Revisiting the Law

Recently, I’ve been reading through the Old Testament. I haven’t read the latter books of the Pentateuch for a while, so it was an interesting experience. The Pentateuch makes up the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, and also comprises the Jewish Torah. This collection is also referred to as the Books of the Law, which is what Jesus is talking about when he mentions “the Law and the Prophets” (e.g. Matt. 5:17, Matt. 7:12).

Genesis and the first half of Exodus are largely composed of narrative, but from that point on there are indeed large chunks of detailed instruction from God which dominate the books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. And when you hear people talking vaguely about “all those crazy rules and stuff in the Bible”, it’s generally the last three books of the Pentateuch that they have in mind. So as I worked my way through these books, I was expecting to find an endless list of obscure and arbitrary prohibitions.

In contrast, I was delighted at just how sensible all the laws are. But there are a few important things to bear in mind as you read them.

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The Laws of Moses were given to a people who had been slaves in a foreign land for 400 years, and were now being moulded into a new nation. The Law is not there to restrict the Israelites’ freedom, it is God’s gift to them to help them live in harmony and build a successful society. Also, as God’s chosen people, they need special instruction on how to worship God. So most of the laws are focussed on teaching the nation how to interact with each other and with God.

But even with that proviso, there are a few laws which seem a little odd. There are two more things that we need to understand about the function of the Law:

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Firstly, as God’s people, chosen to be set apart for Him, it was important that the Israelites did not become corrupted with the religious practices of other nations.

The principal concern in this regard was keeping them separate from the influences of Canaanite religion, which was rife in the country to which God was leading them. Canaanite religious practices centred around worship of Baal, the god of thunder and fertility, and the bringer of rain; and Asherah (also called Athirat), who was the mother – and also consort – of Baal. (Another of the regulars in the Canaanite pantheon was Anat, the virgin goddess of war and strife, who was both wife and sister of Baal). A large part of Canaanite religious practice involved trying to increase fertility by bringing together objects associated with Asherah and those which represented Baal, so that their “sympathetic magic” would simulate Baal having sex with Asherah and thus increase the harvest.

Kinky, I know. But the point of this whole deviant diversion is that the laws which seem most arbitrary to us are ones like “Don’t wear clothes made of wool and linen” (Deut. 22:11), or “Don’t boil a young goat in its mother’s milk” (Ex. 34:26). The modern response to those passages is, respectively, “Why not?”, or “Why on earth would anyone do that in the first place?”. In each case, the principle behind those sort of injunctions is all about avoiding the idolatrous Canaanite religious practices centred on Baal and Asherah.

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Secondly, the laws are not like a modern penal code; they are not meant to be exhaustive. Instead, they function paradigmatically, by giving examples of the kind of behaviour that God wants from His people.

This is why the Israelites are instructed, for instance, to “Build a parapet around the roof of your house” (Deut. 22:8). The custom among the Near Eastern civilisations was for guests to sleep on the roof of the house (which was flat), and the instruction here is to make sure that they may do so safely without worrying about falling off if they roll over in their sleep. It is a paradigmatic example of the kind of concern for others that God wants us to show. Instructions about leaving gleanings in the field (Lev. 19:9-10) are an example of offering welfare and charity to the poor and destitute, but they also illustrate a principle of charity that is equally relevant even if we are not farmers.

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For a more thorough treatment of reading the Law in context, I strongly recommend Chapter 9 of How To Read the Bible For All Its Worth, by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart.

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Related posts:

The power of narrative

Matters of interpretation

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What is man, that thou art mindful of him?

Atheism as manifest in the West is an odd phenomenon – in many ways, it’s very much an off-shoot of Christianity. It’s essentially the result of taking Christ out of Christianity and trying to hang onto the rest if it. So we see widespread support for the “loving your neighbour as yourself” commandment, but a willful disregard for its other half (loving God with your all). There is plenty of acknowledgement of Jesus as a teacher, but not as Lord. “He said some good things, but he’s was just this guy, you know?”

The best description that I’ve heard for this condition is “cut-flower morality”. We think that we can remove the teachings and the wisdom from the divine root and still enjoy their beauty. We deny that humans are made by God, and still expect that humans have intrinsic value.

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I’ve heard the phrase “lucky mud” used to describe humans – it’s a description born from a rigidly materialist mindset that sees us as the current phase of a random and unguided evolutionary process. But the “lucky” part still acknowledges that there is value in human life, and yet the materialist worldview has no place for such value. If we are arbitrary evolutionary byproducts then we are no more special than the coal that we use to heat our homes or the rocks that we crush to make roads. Being alive has no value in such a mindset: how can it? Life is just a temporary arrangement of some chemical elements which displays certain unusual properties.

