Bible Stories for Strong Stomachs: The Bible is Full of Shocking Stories, “R” Ratings, Seedy Characters, and Unsolved Mysteries That Convey God’s Word in the Weirdest Ways

By Barry L. Callen

Intriguing and eye-opening interpretations of the most scandalous Bible stories that are puzzling and even shocking, maybe not even worthy of being in the Bible. A serious and sometimes whimsical taking of readers into the most awkward and even repulsive biblical narratives to find answers to the difficult questions facing believers today. Here is an outstanding resource for young adults, Sunday school classes, and quest groups that will provoke real conversations about the Bible and how the faithful should be living their lives. These twenty-eight Bible stories, strictly for adults, would make great sermon material for the pastor who has the courage and wisdom to try. They surely are in the Bible for some important reason. You are warned to approach with caution.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Jan 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781498281232

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Bible Stories for Strong Stomachs

The Bible is Full of Shocking Stories, R Ratings, Seedy Characters, and Unsolved Mysteries that Convey God’s Word in the Weirdest Ways

Barry L. Callen

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BIBLE STORIES FOR STRONG STOMACHS

Copyright ©

2017

Barry L. Callen. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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8

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, Eugene, OR

97401

.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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8

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www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-4982-8122-5

hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-8124-9

ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-8123-2

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Callen, Barry L.

Title: Bible stories for strong stomachs / Barry L. Callen.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books,

2017

| Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers:

isbn 978-1-4982-8122-5 (

paperback

) | isbn 978-1-4982-8124-9 (

hardcover

) | isbn 978-1-4982-8123-2 (

ebook

)

Subjects: LCSH:

1

. Violence in the Bible. |

2.

Sex in the Bible. |

3.

Bible Study and Teaching. | I. Title.

Classification:

BS1199.S45 C20 2017 (

print

) | BS1199 (

ebook

)

Manufactured in the U.S.A. January

2017

Table of Contents

Title Page

Opening Warnings

People are Just Pitiful!

Chapter 1: Look Out the Window and Be Depressed

Chapter 2: Kill Some Animal and Make God Happy

Chapter 3: Skeletons in the Closet

Chapter 4: What About Those Monthly Periods?

Chapter 5: Women Don’t Deserve Respect!

Chapter 6: Deny That He’s Your Kid

Chapter 7: The Party’s About Over

The Bottom Line

God Sure is Different!

Chapter 8: Has Appeared as a Ufo

Chapter 9: She Claimed a Sperm-Free Pregnancy

Chapter 10: Vulnerable as Helpless Sheep

Chapter 11: God Says, Go Marry a Prostitute!

Chapter 12: A Whale of a Sense of Humor

Chapter 13: And My Bowels Moved For Him

Chapter 14: Always Stretching The Truth

The Bottom Line

How Not to be God's People!

Chapter 15: Crush the Skulls of Men and Babies!

Chapter 16: Two Bags of Dirt Will Get You God

Chapter 17: Work the Big Bait and Switch

Chapter 18: Just Make Some New Gods

Chapter 19: Put Everything Up For Sale

Chapter 20: Engage in Endless Preaching

Chapter 21: Tempt the Curse of the She Bears

The Bottom Line

Crazy Possibilities for the Future

Chapter 22: Agree That the Donkey Did See an Angel

Chapter 23: Make a Ridiculous Real Estate Transaction

Chapter 24: Celebrate Sprigs and Old Stumps

Chapter 25: Put the Whole Zoo in Your Boat

Chapter 26: Get Out of the Tree

Chapter 27: Fight God to a Draw

Chapter 28: Become Food for the Beasts

The Bottom Line

Opening Warnings

Parts of the Bible were not written to be read over a cup of coffee shared in polite company. The Hebrews were graphic, sometimes even gross when expressing their beliefs and life experiences. If you’re going to read the Bible, be prepared for occasional eye-opening, breathtaking, and even nerve-rattling passages.

The following twenty-eight biblical stories are prime examples. They are not for the weak-kneed or those with delicate digestive systems. However, they are from God and apparently for God’s people, so please don’t shy away just because these stories are shocking, seedy, or unresolved. They are what they are. They are part of God’s revelation to us fallen and needy humans.

Strange Ways to Tell Great Truths

A Jesuit priest works with the roughest of the rough in an inner-city setting. He once summed up what he does and why he does it in simple terms. I will use these terms to launch this book of strange stories. Here is what he said. "God is compassionate love. We believers are to be in this world what God is." That’s a mouthful and a huge challenge!

