I was a Christian, I believed earnestly. But I was circumcised as an infant. As I grew up I was exposed to truths, like gender equality, bodily/genital autonomy. Why was god sexist in subjecting only boys to the suffering (boys even today who receive pain management suffer, in the old testament were out right tortured in the name of your god for a covenant) What kind of god commands 8 day old boys to experience genital mutation? I was traumatized by my circumcision I went to a rape counseling center and I explained my trauma, I was told that by definition circumcision is sexual violence. So what was with god's predilection for having an interest in 8 day old baby boy's genitals, and is this why Catholic priests keep getting caught molesting boys?
Wouldn't an adult choosing circumcision for himself as a sacrifice be more meaningful as he'd willingly give up that part of himself?
In the old testament where the command to circumcise these infant boys it spoke of those who were bought with money, how young could Israelites buy children, and why did your god permit slavery? Why was god OK with Israelites beating their slaves in so far as the slave didn't die?
A fair bit to unpack here.
If you were physically circumcised (PC) within a Christian household, it was not typical of Christianity. Under Sinai, physical male circumcision (PMC) was not mutilation (some would call ear piercing
mutilation, if they don’t like ear piercing). PMC can have physical health perks (see Dr S I McMillen’s
None of These Diseases, 1968): though I disagree with McMillen’s hermeneutic. It was a symbolic act and a good under its covenant, and the symbolism would not have worked (nor had been needed) with girls. If that’s sexism, we might as well say that biological evolution has been sexist in not allowing men to breastfeed. Yes, biblically PC was never for females (FGM), although that’s practiced in some Muslim circles. Sinai was not Christianity, and was ended by messiah’s death. That’s part of what τετελεσται—It’s done—meant (Jhn.19:30).
So, PMC was good under its covenant (Sinai). But like the Snake was used to bless as a focus of faith, yet after its proper innings became a curse of superstation (Nb.21:9; 2 Kg.18:4), so after the blessing of now defunct Sinai, any superstitious holding of PMC is a curse, a cancer. And like cancer, if you don’t kill 100% of the cells, those remaining can evolve to survive another attack. There are many Christian variants in the world, and sadly some are like the Circumcision Party that Paul had to challenge (Ac.15;
Galatians). In
Galatians, Paul made it clear that while having had value as a physical act of commitment by the people, for the new people of global Christianity the old could be seen as having also been prophetic of spiritual circumcision, a true severance from the outside world. All Christians are non-physically circumcised.
I deny your basic premise in these citations: [of your god for a covenant/kind of god/why did your god]. That’s silly talk, and admittedly common in Christian circles which being tertiary education should know better. In reality if not in semantics, neither Abraham, Moses, nor Jesus, had a god—but they all had God. To the extent that I have a god I have not God. Your semantics need upgrade along many lines, IMHO, and are mutilating reasoned debate. What you may legitimately ask is:
Q1: Whether (‘why’ assumes too much) God (there are no variants) was into torture/pain (you seem to me to assume sadomasochism, which interestingly C S Lewis had been into in his atheist days.)
Q2: Why God permitted slavery.
Q1: I question whether they physically suffered as you I guess have suffered. To any physical pain you could add emotional & social pain, but those types were lacking under Sinai, where PMC was typical, not atypical, for boys/men. I also question whether they suffered much more that an initial yelp (as puppies when their tails are docked) and some soreness over a few days. Many societies (eg American Indians) have had such rites for much older boys, marks which would be marks of pride, marks of manhood. But in the West medical intervention has generally weakened humanity (see Marc Girardot’s
The Needle’s Secret: Unraveling the Mystery of Vaccine Harm, And the Bolus Theory Revolution (2024)), as R F Kennedy has said. To illustrate in other terms, it may well be that you have been metaphorically battered, and that by equating smacking with battering, assume that boys under Sinai were battered because they were smacked. But what didn’t work well for you might have worked well for them, contrastively as a mere smack to your undoubted battering. Do you see what I mean?
Q2: It is clear that slavery under Sinai was non-abhorrent, very different from the abhorrent slavery of say the Muslim Empire which took and sold slaves to the generally benign British Empire, when for a while Britain followed the Muslim lead, doubtless with a mix of altruistic and non-altruistic motives. Indeed Sinai slavery was more akin to poverty forcing some to work for their basic keep as family domestics. Within the Roman Empire, it could range from benign owners, to malign owners. Like PMC, slavery is not a one-size-fits-all. Come out from the Left, Candace Owens is good on sketching some salient points re. slavery—maybe look her up? Sinai had a range of rules covering indigenous slaves, to non-indigenous slaves. The former could, after serving their time, ask to stop on as part of the household. Slavery was more a neutral than a negative word under Sinai.
God’s son the logos, himself came to become Jesus, a PC Jew who was a slave (Mk.10:45) of his father, so as to free many who were slaves to sin and death. Christians are urged to be a slaves, not
to sin (Rm.6:6), but
to righteousness (Rm.6:18), indeed to God its source (Rm.6:20). The latter was not slavery as abhorrent, but slavery akin to joyful filiality (Rm.8:15). As to social slavery under Rome, Roman law only permitted masters to release a limited few into the free-market. Even in Christian households, it could be perfectly ethical to keep slaves (Col.4:1), even Christian slaves though honouring them as siblings spiritually on par with masters (Phm.16), for the gospel of liberty is that spiritually ‘in messiah’ there is neither slave nor free, physically circumcised nor physically uncircumcised (Gal.3:28; Col.3:11). At the merely social, under non-Christian masters legal manumission was generally recommended (1 Cor.7:21).
Slave
traders, on the other hand, were condemned along with sexual deviancy such as homosexual
practice (1 Tm.1:10). For the latter you could read Dr John White’s (
Eros Defiled: Ch. 5’s
The Freedom that Enslaves). White, BTW, wrote both as an ex-homosexual and as a psychiatrist. The Bible is about freedom, which removes from abhorrent slavery into beneficial slavery: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (NIV: Gal.5:1). It also cares for social freedom and wellbeing, such as sexual celibacy until marriage and sexual fidelity within marriage, God himself as defining marriage he created for humanity. If we follow its liberation we become blessings to our society and to our children.
