Fear God or He Will Totally Kill You and Your Country

Ladies and Gentlemen welcome back to the house of the Lord! People, I'm going to cut to the chase; I just read 1 Samuel and shit my pants.

I mean, I knew God was all-powerful and what-not; and I know that back in the day He made damn sure Israel was kicking ass and raping foreheads, but I had no idea how far He'd gone!

This one is a pretty quick, it starts in chapter 15, when Samuel, working as God's middle-man, is telling Saul, the king of Israel, what to do. And if I may digress just a tad, why does God have a middle-man to his king? Why not just talk directly to him or have Samuel be the king? It seems really inefficient. I suppose it could have been better for the economy to keep more people employed.

Regardless, Saul is told that he has to attack the Amalekites because Amelek hindered the Jews during the Exodus. And his dicking with the Jews pissed God off to the point where He sounded the commanded, "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."

No bones about it, that is totally hardcore.

But Saul is a big puss. Sure he kills all the men, women, children, babies and the vast majority of the animals; but, he left the king, Agag, alive and took him prisoner. He also kept the best of the cattle to use for dinner and sacrifices, which sounds utterly sensible and delicious to me.

So, anyway, the Lord gets monstrously irate and, while chatting up Samuel, totally tears into Saul. He emo-bitches about how He totally regrets making Saul the king and that it was a huge mistake. But then he retracts that a bit later by saying he makes no mistakes. Obviously he was guilt-tripping and when God Himself guilt-trips your pathetic soul you're gonna need buckets of Prozac and a lake of Everclear to drown that mess.

So he sends Samuel over to humiliate Saul by telling him--and this is great--"The LORD hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine, that is better than thou."

Ouch, that's the kind of burn that lasts an eternity! I'm surprised he didn't add, "And he has a bigger dick than you, too, jerk! Just ask your wife when she waddles home tomorrow morning."

And on top of that, Samuel calls Agag and, Agag pleads for his life saying, "Surely the bitterness of death is past." Samuel, responds with, and I quote, "Aww, fuck no!" and chops Agag up into pieces right in front of Saul!

Now this, my friends, is one bad-ass God. Sure when Jesus came around He seemed to turn a new leaf and became merciful and peace-loving, but I think it's best we don't forget what this God is capable of doing. I mean, yeah, maybe today you can go do a minor sin and think, "It's all good, He'll forgive me," but next thing you know, your eyes bleed, your tongue explodes, and your wang shrivels into a pathetic husk.

With that, I have a few announcements for this week: The youth group is having their first retreat and it is to Tijuana, Mexico to bear witness to all the sexy shenanigans going on there and preach against them. Also, Mrs. Cowlinsky will be heading the first annual bake sale and has requested that you refrain from donating any more erotic cakes and claiming it's Adam and Eve. Apparently this has been a common problem for her.