Pat Robertson Discovers Cherry Picking

Over the weekend, Pat Robertson received the following email from a viewer of The 700 Club:

Over the holiday, I heard that America was founded as a Christian nation. If that’s the case, why did we allow slavery? – CHRISTINE

Who’s excited to hear what P. Rob had to say?

Well, I think there was a blind spot, you know, like it or not, if you read the Bible, in the Old Testament, slavery was permitted. You’d go into a nation — I say “you” — a country would go into another country and enslave the population and these people were put to work… use them as commodities. And so we have moved in our conception of the value of human beings over the years until we realized that slavery was terribly wrong.

O RLY?! You mean to tell us that we have developed our own moral code that is both independent and often times contrary to the Bible’s teachings? Shocking! What happened to all that “Bible is the literal word of God” stuff? Since we already eat shellfish and work on the Sabbath and wear cotton-poly blends, can slavery be dismissed just as easily? Because some of that stuff is so antiquated it is not only irrelevant in the 21^st century but downright absurd.

If Robertson has his way, we can let thousands of years of Bible-condoned slavery slide… but if someone dares question Leviticus (also in the Old Testament, let us not forget) and suggest that gay people should be allowed to legally marry, we are a nation full of sinners?! Really?!

If Robertson can’t see the phenomenal irony blazing in front of his face, then I’m not sure what else to do at this point. I hope the parents of every gay kid getting harassed at school due to Bible-based bullshit spouted by Robertson calls him up and tells him how their lives are torn apart. I hope that Robertson can’t sleep at night because he’s fully aware of the psychological damage his nonsense has caused on people across the country and around the world.

He should be ashamed of himself. If he was capable of that feeling.

**Rant Over** (Please forgive, me, I watched Jed Bartlet’s amazing speech from The West Wing earlier today and was feeling pretty ranty.)

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Tainda

I wish Jed Bartlet could run for president. I would so vote for him…
Matt E

Hooray fo Xtian hypocrisy! The bible s the literal truth and moral relativism is bad! Except for where the bible allegorical and all those archaic moral prescripts we no longer agree with because, well, you know, we’ve moved on from then and….
pinkfuzzyslipperz

He forgot to mention the fact that “God” TOLD them to make slaves of other races/countries.
LesterBallard

A blind spot. God is blind. God can’t heal himself?
rlrose328

Thanks for the West Wing link… I could watch that clip a dozen times and still watch it again.
flyb

Oh, and by the way, Christine, the USA was not founded as a Christian nation.
Buffy2q

Some things in the Bible (whatever things Christians decide) only applied at the time the Bible was written. Or they only applied to the Jews. But that stuff about gay people still applies because the Bible is God’s Eternal and Unchanging Word.
Patterrssonn

You see God purposely created the blind spot in order for Christianity to sort of make some kind of sense if not looked at too closely and if your an idiot. It is His gift to mankind.
LesterBallard

I wonder if Pat is getting so old and senile that an actual human being is starting to come out . . .
Our Daily Train blog

More sophisticated Christians will say that the “slavery” in the Bible is not the type of human ownership that we now think about but rather voluntary servitude, as in, “I will work for you for free if you take care and feed my family, etc.” While I don’t buy the notion that every single mention of slavery in the Bible is referring to voluntary free labor, I think it’s plausible that both types of service existed at the time. In any case, even if you ignore slavery, there’s plenty in the Bible that should make Christians cringe with horror.
Sharon Hypatia

Unfortunately, xtians aren’t appealing to Leviticus but to Paul when they condemn homosexuality. Paul said that adherence to OT laws was no longer
necessary for xtians but he said in the NT that homosexuality was a sin (oh, and slavery was
O.K.!)
They’re not hypocrites on this point, just really terrible people.
TerranRich

They’re hypocrites for referring to the Bible at all for any kind of basis of morality.
TerranRich

Your sarcasm was almost undetectable. 😉
Renshia

That’s true, but now you are splitting hairs.

The point it that xians do not feel the need to follow the old law, because the law was completed with the sacrifice of the son. So the only ones who feel the OT is anything more than a good reference to justify beliefs are the jews, they still follow the old law.

I am sure you can point to lot’s of places where they take exception to the rule, but that’s pretty much the truth, unless it serves their purposes not to.
allein

I’ve never quite understood what it actually means that the law was ‘fulfilled’ or completed (as you put it) by Jesus so-called sacrifice. Can someone help me out here?
Edmond

These Christians are wrong, or at least not completely correct. No doubt, there were probably plenty of cases of “bondsmanship”, voluntary servitude to repay a debt, but it’s an unavoidable fact that there were also plenty of cases of regular old slavery, the INvoluntary kind.

