Church Voices

The scriptures are filled with such disreputable people. The kinds of people your momma warned you about. So, without further ado I present to you my favorite people your momma warned you about from scripture.

Rahab
Attend enough churches and you run into kids named after all sorts of Biblical characters. You’ve got Timothies, Davids, and Calebs all over the place, not to mention Ruths, Naomies, and Marys. But I’ve yet to see anyone name their daughter Rahab. Its a real shame too cause Rahab is totally sweet. Then again I suppose naming your daughter after a whore really isn’t all that appropriate. Despite all that Rahab was awesome. The Israelites were about to cross the Jordan river and into the promised land. Their first target was Jericho. Now, Jericho was a fortified city, one of the oldest in the area. The reason it was so old is because it was so defensible. It sat up on a plateau in addition to having huge walls, in addition to having a river on one side of it to keep armies away. Joshua sent out a couple of spies to check things out. Of course the spies immediately check into the local brothel, run by Rahab. When the King of Jericho finds out who they are he tries to capture them, but Rahab hides them. She gives the reason for her betrayal in Joshua 2:9-12 when she says that she has heard how the Red Sea parted for them on their way out of Egypt, and how they shuffled the kings of the Amorites off this mortal coil. And then she makes an amazing statement when she confesses that “the Lord your God is God of heaven above and earth below”. This is an incredible statement because its a total shift in belief for Rahab. The people of Jericho (and pretty much everyone else in the area) were pagans. They believed a great many gods existed and their seats of power were geographically situated. The god of Jericho was stronger than other gods, but only in Jericho. So for Rahab to make that statement was pretty much a total paradigm shift in her thinking about spiritual matters. So Rahab goes from being a pagan whore to a proper, monotheistic woman. She even gets a mention in the geneology of Jesus. How can you not like that?

The Criminal on the Cross
In Luke we see a conversation between two criminals and Jesus. The criminal I’m referring to in this case is the one that Jesus tells he will see him in paradise later that day. What’s interesting is the way this criminal reacts to the situation. First, while he’s hanging there on the cross waiting for the sweet release of death he doesn’t try to deny that he’s not a criminal, nor does he even try to justify his actions. No twinkie defense, no mealy-mouthed half confession that blames society or the victim. Just the simple statement to the other criminal, “Don’t you fear God since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man [Jesus] has done nothing wrong”. Now there’s an honest assessment.

Gomer
Ah Gomer, the wife of a prophet. We don’t really hear a whole lot about the wives of prophets. Most of the time you figure they’re just at home wondering what crazy stunt their husband will pull next in the name of God (”you already walked around with a pan in front of your face, now go take out the garbage”). In the case of Hosea, God actually arranges the marriage. Ah, the wedding party of Hosea and Gomer. Surely they will live out their lives in marital bliss. Except that Gomer turns out to be a huge freaking slut. She gives it up to just about everyone in town. She gives Hosea three children, apparently two of which were not his, and just to make this story really good, God orders Hosea to name the second two children “not my people” and “not loved”. Eventually Gomer ends up on the auction block down at the local discount whore shop. Hosea, her husband, has to actually go and buy his own wife back. We’re not told much else except that when Hosea does buy her back he finally puts his foot down and its implied they live happily ever after. Of course God sets up this little drama to illustrate what His people do to him when they pursue other gods. The kicker in all this is that the way this metaphor applies today is that you and I play the part of Gomer to God’s faithful Hosea. The bad news is that we’re slutty adulteresses, the good news is that God still loves us and will buy us back.

Samson
Samson was a madman. The stage is set when the Israelites fall back into sin and God hands them over to the Philistines. Samson comes along into this situation and just starts screwing with the Philistines as much as he can. Of course this brings the heat down not just on Samson, but on the Israelites as a whole. So now Samson is stuck between both Israel and Philistia. First, Samson starts off by marrying a Philistine woman. They have a feast that lasts seven days. On the first day of the feast he bets 30 Philistines they can’t guess his riddle, if he wins they give him 30 sets of clothes, if he loses he gives them 30 sets of clothes. So Samson stumps them with his incredibly vague riddle about a lion he killed. The 30 Philistines lean on his new wife to get the answer out of him so they can win. She nags him so long that he finally gives in and tells her. When they tell him the answer he’s pissed off they got to him through his wife. So he goes out and kills 30 different Philistines and pays up with the dead men’s clothes. After all this went down the Philistines thought it would be a good idea to marry off his wife to someone else. When he finds this out he goes out and gets 300 foxes, ties torches to them and sets them running off in the Philistines fields. He burned their food down. Nice. This of course ruffles a few feathers and so they burn Samson’s wife and her father to death. Not a great idea. Samson goes out and slaughters a bunch of them. This gets the Israelites in a tizzy as they don’t want the Philistines to bring the hurt. So Samson lets them tie him up and turn him over to the Philistines. At which point he breaks the ropes, grabs a donkey jaw bone and commences to killing 1,000 men. Ouchie. But he’s not done yet. Oh no. Samson heads out to Gaza where he hits up a prostitue. The people of Gaza hear he’s there and decide to kill him at dawn. The problem is Samson isn’t all that tired after a night of whoremongering and wakes up in the middle of the night, rips out the city gates and plants them on a hillside. Then we get into the whole Delilah situation. Basically she nags him and nags him until he wears down and tells her how to render him useless. Of course she turns him over to the Philistines. They put his eyes out, and turn him into a prisoner. Then one fateful night they bring him out to ridicule him. But they stopped laughing when Samson prayed for strength once more. God granted it to him and he knocked out the supports for the structure they were in. The roof came crashing down killing Samson and his Philistine captors. I just hope those Philistine women were really hot because Samson sure got a lot of grief from them.