Part 2 Unsettling Cognizance:
"Be fruitful and multiply". This has to be one of the most absurdly abused passages in scripture. Never mind that this encouragement was given at time when only a handful of humans existed on our planet. If a priest or minister were to congratulate newly weds, wish them well, and comment "may you be fruitful and multiply", does that mean he is instructing them to have 12 kids or as many as they can have? I doubt this would be a reasonable interpretation of the comment. Clearly, from the minute human religious leaders began to write their own interpretations of scripture they became obsessed with sexual matters. On the other hand, if one focuses only on the quotes from Christ in the Bible about sex, He was hardly obsessed about it. Sex, to Christ, was mostly an emphasis on loyalty, responsibility, and love. In addition, Christ never equated the word love solely with sex or reproduction. Love was to be the basis of human interaction, including acts of sex. A person should never use or take advantage of another person in any situation and indeed we are all to be our brother's keeper---that is the message Christ was obsessed with, if the word obsession must be used.
That sex is a legitimate activity only for reproductive purposes is totally a creation of certain religious leaders. Only abstinence, in cycles (or totally) as legitimate birth control got invented by some religious leaders. Of course if the only purpose of sex is producing children, and in a fruitfully multiplier fashion, then any other sort of sexual acts are by definition sinful. The rest became history---guilt ridden lovers feeling their sexual actions with each other were going to be their tickets to Hell. Anyone who has ever surfed the internet to find out what people are into regarding sex realizes immediately sex is a hopeless grab bag, that people are so different regarding their sexual feelings and inclinations as to make any attempt to label most of it right, wrong, or normal becomes solely a function of personal perspective. Probably most everyone finds most forms of 'deviate' sex unappealing. I, for example, cannot fathom why anyone would find making love to someone's foot to be sexually appealing. But in the last analysis so what? Unless someone is being forced to do something or is underage, what the hell difference does it make to anything or anyone else? Of course clearly these 'deviates' are not attempting to be "fruitful and multiply". That I am willing to grant. I tend to wonder how the hell did they find each other? Like, "pardon me, do you mind if I suck on your toes for a bit?" Of course this is one of the milder forms of 'deviation'. I prefer to be like Christ (if I can use this comparison loosely) and just ignore the whole business of sexual variations. Some lamely fume, "We have to put a stop to this or that form of sexual activity or it will spread and contaminate our children". Really? Just think about your own sexual nature---did perverts hiding in bushes form your sexual nature? Did reading about or seeing certain sexual acts in books or movies or the internet really form your sexual nature? All the evidence points otherwise. Look, if it were not so then logically parents would be wise to leave out in the open all kinds of graphic pictures of the kind of sex they want their kids to 'learn'. I mean why take a chance? Perhaps to really imprint the right sexual activity on them the parents could have sex out in the open. Ok, ok---I am getting a bit silly here, in fact it might make sucking toes a more appealing option. As usual, I find humor in most topics. Otherwise one goes nuts. The serious point is that Christ wasn't hung up on particular sexual acts and neither should the rest of us.
If "be fruitful and multiply" made sense when the earth had few humans, it sure as hell makes no sense in our current era of overpopulation. Can anyone seriously envision God, gazing down on the current massive irresponsible reproduction of humans across the globe, cheering us on, "2, 4, 6, 8---populate, populate". I am against any interpretation of scripture which makes God appear dumber than George Bush. If there is going to be anything fruitful about the human future, we better stop reproducing like rabbits.