Exodus 21 starts out pretty good, giving a time limit for owning someone. But before we’re 6 verses in, we hear how to trick a slave into permanent residence. Just give him a slave wife, and she will bear him a family that belongs to YOU. He can choose to leave them after 7 years, but THEY stay slaves. Or, he can stay forever, and you pierce your mark in his ear, like branding a cattle.

There never was an arrangement of “bondsmanship” where you get to KEEP your debtor’s KIDS.

In Deuteronomy 23, God is outlining who can and can’t come into the “assembly” or “congregation”, and in verse 15 it’s specified that escaped slaves should not be returned to their masters. This sounds like good advice, certainly we SHOULD act to prevent slavery, but it illustrates that the authors of the Bible KNEW the difference between “slaves” and “bondsmen”. Bondsmen don’t “escape”, and if they owe a legitimate debt then they should work until it’s paid. They shouldn’t be harbored and hidden. This unique treatment is only for involuntary servitude.

There is NO question that “slavery” means SLAVERY in the Bible. And there’s NO question that it’s condoned in many cases.
Baby_Raptor

You know how the Old Testament laws called for sacrifices (doves, lambs, etc) to cover for sin?

Well, Jesus was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. He came, delivered the new Laws, then died as the final sacrifice. As such, he “fulfilled” the Old Law.
Renshia

First off, when you think of it logically it makes no sense. So don’t think you can apply logical thinking to the line of the story and understand it.

The very first chick ever was tricked and disobeyed god. That’s when the shit hit the fan. She got tricked. It was all her fault. Humanity was screwed.

God got all micro-manage crazy and set up a bunch of rules that everyone was supposed to follow and couldn’t, because were dumb.

One day god pretended to get over his micro-manage phase, and needed to update all this law business. Following those laws was seen as mans sacrifice because of his sinful nature, remember the chick. She spread it to all of us like a virus. Not that I am placing any blame here, but the guy did do a pretty stand up job of naming the animals.

So god sent his kid, like a cure, cause he’s a prick, and had him killed as the best choice for a little human sacrificing, to pay for everybody fucking up all the time. Forever. This sacrifice was to pay the debt everyone owes for not following all the rules. No matter how stupid they were.

But, (I once heard that when someone says but, everything before the but, is bullshit **. In this instance, it’s true.)

But, he didn’t really offer forgiveness carte blanch. He still micro-manages, but he has set up a management team to screen himself from his obsessive compulsive behavior. He setup the kid he had killed, (don’t ask) and a see through guy (don’t ask) as assistant managers. These guys are his new voice and his ears The don’t seem to see much of what is going on but apparently they hear everything, and write it down.

Now, you’re still expected to kiss his ass and ask him to apply that forgiveness if and when and for a duration of his choosing, to you if he wants to and if you ask the right way. Your still expected to sacrifice your life. Now your expected to do it with a fucking smile on your face and pretend everything is hunky dory.

Just to accentuate just how much of a prick he is, and how ultimate this sacrifice was, Now, there’s a hell, a burning fiery fucken pit for those who don’t kiss his ass, accept all the new rules, and a few selected old ones and do it with that fucking smile.

Now does it make sense?

(**Game of Thrones, series)
Sindigo

But he didn’t die. So how much of a sacrifice is that? I would take ~3 days of pain for an eternity in Heaven any day.

And you can bet that Jesus isn’t in the crummy first floor room of Heaven. He’s got a suite with 24hr room service at the very least.
Will Ross

Isn’t Robertson simply saying that society has moved on in two thousand years on the subject of slavery? End of story. This doesn’t mean that everything else in the Bible is false. Or true. It’s the point he starts from: no more. And of course he needs more than “it’s in the Bible” to justify this. Does he have anything more?
kullervo

And a big chunk of this country only came to the moral enlightenment that slavery was wrong after the Union Army kicked the shit out of them.
allein

“But he didn’t die. So how much of a sacrifice is that?”

Hence my use of the phrase “so-called.”

I guess Baby_Raptor’s post explains what they mean by it, at least (still don’t quite get how exactly that’s supposed to work – how does some guy dying a horrible but temporary death 2000 years ago somehow make my ‘sins’ all better today? – but that’s a different issue). So thanks for that.
allein

” First off, when you think of it logically it makes no sense.”

Well, I guess that’s my first problem. I really need to get a handle on my thinking habit. Do they make a patch or something for that?

“Now does it make sense?”

No, but you had me laughing at work this morning when I first read this (the antique version of Internet Explorer I have at work doesn’t allow me to comment). I think some of my brain may have leaked out in the process though. Should apologize to the cleaning guys, I suppose.
Mark O’Leary

Love that preposterous disavowal: “…in the OLD TESTAMENT….” As if the NT somehow rescinds the whole slavery business. On the contrary, the NT clearly approves of slavery.
martymankins

I keep wondering when we get to hear ol’ Patrick Rob cover this up with the “but God said that part is ok to move past” yet somehow still play the bigot card and hate the gays.