{"id":19752,"date":"2013-12-21T16:51:57","date_gmt":"2013-12-21T21:51:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=19752"},"modified":"2013-12-21T16:51:57","modified_gmt":"2013-12-21T21:51:57","slug":"clobber-verses-im-crushing-your-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/12\/21\/clobber-verses-im-crushing-your-head\/","title":{"rendered":"Clobber verses: ‘I’m crushing your head!’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Yeah, so, some third-tier bearded TV personality proclaimed white supremacy, compared gay people to terrorists who practice bestiality, and reduced all women to \u201ca vagina.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that got me angry. Not because this sad old man said such things \u2014 that wasn\u2019t a surprise, so his bile itself wasn\u2019t that upsetting. What got me angry was that Christians raced to defend this man and to identify<\/em> with him and with his message. Any criticism of his comments, these Christians said, was tantamount to criticism of all Christians \u2014 an attack on Christianity and on Jesus Christ himself.<\/p>\n

Because apparently Jesus was a racist, homophobic, men\u2019s rights activist.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Part of why these Christians decided it was their Christian duty to defend racism, homophobia and misogyny was that the old coot preaching this gospel of hate \u2014 Phil Robertson of the basic-cable reality show Duck Dynasty<\/em> \u2014 also quoted from the Bible. He quoted a clobber text from 1 Corinthians.<\/p>\n

Religion News Service did an article examining Robertson\u2019s exegesis and application of the clobber text<\/a> in question. It\u2019s a good summary of the same old tired question-begging discussion: Let\u2019s examine the isolated words of this isolated text to see whether or not we should allow isolated words from an isolated text to trump everything else we\u2019ve ever read in the Bible!<\/p>\n

Brilliant approach, folks. How many laps of that circular argument do we need to make before we get tired of it?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s all you need to know about Robertson\u2019s misuse of the Bible: He quoted Paul to defend excluding people from the blessed community.<\/p>\n

Yes, the Apostle Paul. Not some other Paul. Paul, formerly Saul of Tarsus. The star of the second half of the book of Acts. The guy who wrote a bunch of letters that we\u2019ve included in the New Testament.<\/p>\n

Have you ever read<\/em> Acts? Have you ever read those letters?<\/p>\n

If you have, then you\u2019re one up on Phil Robertson, because there\u2019s no way you could read Acts and read Paul\u2019s letters and then still somehow decide that Paul has got your back when you\u2019re trying to exclude people.<\/p>\n

Quoting Paul to defend exclusion is like quoting Tony Soprano to defend pacifism. Maybe you can find something Tony said that you can pluck out of context to make it sound like it might support that. And then you can ignore everything else Tony ever said or did and just elevate that one isolated phrase, repeating it over and over until you\u2019ve convinced yourself that it means the opposite of everything Tony Soprano represents.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s just stupid. Yeah, that\u2019s my scholarly, seminary-trained assessment of clobbering with clobber-texts. It\u2019s stupid. It\u2019s illiterate hackwork that comes from treating the Bible as raw material to be mined for ammunition to fight whatever battle it was you had already decided you wanted to fight.<\/p>\n

Clobber-text clobberers are the biblical equivalent of the Head-crusher from that old Kids in the Hall<\/em> sketch. They imagine they\u2019re doing something powerful and meaningful, but none of it actually matters \u2014 it\u2019s a meaningless act that has no effect on the reality it pretends to be reshaping. It\u2019s a delusion based on distorted perspective. Hold your thumb and finger right next to your eye and then squint and they\u2019ll appear huge and powerful. You can do the same thing with your clobber-text, but that\u2019s just as silly, and just as meaningless.<\/p>\n