Moral Origins

Issue 7: November 3, 2006

In the previous issue, we found (or so I argued) that the Ten Commandments fail to measure up as a useful code of moral conduct in the modern world for several reasons. Most importantly, they omit prohibitions against physical or sexual assault (short of murder) and other basic crimes, while focusing primary attention on what we would now consider trivia, such as making clay images of people and dogs, working on the sabbath, and saying “God damn” when you hit your thumb with a hammer.

But before deciding that the Bible cannot be the source of our moral values, we must consider whether the Bible as a whole provides a better foundation for morality than just the Ten Commandments.

It’s tough to draw unambiguous moral laws from the Christian Bible, though, because there are so many apparent contradictions or at least varying interpretations possible. Part of the reason is the considerable difference in moral tone between the old and the new testaments.

The Venerable Old Testament: God the Bad-Ass

Let’s look at the old testament first, which is nearly identical to the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh. It conveys the message of a stern and fearsome God who commands obedience to strict rules of conduct and metes out harsh punishment to those who stray, such as turning them into a pillar of salt or destroying their cities and loved ones. You don’t mess with this guy.

Much of the old testament recites, apparently with considerable pride and with God’s approval, the military victories of the Israelites. Following the Lord’s instructions, they generally follow each victory with an orgy of pillaging and slay not only the men, but also all the women and children.

Save the (Young) Women and (Some of the) Children

As an interesting variation on that theme, when they defeat the Midianites, Moses orders that the female children and other virgins (only the virgins) be kept alive for the victorious soldiers. For what specific purpose isn’t explained…exactly.

And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males…. And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods…. And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. (Numbers 31: 7, 9, 15–18)

So Moses, clearly regarded as a good guy and a favorite of the God of the Old Testament, orders that his soldiers keep alive only the virginal young women and little girls as slaves, and presumably rape them whenever they are so inclined. And they ended up with 32,000 virgins, no less. Imagine how that must have livened up the victory party. But what else were these captives good for? They were orphans and, worse yet, female. Useless, except for their entertainment value. This is God’s morality as revealed in the old testament.

Violence Warms the Heart

Let’s face it; the old testament is filled with prideful citations of horrible violence by the good guys against the bad guys, all presumably approved by the Lord, and in some cases explicitly ordered by the Lord, according to the text. For a very extensive and convenient listing, see The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible (http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com).

Attempts to derive a moral code from the old testament confront aspects of God’s laws that are, shall we say, out of touch with moral sensitivities of today. For example, in the United States, at least, most of us believe in something called freedom of religion, by which Americans (or visiting aliens) of other faiths should at least not be stoned to death. The God of the Old Testament disagrees.

If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant, and hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded; and it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and inquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel: then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die. (Deuteronomy 17:2–5)

How many of us accept that it is our moral duty to stone to death people within our national borders who have the audacity to subscribe to other faiths? Such punishment might now be considered politically incorrect, and it would surely play havoc with tourism, but God commands that we do it. One question: are Jews obligated to stone Christians because they worship Jesus, a god not recognized by Jews?

It’s hard to incorporate such an absolute obligation into one’s personal moral code in the 21st century.

And there’s more. Do you know someone who once did physical labor or carried a burden of some sort on the sabbath? I’m sorry, but you must kill him or her! It’s your moral duty.

Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. (Exodus 31: 15–16)

The Ten Commandments tell us that working on the sabbath is a sin, but Exodus makes it clear that the penalty was, still is, and always will be, death. So how much light physical labor can you get away with on the sabbath and still be allowed to live? Well, you can’t build a fire in your fireplace (Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day. Exodus 35:3). And for God’s sake, don’t gather sticks:

And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day. And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation. And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him. And the LORD said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp. And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the LORD commanded Moses. (Numbers 15: 32–36)

First, Slit the Throat

But for certain lesser transgressions, or just to maintain good divine relations, there are ways to placate God. Leviticus prescribes elaborate rituals for the bloody sacrificing of animals so as to please the Lord. There are numerous rituals for peace offerings, sin offerings, trespass offerings, wave offerings, heave offerings, and even a special sin offering for a woman after she gives birth. (Is that a sin?) The first nine chapters of Leviticus, including over 7,000 words in English translation (King James), are devoted almost entirely to the description of exactly how to perform each variety of animal sacrifice. But, of course, as a good Christian or Jew, you know those rituals already, don’t you?

