Perhaps you’ve noticed, in his earthly life, Jesus did not live to be one hundred years old. He didn’t even live to be fifty years old. He lived to the age of thirty-three, or thereabouts. Thirty-three is a nice, medium, mature age, and he chose to die. At the age of thirty, be began this journey toward the cross. Now, I am about to go off the orthodox trail here, but I feel like there is a signal to us, a message calling from the silence of his years between being found in the temple at age twelve and his public baptism around the age of thirty. The fact that Jesus began his ministry at thirty is curious, because he talks often about spiritual rebirth. He talks about returning to the faith of a child. After the infancy narratives of Jesus are completed, the only glimpse we see of Jesus is when he is in the temple in Jerusalem among the elders. This is one of my favorite parts of all the Gospels:

“After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers.” (Luke 2:46)

Jesus was twelve years old at the time, so to read this in 21st century American terms, he would have been a middle-schooler. As many parents know, and many of us may remember, middle school is roughly when the “age of reason” begins, not to mention puberty. A litany of questions and doubts enters the mind of a middle-schooler. Around age twelve, the tooth fairy and Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are all deceased. The myths begin to be seen as scandalous lies used as a carrot-on-a-stick to lure kids into good behavior. And do you know what else can easily become a suspected fraud when a child attends the funeral of Peter Cottontail? Yes, the answer is God.

The “age of reason” is when we enter into a greater understanding of the world around us and begin to grow toward adulthood, which means that is when we start ‘asking questions.’ For the Church, the age of reason is when we are said to be morally responsible for our actions, since we can no longer play the ignorance card regarding knowing what is right and wrong. Interestingly, the Age of Reason is also the name of a book attacking Christian doctrine and the idea of miracles, written by one of America’s founding fathers, Thomas Paine, who argued for Deism, not atheism. What Thomas Paine questioned in his book is many of the same topics any middle-schooler with a curious mind will come across, as the mind, body, and soul go searching together for meaning in this world. Paine didn’t come up with anything new, he just articulated the doubts about miracles and his discomfort with difficult sayings in the Bible, and he wrote the book in his fifties, meaning he could organize his doubts much better than a twelve year old. Paine spent a life of rebellion, gaining fame in America for his pamphlets titled “Common Sense” which called for revolution, and then he went revolution shopping in France and thought it might be nice if they, too, overthrew the government and all Church involvement in society. From his own words, he said that churches and religions “…appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”

Furthermore, he hated the Bible, calling it demonic: “Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.”

This is a perfect definition of the two-fold set of doubts that those coming into the age of reason and adulthood will be tempted by and want to investigate. First, the imposition of authority irritates, especially when the rules seem arbitrary. As teenagers grow and learn, they see adults that do not live up to the rules set forth, as hypocrites abound in all spheres, whether in work, church, or family life. The idea that authority is invented solely for purposes of control becomes an easy leap to make. If the models for authority are bad, or you have been repeatedly told are bad, then the association of authority as an evil oppressor can be enticing because it turns the doubter into a victim and a freedom fighter. In the years of doubt and questioning, the urge rises in all of us a stepson feels to scream at his stepfather, “You’re not my dad!” when it comes to any institution or any person that holds authority over us that constrains our behavior and thought.

The second onslaught of doubt comes from, yes, that same Old Testament that Marcion and millions of others throughout history have disliked. Every child reads the happy stories of the Old Testament. Children’s Bibles go from creation (wow!), to Adam and Eve and the cute serpent (they’re naked, lol!), to Noah’s saving ark (happy animals!) to David killing Goliath (the underdog wins!). And that’s about it. That’s the summary of the forty-six books of the Old Testament. I think both parents and children are ready to move right on over to the New Testament, to the non-judgemental, loving God, manifested in the person of Jesus.

The child has faith in these primary stories about Adam and Noah and David. Children believe them. This is the “faith of a child” that Jesus talks about returning to, where there is wonder and willingness to believe. Parents and children can have amazing discussions and talk through life lessons solely from these top-ten greatest hits, through these highlights of the Old Testament. Kids learn these stories because they aren’t yet ready to tackle confusing lines like, “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.” (Ex 23:19) A child that hears a line like this may have some concern about what is for dinner, but will not likely care or even pretend to understand, even if you explained it. That this line has more to do with protecting Israelite identity so that they avoid becoming like neighboring tribes, in this particular case the Canaanites, who boiled a goat in its mother’s milk as part of a magic fertility rite, would not even enter their developing brains. Actually, it’s not that the child will be unable to understand it. No, the problem is that we adults don’t understand it. We can’t make sense of it ourselves, so we dumb it down and shove it to the back of the bookshelf.

