Collective Punishment: God’s Will
BY SAM FIELDS
Guest Columnist
Get into a discussion about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and you are
guaranteed to hear a defender of Israel insist that Israel has the high
moral ground since it does not does not engage in suicide bombing innocent civilians–otherwise known as “collective punishment.
“What kind of people believe in intentionally punishing the innocent?
The answer? People who believe in The Bible or the Koran
“Collective guilt and its companion — collective punishment, or punishing
A for the acts of B–are a Judeo/Christian/Muslim tradition burned into
the Bible and Koran.
Certainly we are told what the adults in Sodom were doing wrong. But what
were the infants and newborns doing that warranted being burned alive?
If the Hebrew god had a bone to pick with Pharaoh why didn’t he just kill
him rather than everyone else’s eldest son?
What is the moral justification for killing “everybody in Jericho and a
host of other local tribes?
Is there any more outrageous example of collective punishment than blaming contemporary Jews for what may or may not been the bad behavior of the Pharisees towards Jesus two thousand years ago?
The Nazis were big-time practitioners of collective punishment.
Most infamous was the response to the assassination of Gestapo General Reinhard Heydrich in the Czech town of Lidice. No one stepped forward to confess. So they executed all males over 16 years and sent the remaining women and children to concentration camps.
And it goes both ways.
The Israeli government regularly bulldozes the family homes of
Palestinians. Why? Because of the actions of the son.
Of course, who could forget Baruch Goldstein. Goldstein was a West Bank
Jew who, in 1994, wantonly murdered 29 Arabs praying in a mosque. To this day some ultra-Orthodox Jews go to his grave and venerate him like Catholics worshiping a saint.
Goldstein’s mirror image is Nidal Malik Hasan. Hasan is the U.S. Army
doctor who killed thirteen American soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas in the name of Allah. His execution, which seems a foregone conclusion, will make him a Muslim Saint/martyr.
The U.N. has outlawed collective punishment. The American Constitution,
using the arcane language “corruption of the blood, outlaws the practice.
Curiously one other group has prohibited the practice. It’s the American
branch of the Italian Mafia. Families are off limits: “The only people
getting’ whacked are people what need whackin’.
So the next time you hear someone wonder where the 9/11 hijackers or the
Shoe Bomber got the perverted idea of killing innocents you can just give
them a Bible or a Koran.
On the other hand, you might give them another fiction book that is on a
much higher moral plane: “The Godfather by Mario Puzo.
December 2nd, 2010 at 8:21 pm
Too bad your argument in court wasn’t as perceptive when I beat your ass.
December 2nd, 2010 at 8:31 pm
We must all repent and ask forgiveness from the ONE and ONLY TRUE God – The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Only by accepting Him as our savior can we hope to have the goodness of His noodly appendages touch our lives and give us eternal salvation.
December 2nd, 2010 at 11:15 pm
awesome!
December 3rd, 2010 at 10:47 am
the major issue is is there sufficient garlic in the sauce.
December 3rd, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Sam Fields is sometimes a brilliant writer. This is one of those times.
FROM BUDDY:
After reading your kind comments, Fields’ head is going to be so big it won’t fit through the door of his office.
December 3rd, 2010 at 2:16 pm
I look forward to reading Sam’s columns. There are often great truths in his words.
December 3rd, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Fields has one interest in life and that is religion, or his attacks on it. Does he have any other interests? He must be the worst bore with all his talk about God and the Bible.
December 4th, 2010 at 12:36 am
We feel collectively punished reading this shit.
December 4th, 2010 at 1:43 am
Very interesting except according to the story God didn’t kill everyone’s first born. He spared them. Which is kind of the point of Passover. And if you want to use the Bible to get to the bottom of the Israeli/Palestinian thing, you’re reading the wrong section of the Bible. Try Cain and Able instead.
God is not responsible for evil or good. We do those things. God is simply the voice inside us that raises questions that can’t be answered any other way and inspires answers that otherwise would not occur to us.
Why would love play any role in our lives? Why is truth better than a lie? Where did we come from and why are we here? Why even when surrounded by millions of others are we individually still all alone? The answers to these things lie inside us. The world around only adds environmental context, a back drop meant to entertain our senses often to distraction from what’s really important.
Sometimes it occurs to me that reading your stuff is like reading through a shrink’s client file. Your therapy is not going well. And that’s because you keep searching for God answers in the wrong places. Put the Bible down, apparently it’s not helping you and it shows.
God doesn’t live in a book or some magical place. God is not responsible for world affairs. God doesn’t kill or create Pharoahs or Hitlers, is not responsible for sick babies, does not cause or cure cancer. He doesn’t pick who’s a millionaire or a pauper. We do all of that stuff on our own. It just happens.
The essence of God is only found within. It is wired into each of us and binds us together even if we don’t believe or care to consider it. Humans have spirituality because humans are wired that way. It has always been that way and always will be. There is no evolving beyond it there is only denial or acceptance of what nonetheless makes us what we are as people.
You must search inside you to find the God you seek. It takes some effort to find God. You first have to be open to the possibility of God. That is what faith is all about. From there, finding God becomes possible. All that’s left to do is search.
After a while of searching, often when you least expect it, the God you seek ends up finding you and from there you enter a period of contentment. That’s how it works and I wish it for you because I think that’s what God wants of us all. To find ourselves through the oneness that comes from our natural and common connection to Him. And then you are never alone again. Peace.
PS — Those that do war and bad things don’t know that oneness, they can’t. Truly finding God never inspires that.
December 4th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
God?…you write well but you’re talking faith and Sam’s talking religion…btw Hawking is just as right as you are when he says it depends on your definition of God..he says God is the sum of all physic forces..that works for me..Sam seems at peace to me..he just likes noticing that the emperor has no cloths
December 5th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
Sam, You did it again…. So enjoyable!