Monday, June 9, 2008
Do Christians Cherry Pick Morality from the Bible?
I hear a lot of discussion of objective morality vs. subjective morality between Atheists and Christians. Christians claim the Bible is the source of Objective morality. Really? Does the Bible contain an objective, reliable, system for morality? Do Christians use personal preference when deciding what the Bible says about morality? I believe they do. You would be hard pressed to find a Christian these days who supports the killing of witches, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" Exodus 22:18 or one who supports the killing of disobedient children "If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, 19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. 20 They shall say to the elders, This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard. 21 Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. Deuteronomy 21:18-21. The Christian must make a conscious decision to ignore commands in the Bible he or she knows is wrong. Here's my challenge to Christians, codify the system of morality that you find in the Bible into a meaningful easy to understand list of right and wrong. Can it be done? I seriously doubt it. Could Christians all agree about what went into that list? I strongly doubt it. Will anyone actually take me up on that challenge? Probably not.
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9 comments:
Nice blog, Mr Hat. I have little to add to your post except to suggest that you might enjoy reading The Year Of Living Biblically, in which AJ Jacobs endevours to avoid cherry-picking and live his life exactly according to biblical dictates.
Good luck with the blog!
Exodus 22:18: http://tinyurl.com/3zv6m4 (further down if your 'lazy', but you might miss most of the point of the article)
Deuteronomy 21:18-21: Check out http://tinyurl.com/6kjgf8 (point 4 specifically)
and
http://tinyurl.com/67wne2
Thanks pierre, J.P Holding of all people. I'm not buying the cultural exuse for the stoning your son one. I thought it was a bit ironic, if that's the word, that in Why Do Christians Not Keep the Law He says:First, some laws are universal moral laws. This includes do not steal, do not kill, and others. There is no disagreement that these laws should indeed be continued to be obeyed today, so we need not discuss them further.
Then in The one related to stoning a disobedient son
he directs us to: Merely argument by outrage. See Crenshaw's Education in Ancient Israel for an understanding of the need for such an extreme in this context.
So I guess the killing thing isn't a "universal moral law" after all, only in context. And I certainly would be a little more descriptive if I were God tossing around the words "stoning" and "your kids" in the same sentence. But then again I'm just a hat.
Just not buying it.
Oh one more thing, as I said earlier, Christians should get together and put all the moral commands in the Bible in one big list, explaining which ones constitute objective morality, and which one's are merely cultural, or ceremonial. That would certainly be helpful.
Yunshui, I've just bought The Year of Living Biblically on Audio and I plan to listen to it as we drive on vacation this summer. I'm looking forward to hearing it and I thought about lending it to my fundie brothers when I see them. Do you think very serious christians will see the humour in it or will they just get offended?
Yunshui, I'm going to try and find that myself. Thanks!
It seems to me that the stoning sons law isn't a universal moral, but is a cultural universal. And I think too that the review of Education in Ancient Israel summaries the point well enough; Education in Ancient Israels culture was perceived differently, was taught for different reasons, and had somewhat different aims. Education was a matter of survival, of ensuring that what there was of civilization did not slip over that fine line from order into chaos. This brief(hopefully) quote, plus Holdings explanation of just what sort of young man would be stoned, seems to say that in that culture the man was very much a detriment, and only a detriment, to society. The son in question would have been totally over the edge, in our view.
Brian:
Without knowing just how serious your serious Christians are (are they seriously religious or religiously serious?) that's a tough call. The book focuses primarily on the Judaic interpretation of the Old Testament, less so on the Christian approach to the New. I don't think any middle-of-the-road Christian would take umbrage (Jacobs is generally quite innoffensive - he even finds nice things to say about snake-handlers), but if you have yourself some way out fundies you might want to do a bit of judicious editing first. There's a review up on my blog, if you want to take a look.
Pierre, What I'm hearing from you is that a cultural expedient
can override a universal law such as "do not kill". I don't have much tome now to respond, I'm going to make it a subject of a future post.
Interesting, but the word 'kill' used in that passage in Ancient Hebrew means murder(in cold blood). I don't think this situation connotes murder, as the young man would only be a drain on the society. In that culture and way of living the only option there was left was to stone him to death, because there was no other way to bring the man back. Considering how far 'in' the supposed person would be, and what his actions, personality and overall attitude to life would be.
I understand the lack of time thing, I usually have very little time to spend on other things during the academic year.
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