A Question For Christians

I have a question I'd like to ask any Christian who believes I am condemned for not believing what they believe. If you are such a person, then please post your answer to my question as a comment for this blog entry, or mail an answer to me personally (my current mailing address can be found by searching for my name, Joseph Duncan, at BOP.com).

This is no simple question, so a little foundations is in order. Please bear with me.

First, it is important to remember from your Sunday school lessons that Jesus, the Son of God, as a man, was in the eyes of society at the time he walked the earth some two thousand years ago, not only a known criminal, but also a pariah of the lowest sorts. He may have entered Jerusalem triumphantly, but by the time of the passover he was being pursued and hated by mobs of people who threatened those who merely admitted knowing Jesus with punishment, or worse. And after Jesus was condemned by the dominant religious order of his day, he was spit upon, cursed, and openly scorned as a blasphemer, the lowest of the low.

And that brings me to my second point of foundation. It is a well documented but little understood historical fact that in Jesus' day the crime of of blasphemy was the most despicable crime of all; worse than stealing, worse than kidnapping, worse than rape, and even worse than serial murder, as the release of Barabbas clearly atests. But, what few people realize is that blasphemy was even worse than child rape, a lot worse. In fact, child rape was not even a crime, and in special circumstances it was explicitly sanctioned by Jewish law, THE Law of that day.

The Talmud, only a part of which appears in the Christian Bible, explicitly demands that a man have intercourse with a girl he takes as his wife, who can be as young as three years old, in order to consummate the marriage. It also decrees that if a man dies and his brother wishes to adopt his wives, he must again copulate with them, regardless of their age, young or old. And if a small girl is raped before the age of three, the Talmud states only that as long as she heals so that her genitalia remains intact she is to be still considered a virgin for the purpose of marriage. No penalty what-so-ever is mentioned for the rapist, except that he must marry the girl if she "loses her virginity" to him.

And if you think that's shocking, it gets worse (or maybe better, if you're a "deviant" like me). Remember the oft-cited old-testament law against homosexuality, the one that explicitly forbids a man to "lay with another man as a woman"? Well, the Talmud goes on to clarify, just as explicitly, that a boy under the age of nine years, is not considered a "man" for the purpose of this law, and therefore it is perfectly acceptable to lie with a boy, "as a woman", and even preferable since there is then no risk of obligating yourself to a wedding afterwards!

Now, like I said, all this is well documented, unjustified, and unexcused even by modern Orthodox Jews. I haven't mentioned what Jewish law permits in regard to slave girls, but I hope that by now you can start to imagine (or perhaps, fantasize). If you don't believe me then Google it for yourself. It was printed documentation of this kind of information that was once confiscated from my jail cell in Ada County (Boise, Idaho) during my competency hearing. The U.S. Marshals who found it called it "child porn", and refused to return it to me even though there was nothing pornographic about it. It was strictly an unbiased and academic discussion of "Child sex in the Talmud" (a good Goodle quote). Apparently the subject alone was enough to be considered by them as, "pornographic". (They incidentally reported to my attorneys that they had found "child porn" in my cell, without telling them what they meant by "child porn"; a clear - but failed - attempt to foster attorney-client bias.)

Are you still with me? If you're like most Christians you'll be rationalizing at this point, making up excuses and reasons to explain away or justify the raw information I have exposed you to here. You will remind yourself that I am after all a "child killer", and subject to the devil, so anything I say that causes you to doubt what you believe in regard to Jesus or God is just the devil using me to get to you, to "take your soul" I suppose. But, if every time that you question or doubt what you believe you blame the devil, then how will you ever learn the truth if what you believe is wrong?

Wait, that's not my question. Before we get to that let's go back one more time and take another look at the heinous crime of blasphemy that "our Lord and Savior" (by his own admission) was guilty of.

