HiddenMysteries: The Promised Land and Other Myths

by tabonsell

Ancient societies, having no printing presses or computer memory discs on which to store their knowledge, used myths to teach and pass on knowledge. Unfortunately those stories are subject to distortions and other misuses over time. This is about some distortions and misuses.

If the word of God could mysteriously appear in the mind of Ezekiel, the ancient Jewish prophet, so that he could know God's plans and desires when others couldn't, it could appear in the mind of a modern man.

If God would endow some people with mystical powers to see the future through dreams or visions, he can endow others with abilities to see the past through intelligence and reasoning.

If evangelist Billy Graham can communicate with God so that he (Graham, that is) is best qualified to counsel presidents, a secular man can communicate with God to counsel himself.

If the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts and other reactionary religious leaders can talk to God daily to be told what God wants of us all, a progressive man can also talk to God.

Here's what God told me:

We got it all wrong.

Myths are not falsehoods, as most people "think"; they are traditional stories serving to explain some phenomenon, custom or understanding of reality. God loves myths. Myths are not to be taken literally, but modern men often do.

The Hebrews weren't a chosen people for any reason other than to be an example for the rest of us. God really didn't like them or dislike them any more than he likes or dislikes us. And there is no reason to think God likes us all that much, for he has devised a system in which even Doris Day must grow old, and that displeases God as much as it displeases any thinking man. But that be what it got to be; or kai sera sera, as Doris used to tell us with song.

The Hebrews ~ like most ancient people ~ were a war-waging tribe that roamed Middle East deserts (wandering in the wasteland after "leaving Egypt") smiting whomever they encountered; killing the men, enslaving the women and children and eating the animals. To justify by glorifying their actions, they made up stories saying God told them to do that, and those people they slaughtered weren't God's People, so their lives didn't matter. That rational pretty much mirrors the attitude the American religious right now has about the Iraqi victims of a religious-right president's actions. There is no physical evidence the Hebrew nation was ever held captive in Egypt, so stories were created to explain the desert wandering. Those stories have endured in religious literature for ages but they don't tell us the true nature of those ancient Hebrews.

Such stories led the Hebrews to concoct the rational that God led them to a "Promised Land," a land that is a delightful place full of milk and honey, the story goes, but it could only be occupied by overcoming those who lived there. The Hebrews were told they could have that new desert paradise by smiting one last nonchosen people. They smote them.

But what is the Promised Land? Religions tell us it is a place. God tells me it is a condition.

Milk and honey represent the good life that only a people living in peace and harmony can experience. And once in paradise, the Hebrews lived in peace and harmony, for a while, at least.

But there was a prohibition that God placed on them before entering the land. That is their leader Moses, who had "led them out of captivity" and through those many years wandering and smiting in the desert, could not enter. There was a reason for that.

Moses was not a single man but a figure that represented a position, much like a tsar, a caesar or a president. Moses couldn't enter the Promised Land because he symbolized a warring, despicable, bloodthirsty tribe. Because entering the Promised Land meant evolving from their warring nature and putting on the cloak of a civilized people dedicated to peace, knowledge and morality, a warrior Moses couldn't be there to lead; the Hebrews needed enlightened, peaceful leadership to be what they were chosen to be. That's what God told me, so don't argue.

And those "giants" that Caleb and other spies reported seeing in the Promised Land were not behemoths who would dwarf a modern National Football League linebacker or defensive tackle, they were the internal demons in themselves that made the Hebrews the vicious slaughter-happy people they were, but which they had to conquer in order to become a peaceful, harmonious people. Monsters they had to overcome to inhabit the metaphorical Promised Land.

The Bible tells us that David also encountered a "giant" that he had to slay before becoming king of the Jews. He slew him. Modern religion pushes the story off as one human, with God's blessing, killing another in war, as if that were justified. Religion is wrong. The behemoth, Goliath, that David killed, like the giants occupying the Promised Land, was David's own internal monster that had to be quieted, put to death with God's guidance; and the story is intended to tell us that every person must slay his or her own internal monsters to be a leader of a civilized people. God told me so.

Warrior Hebrews became peaceful Jews when they conquered their internal giants, monsters and demons, and they were "chosen by God" to do just that. They were a "chosen" people, not a "favored" people, a light unto the nations to follow them into peaceful existence. Their new faith made them peaceful, maybe too peaceful as they learned in the Holocaust of World War II. They were the harbingers to the vicious warring Tibetans who were the scourge of the East, but who developed Buddhism to become the most-peaceful people in Asia. The only difference is Buddhists don't have an all-knowing, all-controlling God to tell them what to do, to think, to be.

It appears that Tibetans were the only people to understand the story. The other two religions (Christianity and Islam) that evolved from the same stories that spawned the Promised Land myth could use some of that peacefulness to tame their own internal giants, demons and monsters that ravage their societies.

Critics ~ that means critiquers, not criticizers ~ often say the Bible depicts the Old Testament God as a vengeful, bloodthirsty fiend. They miss the point of these stories, just as do the fundamentalists who revel in a death-dealing God they find throughout the Old Testament. Those stories of death and slaughter tell us what we used to be ~ and what a few of us still are ~ not what God was. People who depict God as a vengeful, bloodthirsty fiend they think the Old Testament portrays him as being have no problem being vengeful, bloodthirsy fiends themselves. George W. Bush comes to mind here.

Religions and their leaders have distorted and misused biblical stories, to be what they are not, and that has greatly hurt the world for we have learned little of what the tales were created aeons ago to teach. They have been used over the ages to perpetuate ignorance, not enlightenment; to control people, not free them; to beat down, not lift up; to create fear and despair, not hope and joy; to create division, not unity; to create hate, not love; to make war, not peace.

God told me all this, and if you don't believe me, just ask him. He will not deny it.

Thomas Bonsell is a former newspaper editor (in Oregon, New York and Colorado) United States Air Force cryptanalyst and National Security Agency intelligence agent. He became one of American journalism's leading constitutional experts through years of study at Georgetown University Graduate School of Government in Washington, D.C. He is the author of "The Un-Americans: Trashing of the United States Constitution in the American Press", a critique of the mainstream media for ignorance of, or disdain for, our constitutional principles of self-government. He left newspaper work years ago, disgusted at the direction the Fourth Estate -- under the mismanagement of ineffectual, out-of-touch, can't do executives -- was taking away from honest responsible journalism and the observation that there was no place in the mainstream media for a progressive, or liberal, constitutional "expert". Bonsell is an honors graduate of Woodbury College (Los Angeles, California) with a bachelor of business administration degree. He is profiled in Marquis Who's Who in America.

Personal motto: Have brain; will use.

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The Promised Land and Other Myths

Tuesday, April 24 2007 @ 02:04 PM CDT