To quote Dr Manhattan, “A live human body and a deceased human body have the same number of particles. Structurally there’s no difference.”

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Of course, this causes conflict. To actually deny the value of human life is quite literally psychopathic, so instead we try to justify the value of human life from a materialist worldview. So we see silly ideas from people like Richard Dawkins (in The Selfish Gene, for instance), claiming that we have a moral imperative to fight against evolution, even though evolution is the only thing that Dawkins seems to hold sacred. Despite the fact that all of humanity (other than the truly psychopathic) accept the existence of good and evil, in a materialistic worldview these words are meaningless.

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King David, writing in about 1000BC, asked:

“What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Ps. 8:4, NIV)

In a materialist worldview, there is no answer to the first question. But the missing piece is hinted at in the second part: in Jesus, God became man to reconcile us to Him. The title “Son of Man” was Jesus’ favourite way of referring to himself, and it strongly emphasises the unique place that we have in God’s creation.

There is value in an artistic work because it was created with purpose. We too were made purposefully, and our continual and universal acknowledgement of our worth bears a powerful testimony to our Creator’s handiwork.

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Related posts:

The timidity of New Atheists

Seeing the gardener

Non-moral nature

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It’s not the “what”, it’s the “why”

I’m currently reading “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” by Michael Chabon. The book is set in New York during the late 1930s and ’40s – the Golden Age of comic books – and the titular heroes of the novel are budding comic book creators.

In an early scene they are discussing a potential hero for their own story: Should he fly? Should he be super-strong? Should he be invisible? (A little hard to draw that one, perhaps, but anyway…) Various combinations of superpowers are discussed, until Clay, the writer, has a sudden moment of revelation:

It’s not the what, it’s the why.

The character will not be interesting because of what crazy super-power that they give him, or even because of how he uses that remarkable talent. Readers will be far more interested in why he chooses to act in that way. Why does Batman not just lounge about in his luxurious mansion, but instead go out at night and battle against the criminal underworld? Those are the questions that drive the story and the readers’ interest in the character.

As with art, so too with life.

All people have the capacity for selfishness and for self-sacrifice, for nobility and for malice, for good and for evil. But why do we choose to act in one way or another?

I believe that all people are created in God’s image, and I therefore strive to love them as children of God. I often fail, but that’s the why. If I take care of someone who’s sick, if I feed someone who’s hungry, if I donate my time and energy to trying to show others some of God’s love in action, that’s why I do it. Because I want to be obedient to the God who created me and gave me life.

What’s your “why”?

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Related posts:

Living a good and/or Christian life

The timidity of New Atheists

A theoretical faith

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Non-moral nature

I’m visiting some colleagues in Hobart at the moment, so I have a new route that I walk to work each day. It’s a tranquil and tree-lined avenue with some lovely gardens, especially now when all the spring flowers are in bloom.

Running alongside the path is a stream, and this morning, in that stream, were some ducks. Mostly they were doing normal duckish things – paddling about, quacking and nibbling the odd bit of water vegetation. But it’s spring, so they were also pretty frisky. In particular, there were two drakes which both seemed very keen on a female duck, which in turn was doing her best to paddle away from them. But the drakes were not to be discouraged. They held her head under the water and had their way with her despite all her struggling and flapping.

Just another day on the river. A light breeze, the delicate scent of flowers in the air and avian gang-rape in the water.

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We often see grand claims to the effect that morality is just a by-product of evolution, but the reasoning is usually circular and the arguments poor. Dawkins, for example, while claiming that everything to do with anything can be explained by evolution, is predictably all over the place when he ventures into ethics. While he has said: “I don’t believe that there is hanging out there, anywhere, something called good and something called evil”, he also claims that our morality is seen when we rise above the selfishness of our genes:

“I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. I am saying how things have evolved. I am not saying how we humans morally ought to behave… Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have a chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.” (The Selfish Gene)

But this is just ridiculous: Evolution produced everything, including our sense of morality, but it is objectively “good” to act in a way that counteracts evolution. But the concept of “good” doesn’t actually exist objectively, it’s just an evolutionary product…

We can identify certain patterns of behaviour in the animal kingdom, and infer an evolved tendency towards particular behaviours. But we cannot ascribe moral value to actions based on evolutionary criteria. Stephen Jay Gould, in his 1982 essay “Nonmoral nature” (from which I shamelessly borrowed this title), wrote:

“Our failure to discern a universal good does not record any lack of insight or ingenuity, but merely demonstrates that nature contains no moral messages framed in human terms. Morality is a subject for philosophers, theologians, students of the humanities, indeed for all thinking people. The answers will not be read passively from nature; they do not, and cannot, arise from the data of science.”

