Tag Archives: morality

Should people own slaves?

Contradictions,

No, don’t enslave anyone.

God commanded the Israelites to remember how they had been treated as foreigners in Egypt, and therefore not mistreat or oppress foreigners themselves.

According to Isaiah, what God really wants people to do is “to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke”.

Paul thinks it’s good for slaves to become free, though he doesn’t think it’s a big deal if they don’t get freed. He and Peter both think that it’s not good to become slaves of human beings. They say we should live as free people, but only because they think we should be slaves of God instead. Paul also thinks you should not let yourself be a slave to the Jewish Law, but that’s not really about people enslaving people. And that’s about it for anti-slavery sentiments in the Bible.

You can enslave foreigners, but not Israelites.

God’s law says not to make your fellow Israelites work as slaves. (Though he does say you can buy Israelites and make them work for you until it’s time to free them. So I’m not sure how that’s supposed to be “not treating them as slaves”.) If you want real slaves, God says you can buy people from other nations and make them your property permanently. Just don’t treat Israelites that way. You can’t just kidnap Israelites and make them slaves; you have to get your slaves the proper way.

After Judah split off from Israel, and then the Israelites took hundreds of thousands of captives from the kingdom of Judah, a prophet made it clear that God was angry at them for enslaving their fellow Israelites, even if those weren’t technically Israelites anymore.

Later, the people of Jerusalem had a bunch of Hebrew slaves for some reason, but the king of Judah told them to free them, so they did. But then they all changed their minds and took their Hebrew slaves back. God approved when they freed their Hebrew slaves, and disapproved when they took them back.1

Yes, you can enslave people.

God is a master of slaves, and he expects people to respect him for that. God bought a whole nation of people. And when people become Christians, they become slaves of God (or of Jesus), and should live as God’s slaves. All Jews and Christians have been bought by God. This slave-owning God is perfect, and everything he does is right, so we should follow his example.

When Sarah’s slave Hagar ran away because she mistreated her, an angel of God told Hagar to go back and submit to her.

Sarah’s husband Abraham, who obeyed God and kept his commands and did everything God required, acquired slaves too.

God’s law prescribes slavery as a punishment for poor people who steal. God also commanded his people to conquer a bunch of cities outside the promised land: He wanted them to either enslave all the people of a city if those people wanted peace, or massacre them if they didn’t like God’s “peace” offer. (Cities inside the promised land didn’t get a “peace” option.)

God told the prophet Joel that he was going to sell some foreigners to the people of Judah, who would sell them to some other foreigners. God wants these people to be slaves.

Paul thinks the descendants of a slave should be slaves. Or something. He’s actually using the descendants of a slave as a metaphor for the descendants of her master, for some reason. But either way, he thinks people should be slaves.

Paul thinks slaves should sincerely respect and fear and obey their masters like they’re God, because God wants slaves to obey their masters. Paul thinks if Christian slaves didn’t respect their masters, that would be a reason for people to think poorly of Christianity. Slaves should instead be subject to their masters in everything, always try to please them, and never talk back. Because Paul thinks that will make Christianity look good.

Peter agrees. Even when he’s just gotten though saying that we should live as free people, Peter commands all Christian slaves to reverently submit to their masters, even if they’re not good masters, because this is what God wants. The Bible approves of slavery no matter how the slaves are treated.

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Should people rejoice at the misfortune of others?

Contradictions, ,

No.

Job, the most blameless and upright person on earth, said that if he had ever rejoiced over his enemy’s misfortune or gloated over his enemy’s trouble (which he hadn’t), then he would deserve to have his crops replaced with briers and stinkweed.

David, a man after God’s own heart, wished that everyone who gloated over his distress would be put to shame and confusion.

Solomon, who was wiser than anyone else ever, said that whoever gloats over disaster will not go unpunished. Even if you want to see bad things happen to your enemies, he says you shouldn’t let your heart rejoice and gloat when they stumble and fall, because then God will disapprove of your attitude and will stop doing bad things to your enemies.

God had Ezekiel tell the Ammonites and the Edomites that because they rejoiced when Israel became desolate, God was going to bring other nations to wipe out the Ammonites and make Edom desolate. And God had Obadiah tell the Edomites that they should not gloat or rejoice over the misfortune and destruction of Judah.

Yes.

The Bible says rejoicing over the misfortune of others is what righteous people do. The righteous see the ruin of the wicked and rejoice, and the innocent mock their foes when they are destroyed. David said the righteous would laugh at Doeg when God killed him. And he said the righteous will be glad when they are rewarded by getting to dip their feet in the blood of the wicked.

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Should people believe the truth?

