Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Origin of Double Standards

For anyone familiar with the OT, there is a chapter that I found personally amusing. And here goes:
"Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. Now when He saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob's hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him. And He said, "Let Me go, for the day breaks." But he said "I will not let You go unless You bless me!" So He said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob." And He said, "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed."
- Genesis 32:24 - 28

The title of the chapter is "Wrestling with God"

Now, unless I have totally misintepreted this incident, what happened was that Old Jehovah decided for some reason to have some kind of wrestling match with Jacob, a mere mortal I might add and when He could not win the match decided to use His Godly powers to dislocate his opponent's hip (later in the chapter, Jacob or Israel as he was called had to limp back). If this is not cheating, I don't know what that is. I wonder if this then gives ground for competitive sportsmen to take steroids or worse sabotage their opponents in order to win the competition. Afterall, one can always argue that God did that too! Well, maybe not. God cannot be judged for any of His actions not matter how questionable since He is Perfect and Good. Nevermind that He used what would look like chemical warfare on the commoner Egyptians over the exodus episode. It just wouldn't do to haul Him to the international court for crimes against humanity like what we did for Uncle Saddy. I think the moral of the story here is that nothing guarantees fairness in this world. Some people can get away with anything because of their position in power which gives them some kind of moral pretensions. If you have no power, well too bad, life would just kick you in the balls if you only just face the wrong direction.

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