Disturbing Passages in Holy Books

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Actually, most people know that stuff like murder, rape, various forms of bigotry, stoning people to death, slavery, and genocide are wrong although they are condoned in portions of the Bible. Let’s try to keep this thread on the topic of disturbing passages in holy books.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 28 Dec 2023, 11:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

There’s a lot of silliness in Song of Solomon which is a book devoted to romantic/erotic poetry.

In Solomon 4:12-15, a man tells his lover:
"A garden locked is my sister, my bride,
a garden locked, a fountain sealed.
13 Your channel is an orchard of pomegranates
with all choicest fruits,
henna with nard,
14 nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon,
with all trees of frankincense,
myrrh and aloes,
with all chief spices—
15 a garden fountain, a well of living water,
and flowing streams from Lebanon."

She responds in verse 16:
“Awake, O north wind,
and come, O south wind!
Blow upon my garden
that its fragrance may be wafted abroad.
Let my beloved come to his garden
that he may eat its choicest fruits.”

My church used to claim that the man’s love for the woman was foretelling Jesus’ love for the Christian congregation. I guess Jesus wants to have sex with the church. Kinky.

Verses About Breasts

In Solomon 4:5-7, he says:
“Your two breasts are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle,
that feed among the lilies.
6 Until the day breathes
and the shadows flee,
I will hasten to the mountain of myrrh
and the hill of frankincense.
7 You are altogether beautiful, my love;
there is no flaw in you.”

In Solomon 8:10, she says:
“I am a wall,
and my breasts are like towers.
Thus I have become in his eyes
like one bringing contentment.”

Disturbing passage in Solomon 8:8-9:
"We have a little sister,
and her breasts are not yet grown.
What shall we do for our sister
on the day she is spoken for?
9 If she is a wall,
we will build towers of silver on her.
If she is a door,
we will enclose her with panels of cedar."

Still, Song of Solomon might be the least problematic Bible book overall, it’s entertaining, and it has literary value. I’m rating it 6.5/10. I docked a few points for repetitiveness and objectifying language.

Matthew 5:38-42: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. 43 You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."

What Jesus says here is a good idea sometimes, but it can also be downright harmful. At times, people need to stand up for themselves and/or seek justice to avoid experiencing further harm. Sometimes hating someone who harmed you isn't a bad thing. Depending on the victim, it can feel empowering or it could even inspire them to get involved in activism of some sort.

Similarly, sometimes choosing not to forgive people who hurt you in some way can be therapeutic for some people despite what Jesus says at Matthew 6:14-15: "For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."

Perhaps Jesus should've made it clear that one doesn't have to forgive everyone and everything. Sometimes scriptures like these lead to toxic nonsense such as making people feel as though they have to forgive abusers in order to please God. I've seen it a lot in fundamentalist groups. It's one thing if they want to; it's something else when they feel obligated to.

I've chosen not to forgive a couple people from my past, and it feels f*****g awesome to make that choice. I don't take it for granted. Yay freedom! (Having the freedom to forgive is great too but not for me personally when it comes to abusers.)

Speaking of the song of Solomon

Some anti-Zionist Jews take this as an order from God that Jews should not have formed the Nation of Israel.

https://www.nbn.org.il/educational-cont ... o-zionism/

^ That’s fascinating!

It’s mostly just pastoral, romantic poetry.

One of these days, I want to take the book of Revelation and come up with some ridiculous interpretation of it. It’s utterly bizarre, so it shouldn’t be hard.

Some disturbing passages from the Koran



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9VWfsDw95c

I've read part of the Koran, and found it to be as silly as the Book of Mormon. It takes a lot of stories from the Bible, and then assigns the characters to Heaven or Hell. Being consigned to Heaven or Hell is the book's principal theme.

^ I quoted the Quran a few times in this thread. It’s got some doozies, but it’s less violent than the Old Testament as a whole. I read it once a few years ago.

I think the Book of Mormon is extremely funny. It’s just so poorly written and…absurd. Joe Smith was a lousy writer.