Contradictions, , , , ,

Yes.

Jesus thinks that if he tells people the truth, they should believe it.

Paul points out that if you think you’re something when you’re not, you’re deceiving yourself. And he presumably thinks that would be a bad thing, or else what would be the point of mentioning it?

Paul also says that people who don’t believe the truth will be condemned, and that people can be saved through belief in the truth.

And he advises Timothy to turn away from ideas that are falsely called knowledge.

No.

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Should people blaspheme God?

Contradictions, ,

No.

God commanded his people through Moses not to blaspheme him. He said blasphemers must be cut off from Israel.

When one half-Israelite man blasphemed God’s name, the others weren’t sure what God wanted them to do. So God clarified that anyone who blasphemed his name was to be stoned to death. Even if they were foreigners. So they did.

When Eli’s sons blasphemed God, God rejected them and put a curse on their family forever, with no hope of atonement. Even though God had promised that they would be his priests forever.

The king of Assyria and his commander blasphemed God, so God got the king’s sons to kill him with swords. And when the king of Tyre called himself a god, God said he would send the king’s ruthless enemies to prove his mortality to him.

God had an angel kill Herod Agrippa just because other people called him a god. God didn’t even give him a chance to say what he thought about it.

According to Mark, Jesus said blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the only sin that God never forgives.

Maybe?

According to Matthew and Luke, though, Jesus also said that “every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven“. And that “anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven“. So if you sin by slandering the Holy Spirit, God might forgive you. And if you sin by slandering Jesus, God will definitely forgive you.

Yes.

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Should people support their parents?

Contradictions, ,

Yes.

Jesus criticized the Pharisees for encouraging people to give money to God instead of using it to help their parents. So according to Jesus, giving to your parents is more important than giving to God.

Paul agreed, at least in the case of widows: He said if you’re a Christian with a widowed mother, you should take care of her yourself, so she won’t be a needless burden on the rest of the church.

No.

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Should people be childish?

Contradictions

Yes.

Jesus welcomes little children, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to people like them. He says you can’t get into the kingdom of heaven unless you become like little children. And he says the way to become the greatest in the kingdom of heaven is to take the lowly position of a child.

No.

When some boys acted like children (because they were) and made fun of a bald prophet, God sent bears to kill 42 of them.

Jesus said the people of his generation were like little children, and also that they were a brood of snakes who would be condemned to hell on judgment day.

Paul told his followers they needed to stop thinking like children. He said Jesus wanted them to become mature in every respect, and stop being gullible and undiscerning infants.

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Refuting divine command theory

Flawed concepts,

Divine command theory is the idea that God’s commands are what determines whether things are morally right or wrong.

Believers believe that what God says is good is good, and what God says is bad is bad. But does God command certain things because they’re good? Or are those things good just because God commands them?

Divine command theory says it’s the latter. If the former was true, if God had reasons behind his judgments of certain acts as good or bad, that would be contrary to divine command theory. This would mean that there are important things that God did not create, and has no power over.2 It would also mean that we don’t need God to tell us what’s right and wrong, since we could just figure out for ourselves what the actual reasons behind morality are, and what principles of behavior they entail.

So that first option doesn’t tend to be very popular with religious people. But it’s the only option that works.3 If the second option was true, if morality was indeed defined solely by whatever God decided to command, rather than being based on some separate objective standard, that would make morality completely arbitrary and meaningless. If there was somebody who could just say that something was good, and that was how you defined good, then anything could be “good”.

It would mean that instead of saying you shall not murder, God could just as easily have said that murder was the best thing in the world, and it would be so. Imagine a world where all believers think murder is always absolutely good, because God said so. Sounds bad, right? But how could it be bad if it was what God commanded? If you think that scenario would still be bad somehow, that proves that you have moral standards that are independent of what God says.

If you think God would never command something like that because he’s not like that, what makes you think that?4 The idea that God wouldn’t command a particular thing seems to be based on the assumption that the thing is already evil, and God would never do something that’s evil, because God is good.

But what makes you think it is an evil thing? Evil is just whatever God happens to say is evil, right? An act is wrong if God says it’s wrong, but he doesn’t have to say that. Unless you reject divine command theory, the only thing making the bad thing bad is the arbitrary choice of God to call it bad. You have no reason to think he couldn’t have just as easily said the opposite. Divine command theory says he could have.5 6

According to divine command theory, “God would never command something evil” just means “God never commands things that God doesn’t command”, which is perfectly compatible with murder being something he does command. Unless God knows it’s already bad for reasons independent of what God thinks, there is no reason for God not to command it.