In the God created process, human life appeared on the planet between 1 and 2 million years ago. From that beginning until 1750 the human population grew to a billion. 180 years later it was 2 billion. Then 40 years later (1970) it was 3 billion. Thirty years later it became 6 billion. Well, for those who think domination and multiplying is really a God given directive we are really on a roll. Metaphorically speaking, we are like the dinosaurs---stomping everything to death. Species extinction is now proceeding at a record clip, natural resources are being depleted with abandon, and the air is being filled with pollutants because as George the Sapient Sage Bush explains "it is too expensive to curtail". Bad for the economy. It limits the profits of the 1 percenters who own more of our wealth than the bottom 90%. It is not only other species and our natural resources which are taking this vicious hit, but humans are organizing in two basic groups----the few with a living standard out of sight and the many in dire poverty often without property, food, medical care, clean water---living like dump rats off the garbage heaps of the affluent few. I guess, no matter---they don't live all that long.
At any rate, to me, real religion dictates that human life is not the only kind that matters, and whatever it takes to support human life to the detriment of other life on this planet is not an acceptable religious stand. Let's not pretend the Jewish holocaust is an isolated, never to be repeated type of carnage. What about the American Indian holocaust? What about the holocaust in Rhodesia? In Somalia? In Iraq? The disease preventable holocausts across Africa? And yes, the subhuman holocaust rampant right now for other species. Maybe the most apt name for this current era is the Age of Holocausts.
The truth seems to be that this errant religious human manufactured interpretation of "be fruitful and multiply" is, as Spong calls it, "a prescription for human genocide". To those fundamentalist Christians it means just the reverse: "abortion is the human genocide". Painting an abortion in clear cut terms of right or sinful is to show a lot of disrespect for those who are faced with such a painful decision. I suppose there must be a few people having abortions like a mild nuisance to their lifestyle, but there are idiots amongst us in other areas of life decisions as well. To the extent we are all responsible for our personal decisions God will be the Judge. All scripture assures us of that, over and over and over. How strange that anyone professing to be religious would want to pre-empt God's role here. Jesus spent his whole life among the multitudes assisting and advising the needs of the least amongst that generation, and to my knowledge never suggested making laws against any of the stuff in question here, but used personal interaction to help improve the lot of those in need. It would be hard to confuse a Pat Robertson with Christ, or Christ with elaborately costumed Pontiffs, Bishops, Cardinals, Ayatollahs, etc issuing vague useless proclamations for peace, prosperity, and love among mankind from alters in gilded cathedrals. Every Christmas Eve since I was a kid the newspaper headline always has read: "Pope Prays For Peace". Considering our position on the evolutionary scale, we can be embarrassingly obtuse---believing what we want to believe. If praying for peace effectuated anything this would be the most peaceful planet in existence. If praying for the poor eliminated poverty there would be no poverty. If praying not to die from cancer worked, their would be no deaths from cancer. These babblements from ornate pulpits begin to sound at some point more and more like oil, gas, and electric company Ayatollahs pitching calls for energy conservation. You know, say the right thing but really, through inaction, promote just the opposite. It probably is no coincidence that it is the religious right who are the biggest proponents of the War in Iraq, just to mention one example. I guess to be fair, maybe this is their program of population control. Maybe Will Rogers was right. I will paraphrase him: "If you shot 100 hundred people in Iraq at random, probably 90 of them deserved it." See, the fundamentalist just see things more clearly. Sometimes it makes you wonder---maybe the only effective way to reduce overpopulation would be to have everyone pack a gun. We're getting to that point here and across the globe if I can include homemade bombs as guns.
I agree that life is certainly precious. All life exists as part of a God created evolutionary process mired in complex interrelations of the many species and the environmental resources needed to sustain life. Humans have a self serving interest to protect our natural resources and the complex interrelations between species. While this created evolutionary process leads to change and beneficial progress, there is no evidence God messes very often with our position in this process via intervention in any human's daily life, nor is there any evidence that humans, as humans exist now, have any special protection as individuals, or as a whole, against self destruction. Across the eons of time the mix of life forms has varied from era to era. However, with some temporary setbacks and stale periods, the overall progression of life on this planet has been upward. I suppose, in the last analysis, whatever will be will be. Nevertheless, how many amongst us would ever wish we, as individuals, never had the opportunity to be a miniscule part of this process?
