Ethics of the Bible

So I said in my last post I would do a post about Bible ethics and here it is! Before we start yes this will probably offend someone somewhere but then again what doesn't? So lets just jump right on in.

There are many people who believe that the Bible contains all of the laws and rules needed to live a good life. If these are transgressed then God will punish you in this life or the next (or both!) Now I'm going to leave out the whole punishment thing because I could talk forever about how eternally damming someone to Hell for exercising the free will that God himself gave us seems slightly insane and instead I am just going to look at what the Bible teaches us and what we have to do to get into Heaven.

So the most famous Biblical laws (and the basis for most Western laws) is the good ol' 10 Commandments handed down to Moses by the good Lord Almighty on two stone tablets. Can you remember them all? I certainly can't. To Wikipedia!

Interestingly the various different religious groups that recognise the 10 Commandments number the rules in different orders to each other. To make this easy I'm going to use the Septuagint version which is apparently the version used by most Orthodox Christians. It's strange really that there can be different versions of universal rules to live by... Anyway here they are:

1. You shall have no other Gods before me. (Jealous much...)
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. (I like to think of this one as God saying "No pictures!" to a group of paparazzi.)
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. (I'm definitely going to Hell...)
4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. (It's Sunday today... I better pack a fire extinguisher.)
5. Honour thy father and thy mother. (Have I done this? How do you "honour" exactly?)
6. You shall not murder. (Finally onto the big ones now. Pretty clear this one.)
7. You shall not commit adultery. (If you like it then you should of put  ring on it...)
8. You shall not steal. (Does this include music piracy? I would hate to go to Hell because I downloaded some songs when I was 15.)
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbour. (No telling porkies.)
10. You shall not covet thy neighbour's house, thy shall not covet thy neighbour's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbour's. (Green-eyed monster is bad.)

Those are the rules as they are written in (a version of) the Bible. Nice and clear aren't they? I'm sure they worked great during the Bronze Age. Here we come to what I think is the main problem with the Bible and particularly it's laws.

Quick survey how many people out there in internet land own servants? A few of you maybe. A cleaner, gardner or something perhaps. Not everyone though I guess. How many of you own an ox? No-one? Well how do you keep your lawn cut back? Anyway pretty much no-one in the modern world  owns an ox. What about a donkey? No? Right...

Why don't the 10 Commandments say "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's iPhone"? How are these laws at all relevant to the modern age? Why don't they mention the internet, man's single most important achievement in my opinion other than walking on two legs, fire, the wheel and space travel (which also isn't mentioned in the Bible at all)?

Could it be that these rules aren't the work of God at all? That these were created by man for man at a very particular time in history where adherence to these laws was the best thing for society? I believe so. Now that isn't a problem at all but society changes. Fixed moral laws enshrined in religious doctrine do not. This is the problem.

You know Christians that say they believe in the Bible and believe homosexuals are evil but continue to wear clothes of mixed fabrics? Aren't they annoying? The Bible clearly states:

Don't wear clothes made of more than one fabric (Leviticus 19:19)

And then they go and cut their hair and shave too the monsters!

Don't cut your hair nor shave. (Leviticus 19:27)

You cannot say that homosexuals should be stoned to death because God says so and then just casually ignore these rules. That's picking and choosing and I'm pretty sure the big man upstairs won't like hearing that you are CHOOSING which of his sacred laws are right and wrong. That's blasphemy and if you check your Bible you'll find that that's an executable offense against our one true deity.

But it's not just the crazy Christians like the Westboro Baptist Church and their ilk. Ever met a more "liberal" Christian that respects people if they believe in a different religion? Well...

Kill anyone with a different religion. (Deuteronomy 17:2-7)

Yeah... You can be all inclusive and stuff but according to your holy book you will be going to Hell.

Now of course this is not what I believe. I don't believe in Hell. I don't believe these things are actually wrong. The point I am making is that if you accept that the Bible is the word of God then you cannot pick and choose. That's a copout. That's knowing your religion is actually wrong about a lot of things but putting your fingers in your ears and going "lalalalalalalalala" to make it go away.

The argument can (and has) been made that the coming of Jesus "replaced" the Old Testament laws and that we should now follow the teachings of Jesus and forget the whole stoning stuff. "Love thy neighbour". Well here is something else Jesus said:

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

That's from Matthew 10:34. Praise Jesus and his... urm... sword. And then there is the story of the fig tree. Jesus was walking along and he was hungry. He saw a fig tree in the distance and so went up to it to get some figs. Now it wasn't the right season for figs so of course there were no figs on the tree. So Jesus, very rationally, CURSES THE FIG TREE! "May you never bear fruit again!" our good Lord and saviour intones! The next day the fig is seen to be withered and dead. Yeah Jesus you show that bastard fig tree! How dare it not have figs when it isn't... actually... in season... (Mark 11:12-14 and 11:20-25, Matthew 21:18-22)

You cannot use the Bible as an ethical rule book because it's the word of God and then leave out the rules you don't like. In my opinion there are really only two options. Either it's all correct and the word of God and you stop cutting your hair and stone homosexuals to death OR you can recognise that the Bible is an ancient text that is important to understand as it is has had a massive effect on the entire world and still is affecting the world today but should not be taken literally as the word of God that has to be followed to the letter. I could continue to ramble on about all the contradictions in the Bible (it's REAL definition of marriage would perhaps change a few homophobes minds about same-sex marriage...) which also show it to be a man-made creation with numerous flaws but I don't need to. I've said enough (I hope) to maybe get some people to question what they think of as Biblical law.

The Bible is an historical text and should be treated as such. Now go shave. That beard looks ridiculous.