“Isn’t That Special?”

The Church Lady was a Saturday Night Live character, and with all such characterizations there is a grain of truth at its core. And she came to mind as I was just viewing a post on Medium.com with the title “Like Israel of Old, Is The United States God’s Favored Nation?” While people debate this point I have to ask two things. One, why would people want to be considered “God’s Chosen People,” and two, why would such a god even have a chosen people?

The Church Lady had a catchphrase of “Now, isn’t that special!”

I will start with the second question. It is clear from the Bible that Judaism, the parent religion of Christianity, started out polytheistic or at least henotheistic. Yahweh was part of a panoply of gods. In fact, Yahweh was a Canaanite god, along with El, Ba’al, Asherah, and over 70 gods in total. The Hebrews whittled down all of those until there was only one. Interestingly, Asherah, Yahweh’s mother, was described as Yahweh’s “consort” at one point. She often went, in the Bible, with the sobriquet of “the Queen of Heaven.”

The point here was that Yahweh had to be sold to the Hebrews as their one and only god (and Asherah worshipers didn’t want to abandon her, amongst other roadblocks for this happening, for example the Ba’al worshipers who worshipped via a bull or calf icon). One way of selling the Hebrews on Yahweh as their sole god was to declare that that god considered the Hebrews to be his sole people, which makes no sense whatsoever.

Yahweh was declared to be the creator god and people were his creation. Why would Yahweh single out one small group of people off in a backwater of civilization to be the only group he favored? Were there no other people anywhere on Earth he would show favor to? If so, there is no record of that happening. So, this god creates people, declares them to be “good,” then changes his mind shortly thereafter and kills 99.99999% of all of them, leaving only Noah and his three sons and their wives to start over. Again, a short time later, this god declares the Hebrews to be his “Chosen People” and authorizes them to exterminate any group which is in their way. WTF? The rest of Noah’s descendants? Chopped chicken liver I guess.

Returning to the first question, it is clear that religion is a mechanism by which people claim to be “special.” And Americans have been bragging on their specialness for centuries. Lately we have the claim of American Exceptualism, which is the belief that the United States is either distinctive, unique, or exemplary compared to other nations. We are better than those “shit-hole” nations and everybody knows it. Well, except the MAGA Republicans who insist that America is not a “Great Nation.” They can’t insist that we are great and claim they can make America “Great Again,” well they are bat-shit crazy, so I guess quite a few could and just not see any contradiction.

We seem to have this deep-seated desire to be recognized as being special . . . well, not just by the Church Lady, but by one and all. Our religions must stoke the feeling of being special or we are changing churches, by God! This is a far cry from churches in existence at the beginning of this nation which thundered from pulpits that we were miserable wretches, sinners, doomed to eternal damnation. I guess the church’s marketing departments decided that was a message that wasn’t going to have legs.

Establishing that “’Merica is God’s favored nation” would certainly make us all special, but be careful what you ask for. Yahweh also pummeled Israel and Judah from pillar to post, empowering invaders to trample those countries into dust over and over because the Hebrews wouldn’t “accept the yoke” Yahweh was offering. (If we aren’t cattle to this god, we are sheep or goats . . . now that’s special.)