Few adults can interpret or explain the backstory of the goat. It raises questions. Let me just consider a few of those questions that I can think of off the top of my head.

Why would anyone boil a goat in the first place? Who boils a goat at all? This is America. Beef won long ago, we don’t eat goat, so let’s go back further: why a goat? And who boils meat? I mean, boiling hot dogs and bratwurst makes sense, but no one would boil a steak unless they were mentally ill, and they certainly wouldn’t admit it. Have they considered a grill or a smoker? The taste would be much better. Where is this strange culinary event taking place? Is this in France? Why would you boil milk? What’s with the goat being “young”? Seems kind of cruel. I could see PETA being all over this. Was the goat alive before it was thrown into the pot? Is the goat boiled with hair? Are the hooves still on, or do those get lopped off? If so, what happens to the hooves? If it’s alive, does the goat bleat while boiling? I imagine it would make a really sad sound. At least you can’t hear a lobster bleat as it dies in boiling water.

Then there’s the context of where this line appears in the book of Exodus. The chapter is talking about harvest parties and bringing in “first fruits” from the fields and pastures to honor God, so that’s all fine and dandy. Makes sense: bring in offering to honor God, got it. But then it jumps right into a line about boiling goats! This line feels like some addendum or amendment to address a one-time event, like a version of the curse of the goat on the Chicago Cubs, where a man showed up with a pet goat showed up and said, “Them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more,” which caused them to suck for decades, but in this case the man showed up, boiled a goat, and said, “That Israel, they ain’t gonna be Chosen no more.”

How would the average parent talk about this boiling goat verse with a child? Parents just want children to go to bed, not partake in Biblical interpretation by nightlight. The load of laundry, the permission slip for the school field trip, the dental bill, the property tax, the summer vacation plan, tomorrow’s meetings, the need for personal hygiene - all of these questions and issues outrank the problem that a boiled goat represented to the Israelites and the sacred writer of Exodus. We just can’t go into the details, so we stick to the easy things, the big things. There is a reason why the “main” stories are simple ones and it has to do with the same reason that fairy tales and fables are short and sweet with lots of imagery. It’s so we can remember them, while the details and the layers of these stories go far deeper, into places that a parent and child cannot easily venture into, but over the course of a lifetime, we encounter versions of these stories and takes in our very real world and experiences. But I’ll get to that later, because first we have to deal with the boiling of this baby goat.

These confusing lines are actually important, however, because every line has a purpose in the Bible. So for the record, now that I’ve expanded on this long enough that the goat could have finished boiling, what is the purpose of this line about boiling goats? The reason Israel does not boil goats in it’s mothers milk is actually quite simple. The fertility rite of the Canaanites goes against their worship of the one God. So this line, bizarre as it is, directly supports the Ten Commandments that Moses received just a few chapters earlier in the text. This interjection about the goat is about the first commandment: you shall have no gods before me. This prohibition of boiling is literally called out because these are the types of rules that keep God’s chosen people set apart from the pagans. Israel worships the one God, not the Canaanite or Egyptian or Persian gods. So not only do they outlaw boiling goats, but this line can be read as outlawing any pagan ritual or magic or sorcery.

But no child or middle-schooler will likely dig into the underlying meaning of strange verses like this. Most adults will never even consider looking (unless they enjoy it like I do), because it takes too long, the information is hard to find, and there is a game on TV or fingernails to polish. There’s not enough time! Isn’t there a fountain of youth we could drink from?

We lack the time and energy, so we abandon the strangeness of this cultural quirkiness. After all the goat was boiled some three to five thousand years ago, if not long before that. We feel that this goat has no relevance to us today. The Children’s Bibles present a kind of God that Disney could have come up with. In fact, the cartoon Bibles of today are likely the result of desperate Christians attempting to hold back the flood of Disney’s secular religion, as it aggressively evangelizes the world and steamrolls actual cultures and traditions, much like the Roman empire and Spanish conquistadores did, but without the sword. In fact, were Exodus being written now, I suspect it would have lines like, “Don’t worship your smartphone” or “Discard all Disney movies,” because the point is not about the specific ritual with the goat, it’s about any ritual (magic or otherwise) that tears apart the fabric of the Israelite community. Anything that diverts focus from the one true God is prohibited, therefore using magic to try to conjure up fertility is not allowed.

