By Diana Holbourn
During Becky's Last Term at University, she Takes Interest in Controversial Debates Between an Atheist and a Christian she Knows
Book five of the online Becky Bexley series. Chapter 3.
This series accompanies the books about what Becky does at university and afterwards, which you can find out more about on my author website. (The online series is in draft form.)
Early in the evening of the following week, the girls walked to the priest's party and met up again.
After they'd got their food and chatted for a little while, Judith said, "So Deborah, you said you wanted to ask me more horrible questions. Or something like that. I'll do my best to answer them. What would you like to know?"
Deborah said, "OK. Here's one thing I'd like to ask: I know you like being a Christian, and think God's worthy of being worshipped. But I'm still not convinced he is, supposing he exists. For one thing, isn't there an absolutely massive contradiction between what the New Testament teaches about God being a God of love who wants to heal people, and what the Old Testament teaches about him flaring up in anger and causing massive outbreaks of plague on the spur of the moment because one of the Israelites disobeyed him, and causing massive armies to horribly kill men, women, children and babies because of the sins of some of society?
"I've read sets of really horrible verses from the Old Testament on Internet forums, like where one of the prophets said that if the people of Israel didn't change their ways, an army would attack their land, and kill lots of people, smash their children and babies to pieces in front of them, rape women, and rip up the wombs of pregnant women! Really gruesome stuff! What kind of repulsive God could order all that!"
Judith said, "I know it sounds really nasty! I can understand you being disgusted by it. I mean, I thought it was really nasty myself when I read it. But the prophets weren't necessarily saying God was ordering all of that. They said God was causing the army to rise up; but the rest of the description could well have been just a description of what often happens when armies go to war; it's just the kind of thing they tend to do; so they'd be doing it whatever God thought of their behaviour.
"I agree that it's horrifying. But like I said before, the Bible says that all the Israelites had to do to avoid that fate was just to behave decently to each other."
Deborah said, "Well even if God wasn't directly responsible for babies having their heads bashed in and women being raped and mutilated, if he knew it was coming, surely he could have done something to stop it, if he's as all-powerful as you think he is! You know, even if all the adults in Israel at the time were horrible sinners, the babies can't have done anything to deserve it! Surely if it's fully in your power to save someone and you don't, that's a kind of sin! Your God sounds like a brutal sinner to me!
"And why couldn't he have made punishments fit the crimes, instead of causing armies to rise up and destroy whole communities horribly? If any earthly dictator sent an army to inflict horrible cruelty on the people of another country, you'd condemn it just as much as I would, I presume. But just because the Bible says God ordered it, you justify it! Wouldn't it make more sense to conclude that all the things you've been taught about the God of the Bible over the years are wrong, and that supposing he exists at all, he's really a monster?
"I reckon it's more likely that he was just the tribal warrior God of the Jews, in the days when a lot of countries invented gods, and then a lot of the people in them ended up believing they were going to help them in battle, - apart from the fact that he must have been a strange tribal God, because he helped their enemies instead a lot of the time! That probably was a bit unusual, although I don't know much about history and mythology, so I can't be sure.
"But even if I started thinking God must be real after all, I think I'd be too scared to become a Christian, even if for some reason I decided I wanted to. I'd prefer to be annihilated after I die than to have to share the same space with a mega-war lord like God! Why doesn't the idea of being with him spook you out too? If someone asked you if you'd be willing to be in the same room as a horrible earthly war lord you've heard about, who ordered his men to commit barbaric atrocities against civilians, but they told you he was very kind to his friends and his children and pets, I bet you'd still refuse to be anywhere near him! But you want to be near God, just because you've been taught he's a loving God! Have you never read any of the Old Testament and thought about what he really comes across as being like? Or do you want to believe in him so much you'd prefer not to think about that, so you block all the horror out of your mind?
"If you wouldn't want to be in the same room as a war lord who's guilty of sending armies out to commit atrocities, why would you be able to tolerate being in heaven with God? Wouldn't it scare you, being so close to him, knowing he's a mega-war lord, even if he did justify what he's done by saying it was because people are so sinful? I'm sure earthly war lords have done that kind of thing. It seems to me that you're like the daughter of a dictator who has a hard time believing her father could be guilty of a lot of cruelty, because he's always been kind to her personally.
"I think a lot of Christians think they're automatically deserving of hell because they've been taught that they're really imperfect in comparison with a perfect God, and God can't tolerate any imperfection because it's so far below his standards; but in reality, God seems like an industrial-scale war criminal, and a callous being who could do more to stop children and other people suffering but maybe just doesn't care enough to do it. So really, he'll have done much worse things than most people, so he could actually be considered a far bigger sinner, and actually much more deserving of hell!"
Judith said, "It's more complicated than that. I did wonder about the horrible passages in the Old Testament myself, so I tried to find answers; and I think I did."
Deborah smiled wryly and said, "Whether or not they're valid ones is a different matter!"
Judith said with a note of protest, "Tracy, you didn't tell me Deborah was this anti-God when you asked me to speak to her!"
Tracy replied, "Well she isn't normally like this."
