Download Sympathy for the Pharaoh (PDF)
Side 1: Sympathy for the Pharaoh
What if Allah were the one true god, and he was mad at our president for invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq?
What if Allah told George W. Bush to let his people have their lands back and to leave the middle east? Do you think that Bush would obey?
What if Allah made sure that Bush did not obey, even if he wanted to, just so he would have an excuse to demonstrate his godly powers by tormenting and killing large parts of the US population?
What if Allah sent plagues across our whole country turning all of our water to blood, killing the fish and other aquatic life in our lakes and rivers, killing most or all of our farm animals, horribly tormenting us all with boils that don’t heal and swarms of insects, all because Bush wouldn’t do what he wanted?
What if you, or your oldest brother or sister, and the oldest children of everyone you know — of every person and animal in the entire country — was suddenly killed one night just to prove to the president that Allah is powerful?
Side 2: Sympathy for the Pharaoh
1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might shew these my signs before him:
2 And that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son’s son, what things I have wrought in Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them; that ye may know how that I am the LORD.
- Exodus 10:1-2 (KJV)
Would that be right? Would that make him a just and kind god? Wouldn’t it be even worse if Bush were not just our president who we could remove from power, but our king whose actions we had no control over at all?
The people of ancient Egypt had no choice in their rulers, yet these plagues are exactly what the god of the Bible does to the Egyptian people in the Exodus story. He also makes it clear that he wants to do it to demonstrate his power, and to make sure he can do these horrible things with (flimsy) justification, he "hardens the Pharaoh’s heart" and proves that he is the instigator as well as the architect of this horror show.
If this story were true and the Bible’s cruel and vain god were real, would you want to worship him?