So that’s the first set of questions the budding doubter has to deal with, but the main hangup about the Old Testament is the violence, and by hangup I mean, we just disconnect the call. Click. Bye!

After we have passed through the dumbed-down gauntlet of tickly feathers in our modern Children’s Bible, we are in for a shock if we go searching in the actual Bible. If we ever go to the actual text (and most of us won’t, especially Catholics) we’ll find the snake in the garden of Eden, but he won’t be cute. The animal rescue story of Noah’s no-kill shelter ark becomes something much darker. And the peaceful and loving Jesus who passes from this world to the next requires massive pain and suffering to fulfill the new covenant.

The reaction for the light reader is to retreat or ignore the Old Testament because of the bloodshed and violence. This might be a wise move to preserve your faith, because many non-believers dive into the horrors and read deeply, only to determine that they cannot resolve a loving God with violence and suffering. The top objection to God is the existence of suffering in this world, since this seems converse to any argument against a loving God. Not diving into the pit and studying the Old Testament is sometimes a shield for people who put their complete trust in God. They know the truth, they have fully turned to God, and nothing you can say or tell or show them will disrupt that trust in God. This may seem like an ostrich, with its head-in-the-sand, but there is a reason for people who have been reborn to do this.

Why would someone appear to choose ignorance? Because they have received the gift of faith and will automatically tune out any reading of the Bible that does not enrich that faith. They will reject any reading that does not celebrate the “encounter with God” that the word represents to them. Many atheists have more Biblical knowledge than believers because they dig in and look closely, they have more education, and they are truth seekers. Truth seekers read deeply and believe that the only way to read is objectively.

Formerly, in my days of disbelief, I was fully on the side of calling out these ostriches. How could anyone not inspect the Bible and see the problems within it? Even when I wanted to give a reading the benefit of the doubt, it was felt too glaringly ignorant and foolish to believe, and after a few of those experiences I stopped reading the actual book at all and looked for authors like Thomas Paine, or writings from the Jesus Seminar, or John Dominic Crossan - authors who would confirm my suspicions. I recently spoke with someone whose faith was waning, and he told me he wanted to go find books that would cut through the apologetics and defenses. He wanted to find historical analysis and books that delved into the likelihood of the Gospel realities. He wanted a kind of “Bible as literature” approach and scientific approach to the Bible. I told him that his faith will go into hibernation or die if that’s the approach he takes, because he’s already decided. What he wanted was total confirmation for his faith, like Thomas the Apostle, and the entire prospect of having and keeping faith rests on the idea that you will never have that certainty. This is the great contradiction of faith and what makes people so crazy. Once you accept and adopt the mysteries of faith, or the grace of God gives you the gift of faith, then the leap is taken and people will defend and guard that faith with their lives, literally.

This is why the faithful seem so dense and dumb to non-believers.

Now, having come back, I completely understand why the ostriches act obtuse in defense of their faith. Not everyone has time or ability to do deep readings, but they know the faith is real, that the book is the truth, and even if they can’t understand everything they have total trust and will not allow anyone, especially someone that aims to destroy their faith, to even allow the words of doubt to enter their ears. Most of the re-born believers have already been down the road of doubt, so they know where it ends, and no argument or persuasion will trick them into falling again. Yes, they will fall into sin again, but they will not doubt God again.

This seemed crazy to me. I never understood it, until after I returned to believing and started reading a book that I could feel undermining my belief. I stopped reading that book, immediately, only finishing it later once I felt able to return. I actually recall feeling something urging me to stop reading the book. Then I knew I had crossed the leap into land of the ostriches. Since that experience, I recognize when the need to stop or to pray is near, when it must be done. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this one of the signals that the saints refer to when they talk about Spiritual Combat. Yes, it sounds crazy, but perhaps you know about this combat already, as you may have tried to quit doing something that you would like to remove from your life, only to find that you cannot, so you justify it as a cost of life, that every one must have a vice or two. After all, no one is perfect, right?

