Babies with their brains dashed against stones (Psalms 137)

We've taken some hits for this card, which puts us in good company: so has God. We and the Almighty would like some vindication.

We (the creators of the game, not God) went to different "Christian liberal arts colleges" where we heard too many people, including religion professors who should have known better, accuse God of "dashing babies against rocks" with omnipotently calloused hands, or ordering the children of Israel to do so, using this passage as a source.

Does the Divine Warrior occasionally order the slaughter of whole nations, men, women and children, in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament? Yes (see our post about "Not giving a $h!t about the Canaanites"); however, this psalm is not such an example, and it is important to recognize that.

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The speaker is not God, it is an individual crying out to God on behalf of his (some scholars argue her) people in their time of abject suffering. They are "by the rivers of Babylon," mocked by their oppressors after their Temple has been destroyed, their mothers and daughters raped, their fathers and sons decimated, and the survivors death-marched across a desert.

This is a song of lament hummed traversing The Middle Passage, chanted across the Trail of Tears, whispered in cattle cars to Auschwitz.

From a heart of sorrow the psalmist wishes equal harm to befall his/her tormentors, cries to the heavens for it to be a reality, but God does not swing any infants by the ankles, nor order such to take place. God's hands are clean and so is the singer's. No Babylonian children were harmed in the making of this psalm. But that is (almost) a secondary point.

Here is what should give you pause:

If you cannot fathom the level of anguish required for a normal person to wish a gruesome death upon another's child, then you have lived a charmed life and should praise whatever deity you hold dear; but how dare you blithely minimize or judge someone else's expression of a pain you can't comprehend?

Who are we to criminalize another, not for action, but a plea of distress to God? And what hubris does it require to indict God for not condemning them for their poetic, emotional release?

Perhaps we should ease up on people in pain.

Perhaps we should allow them to honestly grieve in their own way.

But what do we know: we made this game and you probably think we're going to Hell anyway.

God regretting your existence (Genesis 6:6)

Here is a not funny question: is this card about you?

Like the story of the people in the Flood Narrative (Noah and the Ark, lots of rain, bloated dead bodies everywhere once the rain subsides), do you, have you, or could you bring YHWH to a place of feeling like this when thinking of you? [NSFW-sort of]

We think it's an important question. Not just globally, not as a nation, but individually.

Personally.

Perhaps good, modern, progressive, liberal, open and affirming, beloved community, non-offensive, rosy-colored-glasses Christians, have strayed from the Biblical (and common sense) idea that there is only so much crap God will put up with from each of us.

Perhaps we need to stop thinking that the notion "God is love" means that God doesn't care about our personal acts of evil in the world. That God simply pats on us the head, gently chiding us to do better, and wrings Divine hands at the predicament He is unable to get a grasp on.

Perhaps we should remember that the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament both contain the idea that God is in possession of the full range of emotional options; that God can get pissed off fairly quickly when people are mistreating others.

Perhaps we should keep in mind that "divine wrath" is predicated on "divine love" — an idea Good Christians have no problem remembering when talking about caring for the abstract poor, widows, and orphans, but seem to completely forget when the conversation turns to their own brands of personal evil/sin.

Perhaps personal floods sweep through our lives from time to time for just this reason. Let's just keep hoping that we're Noah in the story.

But what do we know: we made this game, so you probably think we'll be the first to descend to a watery Hell

Playing the whore with many lovers on top of every high hill and under every green tree (Jeremiah 2:20)

We had a long post planned for this one: a carefully articulated, poetically worded, Scripture laden treatise to prove a central point; but allow us state it crassly, boldly: Take your complaints about patriarchal language and shove them for a moment and realize that God loves you, loves us, love the Jews of Jeremiah's day, and was hurt by their actions against Him, our actions again Him, your actions. Mine.

Jeremiah paints God as a hurt lover, like Hosea, Isaiah, and Ezekiel did before him. That is the heart of the text.

Have you ever been cheated on? Have you had someone you cared for rip your heart out, when all you ever did was love them as best you could? Have you ever asked them "why" and got a shrug in return? Have you desired to take them back when you know the outcome will leave you in tears again?

There were so many things we were going to say, rephrasing, rehashing, recapturing the anguish Jeremiah and the other prophets cull from the heart of God, but instead we give you these words from Martin Sexton's "Where Did I Go Wrong?" [Maybe read them alongside the second chapter of Jeremiah in itself entirety, where God laments a lost love, saying "you were My lovely bride, you used to love Me? What happened? I gave you everything, but you left Me for another who treats you horribly. Why?"]

Where did I go wrong with you?

Where did I go wrong?

Was it something I said or did or didn't do?

Was all I had not enough for you?

All the life we were burning through

What with your memory shall I do?

I opened up the deepest of my inside

It was all I had left to give to you.

Where did I go wrong with you?

Perhaps ... no. No perhaps. God loves us and we act like unfaithful spouses.

And you probably think we're going to Hell for making this game, but you know we're right.

Making stupid life choices & blaming them on Philippians 4:13

All the things I do are justified by my faith in Jesus, including, but not limited to: cooking meth in an elementary school's art room; sacrificing my neighbor's pet labradoodle to Dagon on their front lawn; and farting on homeless people.

No?

The passage doesn't mean that God is required to "bind in heaven" (Mt 18:18) my every action because I prayed a prayer to the baby Jesus at summer camp?! The Holy Spirit indwelling deep, way down, deep, way down, deep down in my soul is not a license to do/smell/lick wherever enters my head or field of vision?