She joked, "It must be your influence. ... Or maybe it's religion's influence. That's it: Religion must be bad and must need to be banned! Yeah, let's ban it! That would solve the problem! ... Hang on, wait a minute: Whose side am I on here? I thought I was on yours!"
They all chuckled.
But one of the girls felt a bit upset, and said, "Deborah! I didn't know you were this anti-Christian! We've been friends for some time, but you've never told me you felt like this about the Bible. It feels like being deceived a bit, to be honest, like when your parents always seem pleased to see you and say they want you to keep in touch while you're at university, but then you find out they've been complaining about you behind your back to your brothers and sisters, saying they think you're lazy and that you complain too much about things or whatever! You know, you start feeling as if they're being false and two-faced when they're nice to you, or at least as if they don't like you as much as they give the impression they do."
One of the others smiled and said, "If your parents accuse you of complaining, ask them what they think the problem is, since they obviously don't see anything wrong with complaining, or they wouldn't be doing it about you!"
They chuckled. But one of them said, "If your parents complain about you, it doesn't mean they don't like you. Everyone probably gets annoyed with things their friends and family members do sometimes, and wants to let off steam about it."
The girl who'd complained said, "True. I suppose it depends on how often they complain. It's still not nice to find out they've done it though. I mean, if they've got a problem with something you do, they should have the guts to tell you personally!"
One of the group said, "Maybe they just don't want to cause trouble though."
The girl who'd made the quip about parents who complain that their children complain too much said, "My parents have complained to me sometimes that I haven't helped enough around the house, and I've said, 'Well if you want me to help, all you have to do is call me and ask me to do something, and I'll do it. Otherwise I won't know you want me to do it.' And they've said, 'We don't want to have to come and get you. Why can't you stay down here more of the time so we can just ask you when we want you to do something?' Well I like spending my time doing my own thing in my room. I wouldn't want to wait around in the kitchen till they want me to help with something. If I did, they'd probably complain that I was in the way anyway! They've done that before! I suppose in hind-sight, I could have said to them, 'If you're too lazy to just climb up a few stairs and shout for me, it's no wonder you want help; maybe you're too lazy to do the thing you want me to do yourself as well, and that's why you want me to do it instead.'
"Mind you, I can't imagine that going down too well! And it wouldn't really have been fair, actually."
The girls smiled. But then the one who'd protested to Deborah said, "You know what I mean though. I'm just using parents saying horrible things about you behind your back as an example. The thing is that finding out that Deborah thinks horrible things about people who believe in God feels like finding out that someone you thought was your friend secretly doesn't like you much after all!"
Deborah felt a bit upset by the comparison, and replied, "It isn't like that though! It's not as if I secretly think you must be a sicko who likes the idea of babies being killed and I don't really like you or anything, or that I think you're stupid for believing in God or something! Most Christians probably hardly even know anything about what the Old Testament says, or even all that much about the New Testament! And I didn't myself till recently. ... Actually, I started looking into it a lot more after Judith started trying to evangelise me."
She grinned as she said, "So that backfired! Sorry Judith."
Then she continued seriously, "But I don't judge Christians by what I've found out about what the Bible says. And I actually admire some Christians for being good and kind, and that kind of thing, trying to live up to the way the Bible teaches Christians to behave. It's just that the more I've found out about the Old Testament, the more I wonder about how people like Judith, who seem to have looked into what the Bible says quite a lot, can still believe in God. Normally I don't really give a stuff about what religion someone is. It's just that if someone wants to actually convert me to Christianity, I'll let them know all the reasons why I don't fancy the idea. It's not as if I've been a false friend or anything. I judge people by what they're like as people. I wouldn't have said anything about this stuff to Judith if I'd thought it would make you think I didn't really like you. I do!"
The girl who'd become concerned about Deborah's attitude said, "Well that's nice to know. I don't know that much about the Old Testament, actually. It'll be interesting to hear what Judith has to say."
Just then, Judith sneezed. One of the girls joked, "Was that what you had to say? That was a very short explanation of why God's the way he is in the Old Testament. I expected you to say more than that."
Judith chuckled and said, "Of course it wasn't my explanation! Sorry about that sneeze. I think it must have been just a bit of dust in the air or something."
One girl joked, "Maybe it was a bit of the dust the Bible says God made humans out of. Maybe it came off your body, and that means you're beginning to disintegrate!"
Judith giggled and said, "I hope not!"
One of the group said, "Don't scientists say most of the elements in the human body originally came from stardust, that was flung out when stars exploded, or whatever they do at the end of their lives? I wonder if that's the kind of dust the Bible means God made humans out of. I think it's an interesting idea anyway."
Judith sneezed again, and apologised again.
One girl joked, "Oh no, you're disintegrating some more! Maybe soon you'll just be a heap of dust on the floor!"
Then one of the others said, "I remember when I was at school, when someone sneezed, some of the teachers would say, 'Bless you!' And I remember that when one of us burped, we were instructed to say, 'Pardon me!'
"Imagine if someone got those two things muddled up, so whenever someone burped, they'd say, 'Bless you!', and every time they sneezed, they'd say, 'Pardon me.'"