The idea of conducting animal sacrifices on the altar of the Lord does seem a bit out of place in an Episcopalian church service in Boston. Especially when the old testament clearly implies that it is not just a symbolic gesture, but an actual gift to the Lord that pleases him with the “sweet savor” of the burning flesh.

But more troublesome than the embarrassment of participating in such a primitive ritual are the obvious conflicts between the compassionate moral values we hold dear today and the cruel and ruthless practices presented to us by the old testament as examples of what is right and good.

Kill Them All!

The God of the Old Testament is not a compassionate God, nor a kind God. He is often inclined to mete out harsh punishment or death to the innocent as well as the guilty. In fact, pretty early on in his career, he was so disappointed with mankind in general that he decided to drown everyone, indiscriminately, except the 600-year-old Noah and his family and some animals.

And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. (Genesis 6: 7–8)

Is it plausible that every single man, every single woman, and every single child in the world, except Noah and his family, was evil and deserving of a death penalty by drowning? Surely there were some newborn infants among the world’s population. Had they been inexcusably naughty, too? And the fetuses in the womb in their first, second, or third trimester? What had they done to deserve a death penalty? Could it be that God just got a little carried away with anger on that occasion?

Or perhaps, God’s moral code finds no fault with the widespread slaughter of innocents. That would have to be the case unless God violated his own moral code. It’s clear that he must have killed innocent children, babies, and fetuses in that flood. Is that immoral behavior or isn’t it? It would be helpful to know.

Could it be immoral for us, yet allowed for him? Maybe it’s OK for God to do evil because he’s the boss and he makes the laws. Maybe he can be as evil as he wants, but he insists that we be above reproach, obeying the laws he invented for us. Or maybe there was nothing that was naturally good or evil until God defined the laws, and since they don’t apply to him, he can’t be evil. Or good, either.

But what are his laws? We discovered in the previous issue of this blog that the Ten Commandments are inadequate as a moral code, so we thought perhaps we could discern, from the Bible as a whole, what is right and what is wrong. Now it appears that, at least from the old testament, we can’t use God’s behavior or that of his favored people as a moral guide at all. How can we divine a moral code from the Bible if we can’t assume that God presents an example of virtue?

Out With The Old

But wait. There’s the new testament, too, with a radically different vision of God. Jesus, in the new testament, conveys a message of love, compassion, understanding, and forgiveness. Unlike the “terrible” God of the Old Testament, the God as seen through Jesus doesn’t destroy whole cities, never roars in angry outrage, never throws his weight around threateningly or attempts to rule through fear. He is not quick to slay sinners or banish them to a fiery hell, but rather, through Jesus, welcomes thieves and prostitutes and offers them forgiveness and redemption. Try to imagine the New Testament God roaring through the mouth of the gentle Jesus, not something nice, like “suffer the children to come unto me,” but rather “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.” I’m sure Jesus would look startled and blurt out, “Did I just say that?”

Obedience to strict rules meant less to Jesus than the kindness in one’s heart. Consider his pragmatic response to the objections of the strict constructionists to healing on the Sabbath: “Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day?” (Luke 14:5.) Clearly, he approved of such a pragmatic exception to the rule. I’m guessing the Old Testament God would have struck down anyone trying to pull his ass from a pit on the sabbath, and then visited a plague of permanent diaper rash on his children, grand-children, and great-grand-children, just for good measure.