Should my understanding of the passage be based on a reversed reading, placing the emphasis on the "He who gives me strength" at the end, instead of the ever-presently selfish "I" at the beginning? But then the passage becomes about God's will instead of my own will, especially when the question is asked, "what are the things God would strengthen me to do?"

Maybe those things are true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, or worthy of praise. (Philippians 4:8)

Maybe those things are not based solely on our comfort. Maybe they exist best when we learn to be content, at peace, with whatever we have, whenever we have it, however it arrived (Philippians 4:10-12), even if, especially if, these things contain our personal distress (Philippians 4:14).

Maybe this verse isn't a blank check of blessing for every romantic relationship, church ministry, professional opportunity, or new situation I may think is a good idea. Crazy.

But what do we know: we made this game and you probably think we're going to hell anyway.

A concubine cut into pieces: Her severed remains FedEx-ed around the country (Judges 19:29)

Note: Yes, we are aware that Fed-Ex did not exist in the Iron Age. Really? That's your biggest problem with this card?

During the testing phase of this game someone came across this card and freaked out. The person was offended, indignant, opened a Bible, and then became horrified. "I think I'm more upset reading the Bible than your card."

The person was hurt by silence. That there is no condemnation in the text for what happened. No one says this is wrong.

This chapter of Judges is far, far worse than our 12 word summary, which only captures a moment in a dismal narrative of racism, betrayal, gang rape, and murder which occur long before this poor woman is dismembered. This passage is one every pastor, priest, and parent hide from fledgling follower of the faith, and every atheist apologist knows by heart in order to rail against the former. Both miss the point.

This is The Book of Judges: a book which, in part, records the moral decline of a nation. A book whose heroes become less heroic, less moral, as time marches on — compare Deborah, Ehud, and Gideon, to Samson, Jephthah and Abimelech. A book that repeats some version of the phrase, "in those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes," especially towards the end, as things get worse and worse. (c.f. Judges 17:6, 18:1, 19:1, 21:25) So in truth, it should be no surprise that here, nearing the end of the book, we have this scene.

Not every tale in the Bible displays what is morally correct; some stories exist to condemn the horrific through silence, without commentary from the characters, the narrator, or God. The hearer/the reader knows that even if the foreboding words of missing kings was absent (19:1), no one who survives an encounter with this text needs an Aesopian moral at the end: an appearance of Moses, Jesus, or a South Park character, to tread upon the editorial stage and declare to the audience, "God thinks this is bad and you should too!"

In her book The Nakedness of the Fathers, the Jewish theologian/poet Alicia Suskin Ostriker places the judge Deborah in a modern-esque setting, leading a women's support group. While recounting stories from the Torah and this episode from the book of Judges and, Deborah explicates the silence:

"We are speaking of Jews not gentiles. Remember that among Jews these stories are not heroic but scandalous. A symptom of social chaos, when men forget to obey God as their Lord and King, and therefore fall into abominations.

For us it is tragic when women suffer."

No one in the story speaks up for the woman or comments on how she was abused. This is another biblical sign of how morally bankrupt the nation was, not an example of the misogynistic patriarchy. The writer knew this.

The condemnation is in the telling. The condemnation is in the silence.

But what do we know: we made this game and you probably think we're going to hell anyway.

http://www.bricktestament.com/judges/gang_rape_and_dismemberment/jg19_29a.html

Killing everyone who pisses against a wall (1 Samuel 25:22)

David: the "man after God's own heart."

We don't have the time to fully deconstruct the character of David: shepherd turned solider turned mercenary turned king turned sad-old-man; singer/songwriter, murderer/adulterer, protector of strangers and killer of multiple close friends [we've got a card for that too!]. He's a complicated man.

So when in 1 Samuel 25:22 he vows to kill "everyone who pisses against a wall" — i.e. all the boys/men (unless there are some girls/women who have perfected a particular method of squatting and spraying for effect) — one shouldn't be too surprised; he is as he should always be remembered, how he is often forgotten: a hotheaded, former country bumpkin, with an army at his back. David is a military strategist and fine ruler of men, but he is also a product of a disproportionate-revenge tribal culture, who acts like a spoiled brat at times. We should not be surprised he wants to kill all the males in a household (family and servants) because he encountered another selfish hothead named Nabal.

In context David gave protection to Nabal's men while they were taking care of Nabal's flocks in the field — David didn't harm them (as he had the power to), nor let harm come to them from the outside (which he could have) — and now expects to be rewarded by Nabal for the aid given. But Nabal tells David where he can stick his good deeds, arousing David's mighty spear.

David forgets that rewards are not guaranteed for doing good deeds. Besides, wouldn't "a man after God's own heart" believe in altruism and doing good because that's simply what the LORD requires?

Oh David, you cared for those weaker than you, so they would not be harmed by those stronger. But when rebuffed for you kindness your gut response is to harm those same men you protected (all "wall-pissers"); you would slaughter them, acting worse than the invaders you sought to deter days before?

Thankfully there's a woman in the story; someone who doesn't piss against a wall is needed to drain the ocean of testosterone fueled stupidity on which the story floats.

Perhaps it helps that she's beautiful.

Or perhaps it's the fact that she's clearly smarter than the males, not weighed down by the extra appendage.

A woman after God's own heart brings peace to the squabbling children arguing over whose is bigger.

But what do we know: we made this game and you probably think we're going to hell.