One girl said, "The other day I was going through a doorway with a friend of mine, and the door squeaked when I opened it. I joked, 'That's your nose making that noise. It's like when someone blows a balloon up and then lets the air out very slowly, and it makes a squeaking noise. Your nose must do that when you blow it. And maybe it's doing it now because it's a bit blocked, so the air can only get out slowly.'"
They chuckled. Then one of them joked, "Just imagine if someone had a weird long nose that they could pull on and it would stretch like elastic, and then they could wiggle it about! So if they got hold of their nose when they blew it, they might accidentally pull on it, and it would stretch and flop around! And imagine if it would always suddenly stretch out when they sneezed!"
One of the others said, "If it stretched out that much, they'd have to be careful it didn't go in their mouth when they were trying to eat! Maybe they'd have big nose muscles, that they used for holding it out of the way!
"You know, someone said on an Internet forum the other day that she was upstairs, and she heard her mum eating downstairs, and she thought it would be really nice to go and join her. At first I thought, 'Wow, you could hear your mum eating from all the way upstairs? A lot of people really don't like the sound of other people eating, like when they eat with their mouths open. I hate it myself; it makes me cringe. How loud must your mum have been doing it for you to have heard it from all the way upstairs! What can she have been doing to have made it sound that loud! I didn't know that would be possible! And it actually made you want to be with her? You weirdo!'
"But then I realised she must have meant she heard sounds like her mum getting pots and pans ready for cooking with, or getting knives and forks out of a cutlery drawer or something."
The others chuckled.
Then one of them said, "Hey imagine if someone asked another person how many languages they speak, and they misheard them and thought they said, 'How many sandwiches do you eat?', and they said, 'On weekdays I normally have a couple at lunchtime and a main meal in the evening; but at weekends, I like to eat a few for tea. I especially enjoy peanut butter ones.'
"The person who asked the question might think, 'What's a peanut butter language? And how do you eat languages? Maybe this person's nuts!'"
They laughed.
Then one joked, "I've invented a special language translator called Google Translate. I named it Google out of affection for the real thing."
One of them giggled and said, "Are you sure it isn't actually the real thing, and it wasn't really invented by you at all?"
The one who'd made the joke about inventing it smiled and said, "Well OK, actually it is the real thing. And it is Google that really invented it, not me."
Becky said, "I bet people would love to have had the Internet and Google in Old Testament times! I wonder how the world would have been different if they had! They would have to have had electricity too, and probably all kinds of other things. Maybe one of the plagues God inflicted on Egypt would have been that their Internet went down for weeks!"
They giggled.
Then Judith said seriously, "Anyway, would you like me to say what I was going to say about the reasons for God being a lot harsher in the Old Testament than most of the New Testament says he is, Deborah?"
Deborah said she would.
Judith responded, "Well OK, here goes: This might sound to you like a bit of a weak explanation. Maybe it is. But there's a theory, that seems to make quite a bit of sense, that the reason for the differences in the way God comes across in the Old and New Testaments is that he was dealing with two very different kinds of people. I get the impression that Old Testament Israel was pretty lawless, from what the Bible says the prophets said.
"But New Testament authors like Paul were calling for people who were committed to changing their ways and wanted to live new better lives to become Christians. When it began, Christianity was an extreme minority religion with only minority appeal. People were being asked to be different from a lot of the people around them. Christianity would only appeal to people who wanted to commit to giving up immoral behaviour. That doesn't mean they were all good at it. But the Bible verses about God being loving were meant to apply to people who wanted to live better lives and not go about harming people, or who had the potential to be inspired to want to change.
"This theory's about people's moral development, about how children develop a more sophisticated sense of morality as they grow up, - although in some adults it doesn't get very sophisticated at all, it seems.
"A professor called Lawrence Kohlberg studied some children, and came to the conclusion that children's morality develops in different stages as they grow up. He said he found that very young children don't have much of a sense of fairness or conscience at all; so, for instance, if they want something, they'll just try to get it, such as when a toddler snatches another toddler's toy, and has to be taught that it's not fair to do that. I think children have to be taught not to just act by instinct.
"It's not just little children who behave by instinct though. Everyone probably does sometimes. And some people probably do it a lot more than others. You can probably see a lot of it in the bars at weekends round here, where a lot of men of our age might see women who look attractive, and start making plans to try to seduce them, because their sexual instincts are stirring or they think it'll be fun, and they don't stop to think about whether it's fair or ethical, like if it might lead to unwanted pregnancies if they succeed, or whether any women will end up feeling upset if the men resort to lying and telling them they're falling in love with them or flattering them in other ways to try to entice them to sleep with them, only to just abandon them afterwards if they've succeeded, when they feel like moving on to someone else. ... Well, actually, I can't say I know any men who do that personally; but I've heard about it going on.
"I'm not saying men are always being manipulative when they try to get women to sleep with them, or that a lot of women aren't often out for just a bit of fun just as much as the men are, or that a lot of women will be easily duped, or anything like that.
"But as for these stages of morality, A lot of people probably behave as if they're at different stages in different situations, or depending on how much they want something.