Something For Everyone

The point is not that the old and new testaments are hopelessly incompatible, because maybe, like the three blind men exploring separate parts of an elephant, the same God can be perceived in different ways by different observers. The point is that the old and new testaments together present nearly every commonly-accepted moral principle known to man. Do you believe in being vindictive and ferocious in punishing bad behavior? So does God. Or are you peace-loving and forgiving? So is God. Do you believe in absolute rules? So does God. Or do you believe there are often valid exceptions to rules? So does God. In fact, do you think that love trumps all rules and is all that really matters? So does God.

Do you believe that doing God’s will on earth is your appointed mission? So does God. Or do you believe, rather, that faith by itself, not good works, is the path to salvation? So does God. How about strength and self-reliance? Does God help those who help themselves? Or is it rather the meek who will inherit the earth? In today’s capitalist world, is a productive and successful businessman who competes ethically, fairly, and quite profitably following God’s way? Or is it easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God? Whatever. God agrees with you.

As long as you avoid blatantly selfish, antisocial behaviors that are almost universally regarded as immoral by all contemporary cultures and religions, you can define a wide array of moral rules consistent with at least parts of either the new or old testament or maybe both. Finding any set of moral rules that is consistent with every page in the Bible, however, is virtually impossible without subjecting many “difficult” passages to the treatment of a skilled or slippery spinmeister.

So how can you build a consistent moral system out of that mish-mash? Easily. You just pick and choose whatever supports your own moral beliefs, like every other Christian does, and ignore the rest. Whatever suits your own moral concepts, barring the blatantly selfish and anti-social, you’ll find not only support for your beliefs, but also material for attacking those whose preference is to emphasize different passages in the Bible. As I said, this remarkable flexibility in interpretation is partly the result of marrying the dissimilar old and new testaments, which were written in different ages by authors of arguably different religions, and certainly different cultures.

Chances are, the personal morality of most Christians most resembles that of the new testament, with its emphasis on compassion, kindness, gentleness, and a pragmatic willingness to adapt moral rules to the demands of the circumstances. Most, whether they admit it or not, pretty much reject not only the Ten Commandments, but the entire old testament of which they are a part. As explained in the previous issue of this blog, the Ten Commandments, and I would add now the entire old testament, are used not as a source of morality, but as a convenient affirmation of what we believe is right, but only when the two happen to coincide. We never look first to the Ten C’s or the old testament for guidance on how to discipline our children or deal with a difficult neighbor. For that, and for really all moral matters, we look first inside of us, to our internal moral compass.

We Follow Our Own Compass

And if that internal compass most resembles the messages of the new testament, it is not because any of us has arbitrarily chosen to adopt and internalize the new testament as our moral guide and reject the teachings of the old testament, but rather because the message of the new testament is simply much closer to what we already knew, inside, to be right. We didn’t flip a coin to decide which testament we would follow. We, of the 21st century, simply couldn’t buy into the old testament morality.

Or not many of us could, anyway. For most of us, especially those with a liberal bent, compassion, understanding, and love are at the core of morality. But for some (we tend to call them right-wing social conservatives), rules are absolute and eternal, punishment is crucial to child raising, and infidels must be cast out of our schools even if we needn’t stone them to death. Many invoke the name “Jesus” frequently, but I think of them as “Old Testament Christians.”

So if we (yes, almost all of us, even though we may deny it) typically reject the Ten Commandments as a useful source of moral laws because of their omissions and their heavy emphasis on rules that have less to do with morality than with protocols of worship, and if the Christian Bible as a whole is too self-contradictory and ambiguous in its admonishments to use as a source of our morality rather than as a selective affirmation of it, and if we therefore ultimately refer to some internal sense of morality to guide our moral actions, supplemented by an external culture-based moral code, then where did these internal and societal moral codes come from?

Funny you should ask, because that’s what this blog is all about.

Tune in next Friday.