Paul said much the same thing in his little letter to the Philippians. We are to have the same loving and compassionate mind as did Jesus (2:2). We are to be what God is. The mind of Christ is what God is. We are to allow this Christ mind, the presence with us of God’s being and thinking and acting, to become who we are on behalf of others.

If this simple but profound truth is our launching point, how can we proceed to unpack its meanings? Our way involves sharing four sets of Bible stories. Before reading them you need to consider some warnings. Pay attention before you decide whether or not to keep reading. The path is rocky and a bit dangerous here and there.

There are various ways of opening God’s revelation. We could unleash a sophisticated philosophic discussion or engage in extensive theological narrative. We could begin with a detailed search of church history or commit to an in-depth study

These stories are the strangest ways of conveying the greatest truths. They are adult adventures that point straight at the toughest issues Christians are facing today.

of the Bible in its original languages. While all of these could help our understanding, you won’t find them here.

I come from the same church fellowship as Elsie Egermeier. Her Egermeier’s Bible Story Book dates back to the 1920s and is still in print after millions of copies have been sold around the world. She has introduced generations of children to many of the Bible’s stories, telling them simply, from a child’s point of view. I also want to introduce Bible stories, but mine is a different approach and audience. I will tell them only to adults, taking them right from the Bible in raw form. They will be out-of-the-way, surprising, and even grotesque stories that nonetheless intend to carry God’s heart and will for our living today.

From these tall tales will come key elements of what we need to be in this world as God is. They will convey critical insights into Christian faith and life presented in unforgettable ways. They will surround us with R ratings, seedy characters, weird happenings, and unsolved mysteries—all right from the Bible’s pages. These stories are strange ways of conveying great truths. They are adult adventures that point straight at the toughest issues Christians are facing today.

Four Sevens Make Twenty-Eight

Our offbeat biblical sources for gaining divine wisdom are grouped into four sections of seven stories each—the Hebrews thought seven was a divine number. They’re short on length but long on meaning. Enjoy the pictures. Consider while you read and think about the implications of these short stories for your own life of faith.

First is a group of stories about people, us fallen people. We necessarily begin our search for truth and hope by experiencing ourselves and our neighbors as we and they are. We begin with where we are, who’s around us, and what we’re facing and trying to do. Our stuff turns out to be mostly very different from who God is and what God wants of us. Instead of being in this world what God is, we find ourselves and our communities to be plainly pitiful! These seven stories are a mirror into our sick souls. I want you to be sobered by them, but not permanently discouraged. Don’t give up!

The second group of stories is about God. What is God really like and how does God choose to appear and act on our human scene? These stories tell us what we’re missing and where our only hope lies. We pitiful people cannot become anything different until we come to know who God actually is. And who is God? These seven weird tales make clear that God is very different from us and from who we usually think God is. God sure is different!

Third is a group of seven stories about formal religion and the church. There’s a long history of people being pitiful even when they have become aware of who God is and have tried to represent God in this world. Religion has a tendency to turn in on itself and fall off the very cliff it’s trying to keep everyone else from falling off. These stories are sad glimpses into who God’s people often have been. They show faulty efforts at being religious. Religious establishments are well practiced at misdirection and infamous for going off track right inside God’s house. Trying to be in this world what God is can go very wrong!

Fourth, there are seven biblical stories about how to straighten out God’s people. They are encouraging glances ahead, even if strange in how they’re put. They point to important clues about how we who believe correctly with our heads can get on with the challenge of God-likeness with the rest of our bodies. They show how to do the Christlike thing in the Christlike way, God’s way. But be aware of this. Being like God in this world is being unlike nearly everyone else—and people usually don’t like people who are different and show them up. Prepare yourself for persecution!

So here they come, twenty-eight stories directly from the pages of the Bible. The biblical people thought it all, feared it all, tried it all, from the worst to the best of it. These are twenty-eight real Bible stories, just ones you shouldn’t read right before bedtime or mealtime. They are tales for strong stomachs. Some of them aren’t recommended for reading in the pulpit without great caution, or around young children ever. Be prepared for them to be put right in your face without apology. If you have a delicate digestive system, stop reading now.

The Bible pulsates with references to all aspects of life in this world, including the weirdest and worst you can imagine. Some of its stories require very careful interpretation. I’ll try to point you in helpful directions and leave you with important questions that don’t have easy answers. You might want to share these stories is some group setting of trusted adult friends who can handle stories with ragged edges, vulgar scenes, depressing dimensions, R-rated intimacies, and unclear implications.