"But anyway, this professor said that a stage up from where children or more grown-up people just act on instinct regardless of the feelings of anyone else is one where they only think misbehaving must be a bad thing to do because they've learned they'll be punished for it, so if they avoid doing wrong, it'll just be because they know other people won't like it if they do, so they might punish them. And if they do good things, it'll be because they're told to, and because of what they know about what consequences there will be for them personally, instead of them wanting to do right because they've thought about it and decided it's the fair thing to do. And they'll think something must be the right thing to do just because an adult they trust tells them to do it.
"I heard that a lot of Nazis who mistreated Jews said at their trials after the war that they were only obeying orders. It sounds like just an excuse to me; but if it was ever true, maybe that was the stage of morality they were at, not judging for themselves what was right and wrong, - although it was probably more complicated than that, because they would have been brainwashed for years with the idea that hatred of Jews was a good thing. But then, if they'd had a more sophisticated sense of morality to begin with, it's hard to see how the brainwashing could have worked. The same with the crowds and crowds of people who cheered Hitler on when he yelled a whole lot of hateful things at his rallies.
"Anyway, this professor reckoned that the stage up from there is when children or other people's opinion of right and wrong is connected to what they'll get out of it personally, like if they believe it's a good thing to help a friend when there's a chance of the friend helping them back at some point, but won't see the point of helping someone if they're never likely to get any kind of benefit from it. And they'll have a tit-for-tat idea of revenge, thinking of it as the sensible thing to do when they think someone's done them some harm that's deserving of it, although they might not take care to make sure the punishment fits the crime.
"Actually, that sounds a bit like something I've heard that some of those Nigerian email scammers say to justify what they do - you know, the ones where they claim they need help to transfer a massive amount of money into a bank account abroad or something, and they say they'll give you a percentage of it if you help them, but first you have to give them money so they can pay to access their money or something; but if you give them money, you'll never hear from them again, and you certainly won't get any money back.
"Anyway, some people have managed to ask them why they defraud people; and one excuse some of them give is that it's just like getting compensation they deserve or revenge because lots of people were taken from Africa and sold as slaves a couple of hundred years ago to make white people money. Well if they really believe that's a good reason, it shows they're functioning at a low level of morality, because it doesn't really make sense. Apart from the fact that they're not the ones who were affected by that, and they'll send emails to just anyone, not knowing or caring if they're white, black, or maybe even Chinese, they'll be sending them to people who didn't have anything to do with slavery, no matter who they are! So why should people who didn't have anything to do with it be penalised?
"It reminds me of something I heard someone say once: I think she was originally from somewhere in Asia, and her dad suffered for months with a bad case of shingles when she was growing up. I think it was that. She said she thought shingles had come to Asia from the West, and said she thought it would serve the West right if some nasty diseases travelled to the West from Asia in return.
"I thought, 'Diseases have come here from there actually; I think cholera came from there. And maybe the plague, as well as other things.' I'm not quite sure about the plague, but I'm pretty sure cholera did. It used to wipe out hundreds of thousands of people in the West, I think, men, women, children and babies. But it's actually very unlikely that any of them had anything to do with shingles spreading the other way; and whoever did cause it probably didn't do it deliberately. That's even if shingles really did originate in the West! So she was obviously thinking at a low stage of morality there, thinking revenge should have been meted out, even if it was on people who had nothing whatsoever to do with doing what she was upset about.
"And I read an article about a culture of family feuding in Albania. I don't know if it still exists. Hopefully not. But I think it did recently. I read about how revenge was carried on and on down the generations, with one person shooting someone from another family in revenge because someone from that family had killed someone from theirs; and then someone from the family of the one who'd just been shot would go and kill someone from the family of the gunman. And it would go on and on like that. But it seems it didn't matter to any of them whether they were shooting someone who actually had anything to do with the killings or not.
"So again, that would show people behaving at a low stage of morality.
"Anyway, according to this professor, a moral stage up from the one where people think like that is when people base their ideas of right and wrong on what people around them do, and on what's expected from them; so if they know they'll be expected to be helpful, or they'll be valued for it, they will be. But if they think everyone around them is, say, cheating on their partners, they won't see why they shouldn't, or they'll want to get in on the fun. They'll want to fit in and be approved of, and they'll take their morality from people around them, so if, say, everyone around them has got a prejudice against gays, they'll just accept it as the way things are, or assume it must be the right way to think. They'll disapprove of people who behave differently from the way the group they identify with behaves. They'll see more value in forgiveness than people at earlier stages do, but if people aren't punished, they'll think it's unfair, because they won't see why the person who did wrong was allowed to get away with it, while they think they wouldn't be.
"I think this is how it works anyway, or at least it's something similar."
Deborah was puzzled about why Judith was going into so much detail about the professor's research findings, and said, "I'm not sure what all this has got to do with the Old Testament."
Judith replied, "It's to do with God having to discipline people at a lower stage of morality more harshly than people at a higher stage, where appealing to their own sense of ethics and fair play can often do instead. There is a point to all this, honestly. I'm coming to it.
"Anyway, the professor reckoned that at the next stage up from the one I've just described, people will recognise that there's a need for authority and rules for behaviour, and think behaving well is a good thing in itself, regardless of what other people do. At the earlier stages, people might do a bad thing if they think they'll be able to get away with it without being caught; but at this stage, people won't do some bad things because they personally believe they're wrong.