What's so bad about blasphemy that it was once spat from the mouths of common citizens with the same hateful vehenence that we now cry "child molester!?" You might think that Jesus' crime was only played up by the Pharisees in order to justify killing him out of their own self-centered ignorance of the truth. But that's not the case at all. The truth is that blasphemy was a very real and serious threat to social order and not just the authority of the Pharisaic lawmen.

In those days religious beliefs were the glue that held society together; and it was the only glue. Without its authority there could be no cities or towns or even villages. The Romans knew this, and that's why they never interfered with the religious beliefs or authority of the regions they conquered. Instead they simply imposed a separate authority - the authority of the state - over religious authority. But, they let the religious authorities practise and inforce their beliefs with very little to no interference. The Romans understood from experiences that to interfer with local religion invariably resulted in the dissolution of community and the loss of the conquered town or city as a resource.

A blasphemer could, and often did, cause people to question the ruling class' right to make laws and inforce them. This inevitably resulted in violent riots and uprisings that could and did destroy entire cities, even whole regions. The insoluble instability in and around Jerusalem even today is no doubt the result of blasphemers. So the fears of the Pharisees were well justified, and the crime of blasphemy a very real and serious one. The crowd spat on Jesus not without good reason. He threatened not just what they believed, but everything they had; their land, their families, and all their possessions. Blasphemy was the worst possible crime against society.

Of course the message of Christ was meant to free people from such dependence on human law and human authority. But clearly they - society in general, then and arguably now - were not ready for that message. So they cursed Jesus, and punished him in the worst way they knew how. They sought to send a clear message of their own to any other would-be blasphemers out there thinking about challenging their faith in their law and authority.

Now comes my question: Am I, Joseph E. Duncan III, not if anything else, a blasphemer of our age? Was what I did not a direct challenge to the authority, laws, and belifs of our modern society? Did I not defile our societies most sacred symbol of purity and innocence as Jesus defiled his by entering God's temple and violently desecrating what he found there? Christians say he was, "righteously indignant" and not "angry" (which would be sinful). I too believe I had the right to do what I had done. By attacking children so blazenly and vilely I was overturning the tables where modern lawmakers trade coin for beliefs (i.e. by selling false idols; ideas such as "justice" and "liberty" that have no value or even definition outside of human intellect) in order to hypocritically line their own pockets with gold.

Let me be more specific: They make laws against physically loving children (i.e. pedophilia) then raise taxes to "inforce" their laws. But where does that money go? Nearly all of it goes into the pockets of lawmakers, lawinforcers, and lawyers - the Pharisees of our day. Of course they genuinely believe in the importance of what they do, as did the Pharisees. And I am and had every intention of being as much of a threat to the authorities of this world as Jesus did to his. Now here's my question to all you so-called Christians out there who think you know the Will of God and the mind (or Message) of Christ just because of what you read in a barely decipherable "holy book", or, more likely, because of what somebody else read and told you about: Isn't spitting on me, the same as spitting on Christ?

I'll wait for your answers, and welcome all attempts to do so. Just please try to keep in mind that everything I wrote above was (is) intended to solicit thoughts, and questions (yes, doubt) about what you believe. So if your answer is some rote quotation or paraphrasing of what you learned in church, then don't bother answering at all. I want to hear from your heart and soul what you really think about all this. There are some Christians out there who can do this, though they are rare, and only mistakenly identify with other Christians. The ones of which I speak might be called True Christians, and I have discovered evidence of their existence in things I have read from various variations (denominations) of Christian beliefs. Ninety-nine point nine percent of Christian literature is garbage, but if point-one percent of what Christians write shows evidence of real understanding of Christ's real message (a message that I nor any man is worthy to convey - not even those who knew Jesus personally) then there must be hundreds of thousands of Christians out there who understand what I'm asking. And if only one of those sends me an honest answer (not an answer that I already think I know; I don't have one) then I will consider the last six hours I spent writing this (after months of contemplating it on and off) well worth the time God gave me to do it. And if you can honestly tell me why I am not "like Jesus", then hell, maybe I'll actually learn something - I'd really like that!