The truth is that the devil never bothers you while you are carrying out his will, but he will aggravate you terribly once you attempt to stop. For me, this has a real life illustration in tobacco usage and addiction, as I could not stop with my own willpower. In fact, tobacco was way ahead on inventing the self-driving car than Tesla or General Motors. What do I mean by that? Well, whenever I had decided to quit using tobacco, I would have built-up my resolve to quit and would even be telling myself in the car that I would not drive to a gas station to buy any tobacco. But to my utter surprise, soon I would be standing in line paying for tobacco products of one form or another. My car seemed to drive itself to the store. These almost felt like out-of-body experiences except I was clearly turning the wheel and signaling to turn into the gas station or grocery store. No matter how firmly I resolved to quit, I could not. No matter how fully dedicated to stopping this practice I proclaimed myself to be, the addiction took over. In the end, the only way I managed to stop using tobacco was the same method I learned and applied to stop drinking, which was prayer. Asking daily for strength and direction from a Higher Power is how it started, and it works, and still works. My car no longer drives itself. This power to change through prayer made no sense. Nothing made sense, after all of the extended efforts and books and nicotine gum and pills and therapies - none of that worked. The one thing I never thought would work not only worked for one type of vice, but works for all types of vice. If this experience happens and you begin to believe in that Higher Power as having real, inexplicable power, you may make the leap from generic Higher Power to believing in God and soon the entire Apostles’ Creed. And then you’re in trouble. You know you can never go back, nor do you want to go back, nor will anything, come hell or high water, separate you again from the loving God who came looking for you, reached out, and scooped you up.

This is why believers may not read as deeply as educated doubters. They never want to lose the gift of faith again. No Old Testament story can dissuade them. Take Samson, the maniac from the book of Judges. Even if Samson slaughtered 1,000 Philistines with a donkey’s jawbone and acted like a total jerk before and afterward - even that will not deter the faithful, because they may not know exactly why it’s important, but they know that story is important.

Once you start asking for the Holy Spirit to help you read the book, and you read the book seeking faith, thinking “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.” I have to repeat this often, but faith is a gift. Those that don’t have faith literally cannot read it as an “encounter with God.” This is not to irritate or mock either side of this question, it’s just a fact that the gift of faith changes your entire approach to how you read the word of God. If you are coming in to find doubt, you will find more reasons to doubt. If you are reading to boost faith, you will boost your faith. It’s like the saying, “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.”

Various anti-Christian websites have done the work of extracting the most cruel scenes of the Old Testament so that we don’t have to do any scrounging around. These lists are posted online for even the most casual doubter, from middle-schooler to full-blown Thomas Paine, so that he or she can confirm their suspicions, that yes - the Old Testament violence is in there. If you are looking for the angry God who tortured Job, or the Judges who slayed the enemies of Israel, it’s all there, and if you want to decide that God was an invention propped up to keep us in line, then you can pat yourself on the back for locating the cherries you want to pick to support that theory. This is the lazy person’s kind of Biblical reading.

What we fail to realize is that the stories may tell of a violent event to make a point. I often think that is the whole point of many of them. They show us the errors of humanity, within and without the circle of the Chosen people. St. Augustine, who seemed to have been sent from the future to help us all learn to read, said, “Narrata, non laudata.” This means, “It is narrated, not praised.” An account of an event in the Bible is not automatically a celebration of the event. This is a key point that the armchair doubter misses completely.

The presence of a story does not make it good or holy solely by its membership in the pages of the Bible. God’s judgement is not always explicitly stated, so we must read for the religious truth of the book, the scene, or the sentence. This is difficult, but worth the effort for those that take the time, if you can find time. The book of Judges is so littered with violence and morally confusing events that any reader who was looking for direct practical life guidance would probably end up in jail. Many of the characters, such as Samson in Judges, is not so much a model to imitate as a way of life to be avoided. When Samson uses a donkey’s jawbone to slaughter the Philistines and then brags about it, he goes even further and demands that God give him a drink. That is not advice on how to behave. Samson’s gift of strength, however, does become his curse. There is religious truth hiding amid the jawbone story if you read the rest of the story of Samson, because he is purified by his vice. His strength becomes his weakness, and this is exactly how sin works. But the average reader isn’t going to find that if the only part of the story plucked out is the slaughter and war. Samson dies due to his violence and arrogance. Reading with the eyes of faith and knowledge of what sin does to a human being will tease out the religious truth. Moreover, a Christian reader should always be looking for how everything relates to the coming redemption of Jesus.

The account of Samson in no way suggests his behavior is admirable. In fact, when we read the Bible in the light of Christ, we can see that all of this jawbone slinging behavior of Samson is exactly the opposite of how Jesus lives his life. So the message is practically a flashing red light telling us, “Don’t be like Samson! He’s a violent, arrogant brute who lacks humility.” St. Augustine has also said that any reading of the Bible that pushes us away from faith, hope, and charity is almost certainly incorrect, since that is what Christ came to tell us while he simultaneously came to fulfill the prophecies and uphold the law of the Old Testament.

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