the subject of Atheism, there aren't many Harris jerseys walking around Houston to spark the conversation. Imagine if Richard Dawkins had the media appeal that Kim Kardashian does. In the Houston area, Foster has that type of celebrity.

2. To adults, sports stars are important during the longevity of a game. For some, a bit longer. But to children? These men are, themselves, gods. Foster, as I mentioned earlier, is not simply an NFL player, he's a stud. He has graced the cover of hundreds of magazines, been highlighted by many Sports Center Top Tens, and been hailed by many parents as a good role model already due to the fact that he has often supported community activities and talks a lot of science from time to time. He's already been endorsed. And now he's come out as Atheist. How will religi-nut parents explain to little Timmy why he can no longer wear his Arian Foster jersey? It's going to force the conversation.

3. I hate to keep harping on this, but Arian has been an extremely successful NFL running back. He's scored a lot of touchdowns. And accredited zero of them to god. So now, every time some rookie wide receiver scores a game winning touchdown, and he says it was god's will, well, what about all those games that Arian Foster won? Who gets the credit there?

4. To come full circle: He's black. If the Atheist community is a minority, the minority Atheist community is even more exclusive. And while there are precious few strong white Atheist voices, I defy you to name five black Atheists. For a good amount of peoople, if they never see it, they never think of it. If an impoverished black teen searching for answers were to stumble across the internet atheist community, or happen over the Hitchens youtube-rabbit-hole, he still may not be able to completely connect because Hitch, Dawkins, Harris, Dennet, etc, are all white. It seems small, insignificant, even. But studies show that appearance is extremely important, in the ability of young people especially, to identify with people.

5. The NFL has now been home to a black, homosexual man from Missouri, and a black, Atheist from Texas. Your move, White House.


ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University.