"But they'll tend to have an unquestioning acceptance of what authority figures say, so they'll, say, assume something must be right if the pope said it, if the pope's one of the authority figures they've been taught to respect, or they'll believe a command must be right just because they've been taught it was God who gave it. They won't question rules, or the social order of things, - such as that the royalty are much richer than most other people in the country, and that people look up to them just because of what position they happened to be born in, - unless there's something very obviously unjust about them.
"The professor's theory apparently says that some people go into a stage above that for a while, although it doesn't actually seem superior to me, where they take the opposite view, recognising that not all rules and traditions are sensible, and that authority figures shouldn't be respected just because of who they are; but they haven't yet developed a strong sense of their own morality, so their rejection of the rules makes them want to do their own thing, like taking drugs for fun and sleeping around, and showing they reject what most people think of as respectability by marking themselves out as different in some way, like when some young men grew their hair long in rebellion against the convention that men's hair ought to be short in the 1960s, or whatever they did.
"Anyway, at the last stage up, according to this professor, people have got a well-developed conscience, and a healthy sense of right and wrong, based on personal beliefs and logic, not on what they've been taught by religions or the rules of society. They'll want the best for everyone, as far as it's possible, so while at the previous stage, they'll think prison is a place where people need to go to be punished for their crimes, at the highest stage, they'll think prison serves the purpose of protecting society from criminals, but that it should be all about rehabilitating criminals so they change for the better as far as possible. Just punishing them doesn't make sense any more, because it doesn't do anything to change things for the better in itself, so they can think its main purpose should be to be just used as a deterrent against criminals committing crimes in the future. It's the stage where loving enemies starts to sound like a reasonable idea instead of a stupid one, because it might help them become better people.
"I think that's pretty much the way the theory goes anyway."
One of the girls smirked and said, "I can see people quickly slipping down from the top stage to the one below it when a criminal commits a crime against them personally! I expect a lot of people get angry and start wanting them punished then!"
Another one of the girls said, "Yeah, actually that reminds me of something that happened on an Internet forum I was on: There were two men who said they were Buddhists, and liked to talk about love and peace. One said he thought terrorists ought to be loved into changing their ways, although later he said he thought they ought to be made to do hard labour for years. I thought, 'They're really going to feel loved then, aren't they!' Note the sarcasm.
"But anyway, as soon as these men felt insulted by someone, they'd start coming out with all these horrible insults back. One of them tried to make out he was insulting people for their own good, to cut them down to size for the good of their own mental health, to stop them being too arrogant. The excuses some people come out with! It did make his point of view sound a bit daft, as if his thinking was that terrorists who bomb people deserve to be loved, but people who just fling around a few insults on an Internet forum deserve to be insulted back! I expect the difference was that they were insulting him personally, so he was actually affected himself by what was happening!"
Judith said, "Probably. But anyway, about this professor's theory, it says that someone who's genuinely got a higher-stage sense of morality won't need strict sets of rules to know how to behave, like people at an earlier stage will; they'll just be able to go by principles, so for instance, instead of needing to be told not to have affairs with other people's husbands or wives, in any situation they're in, they can think, 'What would be the fairest, kindest thing to do under the circumstances for everyone who might become involved?'
"So they might think having an affair is tempting; but they might think, 'It wouldn't be fair on the man's wife, would it. What if she found out and she was really upset? Or what if she divorced him and his children were really upset, and their standard of living went down because he wasn't there to chat to and help them with things, and because the family was poorer because he wasn't using so much of his money to support them?'
"So dogmatic rules aren't important for people at that stage. I suppose that might seem to make things more complicated, because people might have to think through more situations instead of being told what to do; but often, a well-developed conscience will instantly give people an instinctive feeling about whether a thing's right or wrong.
"It's still useful to have rules as guidelines, because people can sometimes do things without being able to foresee bad consequences. Like with the way the Bible forbids sex before marriage; people might often not see any harm in them doing it, because they think it's just loving, and they have an intention to always use contraception; and for a lot of people, things might go fine without any harm coming of it at all. But the rule's there to protect the group, not just individuals. What if out of ten loving couples behaving like that, two go on to have problems, maybe because their contraception fails or the woman forgets to take her pill a few times and gets pregnant, and then because they're not committed to each other for the long term, the man leaves before the child's even born, or else the couple aren't ready for children, so they have to make what might be the upsetting decision of whether to have the foetus aborted?
"In some parts of the world today, circumstances can be even more dire, since it's hard to get safe abortions, and a lot of women die in childbirth. And contraception isn't easy to come by. So it's just reckless to have sex with someone you might not even want to go anywhere near in a few weeks' time, - although most people who have sex with people they're not in good stable relationships with probably won't realise they might come to dislike each other soon. But that's why people ought to be careful.
"On the other hand, if a couple are committed to each other for the long term, and they want to be with each other because they're really compatible so they know they would make a good match, rather than it being just mushy feelings making them think they want to be with each other forever, and if they have the same beliefs about things like the best way to handle money, - like whether to save most of it or often splash out on things, - and if they believe the same things about other important things like the best way to discipline children, - things that often cause massive arguments in marriages because there are big disagreements about that kind of thing, - if they agree on the major things so there aren't so likely to be a lot of big arguments that might eventually lead to them splitting up, and if they're both committed to caring for children while they grow up if children come along, then a bit of paper saying they're married won't make much difference, so whether they're married or not when they have sex won't make much difference, - although a marriage licence might get the couple some benefits in law. But it's the life commitment that counts.