Here’s something toxic that many fundamentalist Christians contend with:

Galatians 5:22-25 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”

If you are depressed and don’t experience joy, you must not have God’s Spirit / there must be something wrong with you spiritually.

Expectations like these have probably pushed some to suicide because their best was not good enough.

To be fair, the problem here is more about taking the scripture literally and slightly out of context than anything else. Still, God should’ve foreseen potential problems if it is his Word (for argument’s sake).

It’s irritating when people portray God as some helpless victim. Poor God. He’s only the most powerful being in the universe and can (un)do whatever the Hell he wants to.

I'm too lazy to type the whole passage but I learned Psalms 109 is believed in the Hoodoo Community to be one of the most powerful and deadly curses one can recite to destroy one's enemy and his entire family from existance.

I took a snapshot of it from my old KJV bible I got from an old thrift shop.

Really unpleasant stuff...

^ Thanks for sharing! That's absolutely chilling.

You're very welcome. Yeah it's interesting how Christians can claim to be against witchcraft yet there's a literal spellbook written right there in the Book of Psalms.

Now also keep in mind Psalms isnt just used for nasty things like revenge and hurting people through curses and hexes, it's also used for benevolent things like healing blindness or other health issues, protecting people who journey to distant lands, bringing wealth to the poor, gaining the favor of people in power, breaking an addiction, cleansing oneself of a curse, stopping the quarrels between married lovers, etc

So it's really not all as scary as that Psalms 109 passage.

Here's a list I found online about the various uses for psalms for those who use it in things like hoodoo and conjure. Both the scary and not-so-terrible.

https://www.readersandrootworkers.org/w ... _of_Psalms

I think a lot of people would be surprised those scriptures are in Psalms. Many people believe there are only nice scriptures in there.

We barely touched on the story of the Flood. The fact that God killed babies and children along with everyone else except for Noah's family in the Bible was very real to me although most denominations of Christianity gloss over it. This image is in a very popular JW publication for children. If the Flood really happened for argument's sake (it didn't), God would be a major a**hole and undeserving of worship or even respect.

I guess God makes mistakes:

6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” - Genesis 6:6,7

I think the passage about how every man, woman, child, and animal in the city of Jericho was "put to the sword" was one that really disturbed me. Not so much because God commanded it, but because it reminded me of humanity's tendency to genocide during times of war and how they justify it.

It also made me think of the story of the Trojan War which ended kind of the same way, and it was the Goddesses Hera and Athena who ordered the entire city be destroyed because of one Trojan man named Paris who chose Aphrodite over the other two Goddesses as "The Fairest".

Maybe the problem isnt so much God or the Gods as it is humans?

If the stories actually happened, God (or gods) would absolutely be the problem. Humans invented gods so humans are the problem. However, many people believe that the Bible is the Word of a perfectly just and moral god because it says it is. One of the points of this thread is to highlight the problem with that.

1 John 4:8 says that "God is love." There's no way that can be true based on stuff that's in the Bible unless it's not a true reflection of him (i.e. God did not commit or endorse the atrocities that the Bible says he did AND God is not truly all-powerful or else he would end suffering).

I think man from an especially barbaric era created God in his image rather than the other way around. The New Testament is an upgrade because it was written later although it's not without its problems. People had grown and developed from a philosophical standpoint. It's hard to reconcile the god of the OT with the god of the NT IMO even though they are supposedly the same entity. Of course, even in the Old Testament, God gradually evolves. Before that, he was a minor god in a polytheistic society.

Still, the point of this thread is about disturbing stuff that's in the Bible. It continues to cause a lot of harm in a variety of ways. Some live their lives in ways they don't want because they think that's what God wants and people use the Bible to justify any number of harmful acts, including war and genocide.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 30 Dec 2023, 12:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Which is why I brought up Jericho. But there are similar myths just like that one such as the Trojan War in Greek Mythology.

They both made me sick to my stomach tbh...