Surely these stories are in the Bible for more than shock value. They shine God’s clarifying light on at least one of four things—how pitiful we people are, how surprising God is, how not to be in this world supposedly representing God, and how we might be in this world as God actually is and wants us to be.

The biblical people thought it all, feared it all, tried it all, from the worst to the best of it. These are real Bible stories, tales for strong stomachs.

Allow your last meal to digest before you begin—and be patient. Meaning sometimes lies beneath the surface of the printed page, between the lines of a story, only with the background understood, only when the odd literary form is appreciated. And one more thing. We will need the gentle ministry of God’s Spirit to take us past the momentary words to the enduring meat of divine revelation.

Bible Reading Is Not Easy

We keep telling people to read their Bibles. One reason they often don’t is that it’s an exceptionally hard book to understand—or sometimes even tolerate. It’s not even one book, but a library of sixty-six books by many authors writing in different centuries, cultures, and languages.

Virtually all biblical writers were ancient Jews, so the result of this complex of writings is profoundly Hebraic in perspective, and most of us today are far removed from what Hebraic is.¹ We often hear, But the Bible says . . . as plain as day! Yes, that may be what the words say in that one spot, in that context, and in English translation, but is that what the Bible really teaches? Maybe, and maybe not. A little humility, patience, and digging often helps.

Again, the number seven was special in Hebrew culture. I have discovered in the craziest of the Bible’s stories seven ways that people are truly pitiful, seven ways that God is so very different, seven ways that the synagogue and church have gone badly wrong, and seven crazy ways that serious believers might actually go right in the future—be in this world what God is. Here’s a biblical storybook off the beaten track that brings us face-to-face with today’s toughest issues.

A sperm-free pregnancy, a talking donkey with great vision, God’s arranging a prophet’s marriage to a prostitute, ancient flying saucers that maybe were God, a little diarrhea to bring on romance, a queen parading nude (except for her crown) in front of a crowd of admiring nobles, a tent peg driven through a sleeping guy’s head by a hostess who had just served him dinner, bags of dirt guaranteeing an intimate meeting with God, the dumbest of land deals, skeletons even in God’s closet—yes, these and more stories. Do read with care.

Most of all, if you want to know how to be in this world as God is, and if you want that mind in you that Christ has, read these stories with your eyes and listen with your heart, preferably on your knees. God is still speaking!

1. For brief introductions to the fundamental contours of Jewish biblical thought, see Marvin R. Wilson, Our Father Abraham (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,

1989

), chapter

9

, and Barry L. Callen, Beneath the Surface (Lexington, KY: Emeth,

2012

), chapters

7–10

.

PEOPLE ARE JUST PITIFUL!

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1

Look Out the Window and Be Depressed

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! . . . Moreover I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, wickedness was there, and in the place of righteousness, wickedness was there as well (Eccl 1:2, 3:16).

How about that for discouragement! The word vanity means vain, empty, meaningless. Are we humans dying of thirst and trying to drink from a chain of mere mirages? Is life mostly an invitation to go to the

Our ancient writer was an honest and experienced seeker after truth and happiness. The empty, useless, and pathetic aspects of life as it is are looked right in the face.

nearest drugstore and fill a prescription for anti-depressants? Has this world reverted to what it originally was—chaos? By the way, what is a book like Ecclesiastes doing in the Bible in the first place? It’s depressing! Are people really that pitiful? Is our human story only one vanity after another?

This first biblical passage is not quite a story. It’s more a scene that tends to dominate the whole human story. It’s a picture of the gone-wrongness of life. It’s the stage on which all of our stories are being told. The set is dark and depressing—at least at first. There are floodlights in the house, but they don’t get turned on until later—if at all. We will have a choice to make about that as time goes on.

Do you know who the Teacher or Koheleth was? Never mind. No one else does either, and it doesn’t matter. He is our biblical writer. He was a teacher, a man rich in life experience, and a specialist in spreading depression. We’ll call him Mr. K. The Hebrew word koheleth means someone who convenes a congregation, and this writer is convening all of us for a story of hard lessons about how life really appears to be in the ugly trenches of the everyday.

Our storyteller gets eloquent with dark reporting. Despite the many celebrities of this world who brag of their successes and sport their confident predictions of the future, sooner or later they’ll be just as broke, naked, wrong, and dead as anyone else. That’s the dark scene, the heavy story Mr. K is always telling. Want to listen for a few minutes?