"It's similar with lying - there's a rule in the Bible forbidding it; but in serious cases, like where lying could save lives, doing it would be a greater good than being honest."
Deborah said, "Do you believe that similar things about how rules can be bent if people are really responsible, or if there's a greater good involved, could apply with what Jesus said about how people shouldn't divorce, and that anyone who does commits adultery if they marry someone else, unless they're divorcing someone who was unfaithful to them? That's what the Bible says, isn't it? It's never seemed fair to me, because why should people only be allowed to divorce when their husbands or wives have affairs, when far worse things can go on in marriages, like domestic violence? Why didn't Jesus want women to divorce abusive husbands? Or are you suggesting that you reckon he'd think it was OK after all, even though he didn't say so? If you are, how can you be sure it's OK with him? I think the morality of secular societies that have no problem with people getting out of abusive relationships and moving on with their lives is superior to what Jesus said!
"Actually, I know someone who said his great grandmother didn't believe in divorce, because she was a Catholic, and the Catholic Church teaches that people shouldn't divorce, because of what Jesus said about it; but she was miserable for years and years, just looking forward to the day she could leave this life and go to heaven. He said she was a good, kind person, but for reasons that were kept quiet so he never found out about them, her husband had abandoned her, as well as their two children who were only young at the time. She'd had to work long hours to support the kids.
"If she'd divorced her husband and married someone better, maybe that would have meant she could have spent more time playing with and teaching her children, because her new husband would have been bringing more money into the family, so she wouldn't have had to spend so much time working. And a new husband might have spent a lot of time caring for the children as well, besides improving the woman's quality of life. so the kids might have been happier growing up, and she herself might have been much happier. But she believed she had to follow the rules. So she deprived herself of the happiness she could have had if she'd divorced the husband who'd abandoned her, all because she thought she needed to do that to please God and have a chance of getting to heaven.
"And the man who told us about what happened said his mum loved this woman, since she was like a mother to her, despite the fact that she was really her grandmother. And her own husband cheated on her and gambled and drank a lot; but she didn't divorce him till after this woman died, because she wanted to follow her example and be like her, because she admired her and looked up to her, and didn't want to upset her by violating the commands she believed in. So although she didn't realise it, the great grandma's beliefs were keeping other people unhappy, not just herself. And the family was sad that she seemed unhappy, although this man said he never heard her complain.
"And this man himself is gay; and for some time, he tried to convince himself he wasn't interested in relationships or love at all, because he thought getting into a gay relationship would be against the rules, and he didn't want to break them because he wanted to please his family and God. But eventually he did get into a gay relationship, and he said he's never been happier.
"Surely it's not right that people think they have to go through that kind of thing! If that's what Christianity can cause, aren't people better off without it, just making their own decisions about what to do for the best? ... Well, I suppose not everyone's decisions will be for the best. But Christianity can seem unnecessarily restrictive."
Judith said, "I agree it does seem a shame that those people thought they had to live like that. But actually, I think Jesus was talking to men when he said they shouldn't divorce for anything other than unfaithfulness. I suppose that wouldn't be fair on men suffering abuse. But then, - although I can't say for sure that I'm right, - considering how Jesus is portrayed as so kind and compassionate in the New Testament, caring so much about people it says that even when he was hungry and tired, but crowds of people wanted him to teach them and heal them, he didn't refuse, but helped them anyway, I can't imagine him telling, say, a battered or abandoned wife, that she needed to stay in her relationship, where her and her kids would actually be worse off than they would be if she managed to get out of it and find someone else. And I can't imagine him telling a man suffering serious abuse to stay with his abuser either, unless his kids would somehow be worse off if he left.
"Given some other things Jesus said, I would imagine he'd say that rules were made to benefit mankind, not the other way around, as if they're just a dogmatic personal preference of God's that people have to obey no matter what.
"The thing is that in those days, a man who divorced his wife, abandoning his children, could leave them starving, since there wasn't a welfare state to support them, and the mother might have found it hard to get work as well as looking after the children. So commanding men not to divorce might well have seemed the kindest thing to do under the circumstances - the thing that would have caused the least suffering. And apparently it was well-nigh impossible for women to divorce their husbands in those days, in the part of the world where Jesus lived anyway; so it's no wonder Jesus was just referring to men when he talked about divorce. But if the wife and children are actually going to be a whole lot better off out of the relationship, or if the woman can start another relationship with a different man who she can be pretty sure will actually be a good father to her kids, then divorce and remarriage would seem to be the better option. Of course, the ideal is that people should be really careful who they choose to marry in the first place."
One of the group said, "It's not easy to choose someone you can be sure will be a good partner for life though."
Judith said, "No. But it's at least worth asking yourself when you're thinking of getting serious with someone whether they're likely to be a good parent to any kids you have, and whether you think there's a good chance that you'll still want to be with them into old age, when you'll have to get on with them well enough to still be friends with them. I mean, no one can predict that kind of thing with certainty, I don't suppose; but I think it's still worth thinking about how long you'll really be likely to be able to tolerate the person for."
