Sex, Sex, Sex: Christians Offended at Illustrated Bible
Robert Crumb, who has drawn a numbers of underground comics filled with sex and other adult themes, is publishing his own take on the Genesis stories, but it's the stories which most readers probably gloss over without much thought which are getting all the attention now. Some Christians are very upset about this because, apparently, truthful visual depictions of what is actually in the biblical text is disrespectful, insensitive, and inappropriate.
"It is turning the Bible into titillation," said Mike Judge, of the Christian Institute, a religious think-tank. "It seems wholly inappropriate for what is essentially God's rescue plan for mankind.
"If you are going to publish your own version of the Bible it must be done with a great deal of sensitivity. The Bible is a very important text to many many people and should be treated with the respect it deserves.
"Representing it in your own way is all very well and good but it must be remembered that it is a matter of people's faith, their religion.
"Faith is such an important part of people's lives that one must remember to tread very carefully."
Source: Telegraph
I can be sympathetic towards being apprehensive or even a bit unhappy about graphic illustrations of graphic sex and violence in the Bible, though a person with such feelings should be reflective enough to recognize that this should impact how they view the Bible itself. The base material is already there and if there is a real problem, it lies in that material far more than in any graphic illustrations of it. Those who don't reflect on this are saying something like: "these stories are good and proper, just don't use your imaginations to think about the details of what's actually going on." If anything is "disrespectful" to the text it's that sort of attitude because it's a clear refusal to take the text seriously.
This brings me to something for which I have no sympathy at all: the Bible is important to some people, therefore it "deserves" respectful treatment from everyone? No, I don't think so. If the Bible is important to someone then they are of course welcome to treat it with all the respect and reverence they feel is appropriate, but expecting others to treat it with the same or even similar respect is going much too far.
No one should have to treat any book, text, or tradition with any respect, much less reverence, especially in the context of religion. It might bother people to see a lack of respect for a text they consider important, but that's one of the consequences of living in a free society. No person, class of people, or institution can be the arbiter of how others must handle, view, or treat any book. This is especially true when the alleged "problem" is nothing more than knowing that somewhere out there, someone is illustrating or reading that material in a way you don't like.
Biblical Rule 34, nice!
One of the best experiences of my life was going to a marriage counselor with my spouse to work on some communication blocks we were having. I learned a lot more than I expected, and one of the things I learned was that you need to own your own statements. People use “we” or even “you” when they actually can only reasonably mean “me” or “I”. It seems odd someone would refer to “I” as “you,” but in the article you quote above you demonstrate something like that:
>”Faith is such an important part of people’s lives that one must remember to tread very carefully.”
Here the author uses “one”–as in “we” or the univeral “you”–when he can only reasonably mean “I.” He cannot presume to speak for anyone else in this. Nobody has to remember to “tread very carefully” about any issue they don’t want to. If _he_ feels that’s a good policy–he can say “I have to remember to tread…” Or, alternately, if he believes that it would be good for others to do so, he might say “I think/believe everyone should…”
But to say “one _must_” is simply incorrect. First of all, he cannot speak for me on this. AND, he cannot insist that I respect or regard anything anyone else respects or regards.
Someone wrote to the AE list recently and mentioned the “I am the universe” fallacy. It’s the mistake we all can sometimes make of assuming that if I am/think X, that it’s “normal” to be/think X. It’s driven by sheer thoughtlessness, and I’m sometimes guilty. And the statement above is a shining example of someone else doing this as well.