There can be no reason he couldn’t have commanded that, unless God isn’t actually the source of morality.7 There can’t be anything about the act itself that makes it wrong, or there would be something other than God that defines morality. If you don’t think that evil things could have been good things if God had happened to make different decisions when he made up the rules of morality, then you don’t believe in divine command theory.

Another problem with divine command theory is that we have no commands from God regarding a lot of ethical issues. The laws given in the Bible have nothing to say about torture, or about child molestation. So I guess there is no right and wrong when it comes to those things, according to divine command theory.8

The Bible doesn’t mention God giving humanity almost any rules about moral issues for the first 2500 years or so. But sexual deviancy and murder and stuff are already considered morally wrong in the Bible during that time, before God gives Moses the law. How could those things have been wrong when there had been no divine commands about them?

Because commands aren’t what makes things good or bad. Why would they be? If God had told us what the speed of light was, is this what you would be asking: “Is the speed of light 299,792,458 m/s because God said so, or did God say so because that’s what it is?” No, you wouldn’t be asking that. It probably wouldn’t even occur to you to think that God telling us it was so might be why it was so, because that’s absurd. If God has anything to do with why that value is what it is, it’s because he made it that way, not because he said it was that way.

But when we’re talking about moral facts, for some reason we instead jump to the bizarre idea that those facts are somehow caused by someone telling us about those facts. Why do people who claim to believe morality is objective not think about it the same way they think about other objective facts? People act like it’s somehow a problem if there’s no “lawgiver” to be the source of objective moral truth. Why would you think the source of objective moral truth has to be a person? That’s not how truth works. Things aren’t true because somebody said so.

Objective facts are not determined by somebody declaring that that’s how it is. The only time there can be someone who can legitimately decide how things are is when the subject is something made-up. There can be an arbiter of the truth about a fictional canon, or of the truth about a social construct, because those things are made-up, not derived from any actual facts of reality. But there can be no arbiter of objectively real things. With real, objective facts, all anyone can do is find out how things are, not decide how things are.

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Should people be patient?

Contradictions

Yes.

The Bible says God waited patiently for Noah to get done building the ark before flooding the earth. And God didn’t mind Abraham repeatedly challenging his plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. He didn’t get angry when Abraham repeatedly asked what he would do if there were increasingly small numbers of good people there.

So God is patient. Otherwise, he would have destroyed everybody by now. The Bible describes God as long-suffering, forbearing, and patient. It says God is love, and love is patient. And everything God does is right, so we should follow his example and be patient.

According to the Bible, Jesus is God, and Jesus is immensely patient too, which is an example we should follow.

David says you should wait patiently for God to help you. That’s what he did, and God approved of everything David ever did.

Solomon says being patient shows that you have great understanding, and being quick-tempered shows that you’re a fool. Hot-tempered people start conflicts, and patient people resolve them. Patience is better than pride, and better than being a warrior.

Paul advised his followers to be patient. He said love is patient, and you should follow the way of love. He commended himself for remaining patient throughout all his hardships. Forbearance is one of the fruits of the Spirit. (And also there’s no law against it, which means you should definitely do it!) Paul prayed for God to give his followers great endurance and patience.

Christians should imitate people who have been patient enough to get what God promised them. James says you should patiently wait for Jesus to come back, like a farmer patiently waits for rain.

Jesus commands you to patiently endure the trials he’s going to inflict on you, and if you do, then maybe he’ll give you a break from them for an hour. Or something. You might be destined to be taken captive and killed with a sword, but just be patient. Everyone is going to be forced to worship the beast, and then everyone who worships the beast will go to hell forever. But being patient will help, apparently, somehow.

No.

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The Story of the Calling of the Disciples—
Fishing for People

Bible stories, , , , , , , , ,

Two disciples of John the Baptist decided they would rather follow Jesus. One of them was Andrew, and he introduced Jesus to his brother Peter. Then Jesus went to a lake, where he met two pairs of brothers who were fishing. One of those pairs was Peter and Andrew. When he said he could teach them how to fish for people, they immediately abandoned their task and followed him.

Jesus’s new followers followed his example by immediately abandoning their families when he called them. Jesus required them to do this, because dividing families was his purpose in life. He promised to give each of them a hundred new families, because Jesus thinks families are replaceable. In total, Jesus chose twelve men to be his main disciples, also known as the apostles.

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Fishing for People →
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How to keep God from killing you

The bad book, ,

God kills people a lot. If you want to make sure God won’t kill you, maybe the stories in the Bible can help you figure out what you should or shouldn’t be doing. Here are some Bible-based tips for staying on God’s good side:

Things to avoid

How to stop him when you think he’s going to kill you

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