Louis CK Bible Study Week 2 Recap: You Have to Clean Up Your Kids When You Kill Them

Weekly Jesus meme. Classic.

   Welcome back, everyone! For part one of the Louis CK Bible Study, click here.

   Alright, this week we are going to be talked about some pretty dicey stuff, so first thing is first: watch the clip!

   Right off the bat, let’s respond to that and tackle the elephant in the room: I am definitely not ruling out the idea that I might be capable of murder if it was legal. As a journalist, I think it might serve one’s writing well to just have that experience on your resumé. Now that we know what kind of person I am (. . . or do we?), we can turn to the good stuff.

   The passage this week is shorter than usual—you can read it for yourself right here:

Genesis 16: 6-9

⁶ “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.

⁷ The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. ⁸ And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”

“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.

⁹ Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” 

   Wait a second—read that again. Abram and Sarai have some problem with their slave, named Hagar, so Sarai mistreats her (which, from what we know about the treatment of servants and slave in the days of the Old Testament, must have been pretty awful to be called mistreatment). Hagar runs away, but an angel of the Lord appears to her and demands that she goes back to her mistress and “submit to her.” That seems pretty awful, right? It certainly does not sound like the God that Christians talk about—the God of love and fairness and compassion. So what gives? Turns out, it is all a matter of context, just like Louis CK discusses in our clip. Check out the full passage now, with the original excerpt in red:

Genesis 16: 1-10

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; ² so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.”

Abram agreed to what Sarai said. ³ So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. ⁴ He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.

When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. ⁵ Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May theLord judge between you and me.”

⁶ “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.

⁷ The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a springin the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. ⁸ And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”

“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.

⁹ Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” ¹⁰ The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”

   It might make a little more sense now, but just in case, here is the Quick and Dirty.

   So Abram (soon to be Abraham) has this Sarai chick, who will soon be Sarah. Abram and Sarai were promised a kid by God, but still did not have one for a while, so out of sheer impatience, Sarai told Abram to sleep with their slave. Abram, with a total frat move, totally does, and Hagar is knocked up with Ishmael (who, fun fact, will eventually become the founder of Islam—pretty awesome). Sarai is pretty upset about this, and treats Hagar so badly that Hagar runs away. Luckily, the angel of the Lord tracks her down and tells her to return to Sarai, but not before he makes a promise that Hagar will be blessed with a lot of descendants.

   The difference between the two passages should be stark. In one, the Lord seems cruel and rigid, but when placed into the greater context of Genesis, there is a reason behind the return—if Hagar trusts in God now, she will receive a ton of blessings to come. What appears to be a negative in one sense becomes better in another—just like Louis CK points out with murder. The societal context of murder right now says that it is wrong and negative, but when placed into another context where society is fine with killing, it becomes a positive because you do not have to deal with your asshole kids all day.

   The importance of context is rampant throughout  Scripture—this is by no means an isolated incident. Google “messed up Bible verses” and witness the insane power of context. You take a lot of this stuff out of the source material, and it sounds really messed up, but if you put it in the light it was meant to be read under, and the real meaning tells you something different.

   In Delta Chi last week, we discussed some more practical things through the contextual lens—most notably, we discussed drinking. Drinking in Greek life definitely has social value—it is relaxing, fun, and opens you to new ideas and new people. The issue arises when the line is drawn between drinking to meet people and meeting people to drink. In larger society, drinking just to be drunk is heavily frowned upon, but in the Greek system, it is totally accepted—different contexts mean different attitudes and mindsets (just like murder in the Louis CK clip!). Our chapter looked at how we are approaching drinking at this present moment—do we drink to be social, or are we social so we can drink?

   So in your life, where does context define what it alright and what is not alright? Are there things you view differently based on who you are with or where you are? I know for me, it can be hard sometimes to see how different contexts—such as my Christian groups and my fraternity—can overlap, intersect, or intertwine. Ultimately, it seems consistency in your beliefs is key, but perhaps that is the real challenge: consistency through context.

   Peace.