One of the girls grinned and said, "I was on a forum where this man asked for advice because he'd been on a dating site for years, but he hadn't got any dates. At first quite a few of us tried to help him. But then there were one or two disagreements between us. Then it turned a bit humorous. And then on another forum, I asked if anyone there had any advice they could give him, just for fun really. I joked,
"'There's a man on another forum who's fed up at the moment because he's been trying to get a date on a dating site for an entire four years, but no one's interested in him. We've been trying to give him advice on how to make himself more appealing, but he's still having no success; so perhaps you could give me some handy tips I could pass on to him? I'm thinking of things like this:
"'He could say in his personality profile that he's offering a £2000 reward to anyone who's prepared to go out with him on more than one date. Also, when he emails women to ask them if they'll go on a date with him, he should ask them a question that's offensively outrageous, such as asking them how often they change their underwear. Of course, that'll put them right off going out with him. But I'm 300 per cent sure that the technique will work, on the principle of the old maxim, "Any publicity is good publicity". My idea is that they'll be so offended they'll tell all their friends about it. Then all their friends will flock to read the man's profile out of curiosity. With all those extra people reading it, it won't be long before some people like the sound of him and ask him out on a date, especially if he's offering that £2000 reward. Do you have any comparable tips I could pass on to the poor man?'"
The other girls giggled.
Then one of them said, "I joked about having no dates on a forum once. I said it would be nice if someone there would go out with me, but that I thought it was only fair that I warned them about what to expect.
"I joked, 'I've got acne that grows so prolifically and wildly that even hundreds of the hairs on my head have spots on them. They dangle down on the ends of them all.
"'And my belly's so massive that when I sit down, it sticks out over my legs, reaching to my knees. I can put a dinner plate on it and it'll stay there while I eat my dinner off it. Whenever I go on a date, my date sits at a table in a restaurant, and I sit next to the table with my dinner plate on my belly, because I couldn't fit my legs with my belly on them under it. I can fit a wine glass on my belly too while I'm eating my dinner off it, so it's quite convenient for me, but it might be off-putting for dates.
"'And I'm so neurotic about catching germs from people that I'll always inform a date right at the start that if he wants to touch me or kiss me, I'll insist on swabbing his hands or mouth, and any other part of him that might come into contact with me, with a few cotton swabs soaked in disinfectant first.
"'And I'm so addicted to chocolate that I always carry a load around with me to make sure I never run out; and since I can't do without eating it for long, in a restaurant, when I get my dinner, I'll take out a packet of chocolate buttons or something from my bag and sprinkle them all over it. And if my date ever gets anything chocolate for his pudding, I'll snatch it and eat it before he manages to start eating. I always assure him that he doesn't mind when I do that, to make sure he knows he's allright with it. But I suppose he might mind sometimes really.
"'Another problem is that I have weird, very distinctly hexagonal breasts. It's impossible to hide the shape. The doctors say the problem was caused by a strange genetic mutation that only ever got passed down to me.
"'And I must be the clumsiest person in the whole world; I have a bad habit of absent-mindedly picking things up without really realising I'm doing it, and then if my date's within touching distance of me, I often drop them all over him. Things I've dropped all down a date's shirt and into his lap in a restaurant have included glasses of beer, pots of mayonnaise, plates of rice and sweet and sour sauce, bowls of trifle, and opened sachets of margarine.
"'Another problem I have is that I dawdle around so much that I'm always really late for everything. Once a date invited me round to meet his parents. We arranged for me to go there the next Saturday in the early afternoon, and then we were going to go to the local leisure centre to go swimming. I turned up about nine hours late, when it was nearly the middle of the night, and the leisure centre was closed. I insisted that we go anyway though, so in the end we did. But after we couldn't get in, despite trying all the doors, we went back to their house again. And then after all the effort and dawdling I'd spent getting ready for the date, they said they were tired and would prefer it if I went away again. My date didn't want to go out with me any more after that.
"'Another thing is that I have the embarrassing problem of having really strong body odour that smells just like a mixture of chutney and nail varnish, with a hint of burned toast, for some reason. I've no idea why, since I never eat either chutney or nail varnish, and I don't usually burn my toast. But I just can't get rid of it, and the doctors don't know what causes it or what to do. But it literally makes people's noses sting, if they get within sniffing distance of it, which they do if they even just walk into a room where I am. All my teachers at school taught my class from another room via a video link. At the time, they said it was because it was just nice to use the latest technology. But now I think they were just being polite. All the rest of my class would huddle together in the corner furthest away from me, trying to do the lessons as best as they could from there. I thought at the time that it was weird that they never got told off for that. But maybe the teachers were just being kind to them and allowing it.
"'My weird body odour didn't come on till my first day at school. I don't know why, but it came on just as I was walking in the door on my first day, and it never went away. Actually, my hands still smell of my old school today. Whenever I write something, I smell them and I'm reminded of the place, and I feel as if I'm in class again, and as if I'm writing what I'm writing for a teacher to mark. That's just the way I'm feeling at the moment while I'm writing this, although I don't know what my teachers would have said to me if I'd handed it in to them.
