The Bible's Position On Marriage Should Turn Your Stomach

While my wife and I were talking this evening, the topic of marriage came up. We discovered that she did not know that in the Bible, rapists were obliged by God to marry their victim... and the victim was obliged to marry her rapist.

Deuteronomy 22:28–29
28 "If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, 29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days.

I spent the lion's share of my time in religion not knowing that verse... to be honest, I only became aware of it when I started looking at the Bible objectively some years back.  My wife, having been in the faith her entire life... had never heard it.

 

As with most believers, we were taught an edited view of the Bible.  Unbeknownst to us while we were believers, that kind of twisted scripture is all over the Bible.

Truly, even if we had known about such scriptures, we probably would have found some way to move past them.  Bring these scriptures up to someone who WANTS to believe that the Bible is all that they have been taught it is... and they will find someway to move around a scripture like this and on to one that will make them feel warm and fuzzy.  I read an apologist's take on the above scripture, and his attempt to excuse it was as horrific as the verse itself.

from THE OATMEAL

You will simply never hear a verse like this taught on a Sunday morning.  You will hear about love, you will hear about money, you will hear about God's plan for you.  Your Pastor will carefully guide you around every danger in the minefield of the Bible.

This is why the indoctrination has to start hard when they are young.  Any reasonable adult, without conditioning, hearing the verse above would be horrified... and would see any religion which holds the Bible as the "Word of God" for the morally hobbled entity it is.

But if someone had their childhood and adolescence spent drilled with the message that the bible is not to be questioned... should they, by chance, come across this verse or one like it... they will, most likely, follow their conditioning and stay in the pew.