Some animals mate for life, others are wildly promiscuous and indiscriminating in their sexual behaviour. In Bonobo apes about 75% of sexual activity is non-reproductive, and often involves infants. Sexual cannibalism is common in insects. In several species of mammals, including stoats and hyaena, sexual activity between adults and infant cubs has been observed (with the mother of the infants declining to interfere). Male bottlenose dolphins regularly engage in what appears to be forced intercourse, both within their species and towards other species. Female penguins exchange sexual favours for nest-building materials. Killing and eating infants (within a species, even within family groups) is common in many mammals.

But it is a very human peculiarity to look unfavourably on this sort of behaviour. Human child molesters are not tolerated: in fact they are generally perceived as the most abhorrent of people. We are outraged by such behaviour in our own society because we recognise an objective morality by which we can judge different actions.

This idea of “evolved ethics” is not new, of course, and the difficulties of trying to extrapolate morality from evolution have long been recognised. T. H. Huxley wrote in 1893:

“The propounders of [the evolution of ethics] adduce a number of more or less interesting facts and more or less sound arguments, in favour of the origin of the moral sentiments, in the same way as other natural phenomena, by a process of evolution. I have little doubt, for my part, that they are on the right track; but as the immoral sentiments have no less been evolved, there is, so far, as much natural sanction for the one as the other. The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist. Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before.” (Evolution and Ethics)

Huxley makes a vital point here. Our understanding of morality and our application of moral principles to society (in our systems of justice, for instance) are far removed from the evolutionary perspective. All societies believe in the existence of objective morality, and we all live our lives accordingly. This leads us to the possibility that absolute moral standards, like the laws of mathematics, are written into the universe and await discovery. In his excellent pair of articles on evolving morality over at the blog Engineering Ethics (see here for part 1 and part 2), Karl Stephan notes five principles which psychological research has found to be widely accepted throughout different societies:

(1) Harm—don’t hurt other people and help them if you can.

(2) Fairness—people in comparable situations should be treated comparably.

(3) Group loyalty—other things being equal, take care of your own (family, friends, city, nation) first.

(4) Authority—there are rules, rulers, and rulemakers who should be respected and deferred to.

(5) Purity—Saintliness, cleanliness, and being without spot or blemish are good things, and grubbiness, filth, and disorder are bad ones.

Stephan also observes that the concept of morality as a Natural Law was also espoused by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, so the while the psychological research is new, the idea has a long pedigree.

Looking even further back,  St. Paul wrote a letter to the newly-established church in Rome in the first century AD. In it, he described how people who had not been instructed in Christian morality nonetheless acted in accordance with that morality, because God has written His law on the hearts of all people:

“Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law.  They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.” (Rom 2:14-15, NIV)

All of our human experience declares that objective morality exists, but an objective morality cannot possibly be ascribed to evolution. Are there laws of  morality written into the fabric of the universe? Do they await discovery?

Or can they be discovered more readily from looking within?

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Related posts:

Secular (in)Humanism

Chesterton on Nature

Two evolutionists walk into a bar…

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The relativist creed

An atheist worldview encourages relativism, with its insistence on removal of moral absolutes and rejection of truth claims. One of the finest expressions of self-defeating nature of relativism is the poem Creed, written in 1993 by English poet and music journalist Steve Turner. (The postscript, called Chance, was added later).

Personally, I prefer the Nicene.

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Creed by Steve Turner

We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don’t hurt anyone
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.
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We believe in sex before, during, and
after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy’s OK.
We believe that taboos are taboo.
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We believe that everything’s getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated
And you can prove anything with evidence.
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We believe there’s something in horoscopes
UFO’s and bent spoons.
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha,
Mohammed, and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher though we think
His good morals were bad.
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We believe that all religions are basically the same-
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of creation,
sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.
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We believe that after death comes the Nothing
Because when you ask the dead what happens
they say nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then it’s compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps
Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Kahn
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We believe in Masters and Johnson
What’s selected is average.
What’s average is normal.
What’s normal is good.
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We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors
and the Russians would be sure to follow.
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We believe that man is essentially good.
It’s only his behavior that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.
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We believe that each man must find the truth that
is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust.
History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth
that there is no absolute truth.
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We believe in the rejection of creeds,
And the flowering of individual thought.
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Postscript:
If chance be
the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky
and when you hear:
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State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting!
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It is but the sound of man
worshipping his maker.
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Related posts:

Living a good and/or Christian life

Children of God

Secular (in)Humanism

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