Free and open dialogue, and the ability to question or express disagreement or even disdain is the right of any citizen in a free society. I enjoy hearing people exercise it–even when they oppose me. On my way to work, there is a religious group that pickets an abortion clinic. They are nonviolent and aren’t blocking the entrance. And I’m glad to see them exercising their right to free speech with a peaceful civil protest of something they disagree with. On the other side of the street there are sometimes college age students who hold up handmade signs saying “Keep abortion safe and legal!” And when I drive by, I give them the thumbs up, and they nod. This is public dialogue. This is dynamic. This is good. And frankly, even if these signs said “F*CK everyone who disagrees with me,” I’d still applaud it. Get out there and be involved. Figure out what your about–and get in the fray. I have confidence that with more interaction, people are more likely to learn and grow and come to the best ideas. It’s insulation, isolation, protection and refusal to discuss ideas or be critical or even derogatory that keeps bad ideas safe and alive in any society. I think that’s why some religions do all they can to make sure it’s taboo to be too critical of them publicly. What’s that old saying? You don’t discuss politics or religion at a dinner party?
Nothing is sacred when it comes to criticism. If an idea can’t stand up to scrutiny–then let it die, as any flawed idea should.
Good on Crumb! I’ve always thought the bible should be rated NC-17! It’s actually rife with pornographic imagery, horror, violence , sexual explicitness, adultery, incest , infanticide, fratricide, drunkenness, rape, murder, cruelty, deceit, misogyny and other forms of vile behavior, human and divine. Definitely not suitable for young children. This is supposed to be a “Holy” book? God’s word? This is just one more reason why I an an atheist.
Of course, I meant “AM an atheist” .
I wonder if Mike Judge demands, and more importantly, expresses, that same respect for The Koran, The Bhagavad Ghita, and/or The Gospel of The Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Somehow, I doubt it.
As a gay man living in Washington State, my life bears too many recent bible-shaped bruises for me to even CONSIDER respecting this outdated relic.
I would give the bible the respect it deserves, but personally I prefer softer paper.
As a Christian leader I essentially agree that the respect due a text is relegated to the one who so regards it as respectable. I also, however, agree that rather than inflaming people just for the sake of disrespecting their beliefs is a best counterproductive for continued discussion. On a societal level, however, opening a wide discussion may actually require radical perspectives of the text to get at the truths or fallacies perceived in them.
Unless someone says “I’m only doing this for the sake of being disrespectful,” the claim “you’re just doing this to be disrespectful” is difficult or impossible to support. Very often, I think that people believe this claim because they simply don’t believe the other motives offered for the offending action: provoke discussion, provide a different perspective, undermine accepted assumptions that something should only be treated a certain way, etc.
As you say, sometimes a very radical or extreme perspective (or act, or presentation) may be necessary to provoke more substantive discussion. I think this is precisely what we have when there are entrenched, unquestioned assumptions about what a text/tradition says, what it means, how it should be treated, etc. In such cases, something more shocking and provocative may do more good than harm, even if people at first can only imagine it as harmful.
In the current context, I suspect that too many people have simply stopped seeing the details of the sex and violence in Genesis. That content isn’t at all remarkable when compared against similar texts of that region and era, but it stands in sharp contrast to the sort of image people have in mind about what’s going on. The events have been sanitized in the extreme. The graphic illustrations brings us back to what’s really going on — and not in a manner that can be easily described as genuinely “disrespectful” so long as the depiction is reasonably true to what the text say.
This looks great, but I’d also like to recommend Douglas Rankin’s Queen Jane’s translation of the Bible. It’s the entire bible translated from a skeptical and irreverent perspective. It preserves what good stories there are in the bible while highlighting the hideous and disturbing content.
this put me in mind of Monty Pythons version of “All things Bright and Beautiful” – the other side of the coin.
All things dull and ugly,
All creatures short and squat,
All things rude and nasty,
The Lord God made the lot.
Each little snake that poisons,
Each little wasp that stings,
He made their brutish venom.
He made their horrid wings.
All things sick and cancerous,
All evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous,
The Lord God made them all.
Each nasty little hornet,
Each beastly little squid–
Who made the spikey urchin?
Who made the sharks? He did!
All things scabbed and ulcerous,
All pox both great and small,
Putrid, foul and gangrenous,
The Lord God made them all.
Uh, huh huh. Huh huh. Uh, hey, Beavis. This isn’t like the Mike Judge who drew us and stuff… is it?
cag says:
I would give the bible the respect it deserves, but personally I prefer softer paper