“God fearing” has always struck me as a ridiculous statement. It’s supposed to be a positive, like, that person respected God. No. Jesus preached of a loving God. He was delusional, apocalyptic, and a product of his time and circumstances, but he said his god loved everyone. Throw that tired shit away.
You’re thinking New Testament God.
Old Testament God is a big mean motherfucker and he will fuck you up unless you follow his very strict rules. In fact, he won’t just fuck you up, he will fuck up your entire tribe collectively because you didn’t follow the rules.
Largely because he wasn’t the only God kicking around. Jehovah was originally just another local deity, but he beat up the others. You really were supposed to be afraid of the awesome power your god wielded. Ties back to the language of “you shall have no other gods before Me” - they were around, and they were real, but Jehovah was the baddest of them all.
Moses didn’t try to convince the Egyptians to worship Jehovah, he tried to make them scared of Jehovah.
I propose a new cinematic universe, and/or game series of wrestling matches between the gods.
I like how the Egyptians considered the Israelite god to be an evil spiteful desert war God that lied about how his people were treated.
There’s zero evidence that they were enslaved by the Egyptians and then revolted. But thanks to one king and centuries of retoric, here we are.
okay but without fear isn’t there no morality? and, like, if nobody’s suffering, is there really such a thing as justice? if there’s not at least one child in a basement being tortured and treated like dirt, can you even call it a society? I mean, obviously the optimal number of people being horrible tortured in society is “everyone but me, in the sickest ways I can imagine”, but, y’know, progress is progress
-every fascist