The Awkward Story—On the Surface

When the rabbis got together to decide which books should make it into the Old Testament, who could have blamed them for leaving out Mr. K’s work? After all, it’s a story that’s more like a long speech titled Never Mind, Life’s Not Worth It! God rarely shows up in this book, and when the divine does peek over the horizon many interpreters think the appearances are later additions to the text put there to keep the faithful happy and give the rabbis political cover.

Is that all God is, an artificial, last-minute, and maybe unreal addition to make our dull and depressing lives a bit more palatable and this piece of writing more OK for including in the Bible? Is religion just comforting self-indulgence? Is faith a mere exercise in self-delusion?

The story told by Mr. K begins in a strange place, under the sun. I once had a Bible teacher who stressed the importance of this little phrase that Mr. K likes to use. He took this to mean that our storyteller is trying to show how life appears and turns out when God is removed from the picture. Here’s what happens when we choose to live in the shadows of our own wisdom and by the selfishness of our own shortsighted agendas. If we deny the ultimate reality, we are left to wallow in our own limited and perverted realities.

Our little life windows are the narrow confines of our living, our restricted lines of sight to the broken limbs and emptied nests of the harsh realities outside. Clouds obstruct the star-filled skies. We usually see little more than the grit of things as our rubber hits the harshness of life’s road. What generally appears out our windows and in our newspapers and on our computer screens is that people are just pitiful!

This depressing picture of life revolves around a simple plot. The story goes like this. We humans want to be free, totally free, but unfortunately there is no such thing. What we really have is a paradox that is inescapable. The New Testament puts it like this. Christ offers rest to the burdened by asking them to share his burden, to assume his yoke, the symbol of toil. Real freedom, says Jesus, is not the absence of limitations but the acceptance of the right limitation, which turns out to be a burden that feels freeing—his yoke is easy, his burden is light.

People tend to get this backwards. We work to get all we can when, in fact, we are made to be spent. We consume constantly when sacrifice is the path to true joy. We find it hard to believe that we are most free only when we are loyal to the right Master. We are most truly ourselves when yoked to Christ and sharing his suffering in this troubled world.

Mr. K’s story is full of the bad masters usually chosen. Simple rules for success in life are just too simplistic. We make up our own rules, claim

Our lives are experienced as a maze of puzzling perplexities that suggest futility on every hand. Should we raise the bottle to our mouths and the gun to our temples?

our own freedom, and it just doesn’t work. Trying to mimic the rich and apparently successful people is next to useless. Instead, we are encouraged by Mr. K to picture ourselves looking out our sunless windows seeing fields of tragedy, injustice, and limited chances for happiness. Here’s the sad conclusion of this story: For who knows what is good for mortals while they live the few days of their vain life, which they pass like a shadow. For who can tell them what will be after them under the sun? (6:12). The implied answer is Nobody!

Let’s admit it. Our lives are experienced as a maze of puzzling perplexities that suggest futility on every hand. Vanity of vanities! Should we raise the bottle to our mouths and the gun to our temples? Mr. K doesn’t go quite that far—but close. Life on the ground, under the sun, is not much to look at as we peer through our little windows. People chase after the wind (1:17) and the result blows right away from them.

Justice is rarely found. Our highest hopes flee into thin air. Like the two characters in Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, we wait our lives away and God never comes. We pray and get no answers. Is life only a stage play in the theater of the absurd? Maybe, at least when viewed under the sun.

As an educator, I bristle at this from Mr. K: For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow (1:18). I would have preferred: The more I know the more I realize how little I know, which increases my humility (not sorrow), and in its own way brings maturity and even joy. But I didn’t get to be the biblical storyteller. As far as we can tell, concludes Mr. K, the end of all our human stories is exactly the same—the unforgiving, cold, final grave—that is, if we are looking at things only under the sun.

Speaking of the sun, the current drought in parts of the western United States is serious and may not have been necessary except for pitiful people. Longtime residents see climate change at work, and it’s truly depressing. The atmosphere often is hot and angry. There are certain insects that are no longer being killed in winter. Confesses editorialist Hector Tobar of Los Angeles, The plague of insects is my fault. So was the poor snow season in Oregon resorts, and Hurricane Sandy, and the rising tides threatening assorted Micronesian islands. As a native of Los Angeles, I am significantly more responsible for global warming than your average resident of planet Earth.

Why all the guilt? "We pioneered an energy-guzzling lifestyle for the masses and taught