"'Another thing that puts dates off me is that I've got a lot of pet worms, and I like to carry them around with me wherever I go. On dates in restaurants, and places like that, I like to keep taking them out and talking to them, and letting them crawl all over my hands and arms. I like to give my date a handful too, since I was always taught that it's good to share. But for some reason, all my dates jump up and run away when I do that, and never want to date me again.'
"When I said that, one of the men on the forum said he supposed he'd have to wear a hazmat suit if he dated me, - you know, the kinds of things people would wear if they were going into a building to deal with a chemical spillage or something."
The girls chuckled.
But then Deborah turned the conversation serious again, saying, "Anyway Judith, I'm still not clear about how those moral stages you've been talking about have relevance to God coming across as harsh in the Old Testament but mostly caring in the New Testament. What's the explanation?"
Judith said, "OK, I'll tell you. The thing is that some theologians have applied this professor's theory to the Bible. An example of Christian leaders functioning at a lower stage of morality than the ideal is the way they might interpret certain Bible verses: For one thing, the New Testament writer Paul said women shouldn't wear showy jewellery, because they should be modest, and the beauty they display should be inner beauty. The principle of that is that people shouldn't try to get status and admiration by focusing their attention on outward appearances, but they should consider that it's the way you live your life and the good you do that really counts, and also that your money should be used in a wise way that's going to benefit people, not selfishly spent on what makes you look good.
"The thing is that church leaders at a lower stage of morality where obedience to a strict set of rules is considered to be the important thing might severely disapprove of people in their congregation who wear expensive jewellery, and forbid them to do it, but not bat an eyelid if some people come to church in expensive flashy cars, because they aren't one of the things Paul said people shouldn't have. ... Well, it would have been pretty amazing if he had forbidden people to have those, considering cars didn't exist in those days; and people wouldn't have understood what on earth he was going on about for a couple of thousand years if he had said that!
"But what I'm saying is that the church leaders might make people abide by the letter of the law, while not even thinking about the principle of things - that people ought to focus their attention on showing their worth by being good people, not on making themselves look better than others by being showy.
"The Bible says Jesus often criticised the religious leaders of the time for thinking that it was important to enforce really strict obedience to the set of rules that had been developed for Jews to follow, while ignoring higher principles, like mercy and being considerate and things. The Old Testament Law taught that people should tithe; and Jesus said the leaders would be so scrupulous about that rule that they'd tithe everything down to the seasoning herbs that grew in their gardens; but it seems they behaved in a harsh way, showing a complete lack of kindness to anyone they thought was disobeying the rules for any reason, like condemning and ostracising prostitutes as sinners, rather than offering help to any of them who wanted to leave the lifestyle, or trying to understand why they might have got into it.
"The Bible says that one of the times when Jesus criticised religious leaders for insistence on their massive lists of legalistic rules about all kinds of little things people should and shouldn't do was when he and his disciples were walking through a field of grain on a Sabbath day, and some of the disciples picked some ears of it and chewed on them, and some Pharisees saw them and criticised Jesus for allowing them to do that, because there was an Old Testament law about how people shouldn't work on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees classified what the disciples were doing as working by harvesting grain, because long after the Old Testament laws were given, law makers had invented a massive set of rules about what people could and couldn't do on the Sabbath, and classified things according to what kind of work they decided to interpret them as being, to try to prevent anyone from accidentally doing something God would consider work. But some of the rules were pretty extreme, forbidding even a lot of minor things, because they could somehow be related to working.
"It's not surprising they wanted to do that, because it was after the time when Israel was destroyed by foreign armies, which the prophets had said would happen as a punishment for sin. So it seems they thought people needed to be made to obey lots and lots of strict rules, to prevent them from even accidentally sinning, since they thought God might be angry again otherwise.
"It's no wonder they took the Sabbath rules so seriously, because the Old Testament law about it says people should be put to death for working on that day, and there's a story in the Old Testament about how Moses said God had ordered that a man had to be killed for just gathering sticks for firewood on the Sabbath, so the community all stoned him to death! That does sound barbarically harsh! But it seems the reason for it is related to these moral stages of development, although there might have been more to it, that the people in his community would have understood, but we don't, such as that the man might have been rebelling against the Law in a more significant way somehow, since he would have known what it said, and yet still chose to disobey it.
"But the thing is that harsh punishments might have been the only thing that would have made people at a low stage of morality obey God's message, rather than thinking, 'Hang on, if this man can get away with what looks like work to me, that must mean God doesn't really take the law about it seriously, so why shouldn't I do some work, and make my family and servants work every day of the week too? It seems there's no real need to give people days off after all!'
"And then other people might have followed their example, so some people might have ended up being exploited and overworked.
"The argument goes that the people of Israel at the time might well have been functioning at a low stage of morality, partly because they'd been slaves in Egypt, just doing what they were told, instead of being allowed to govern their own lives, where they would have been thinking through what was right and wrong for themselves; and they would have been uneducated. And then with sudden freedom, a lot of them might have been out for everything they thought they could get. I mean, I'm not saying all freed slaves might be like that; but it does seem from what the Bible says that a lot of the people of Israel were like that, disobeying God in various ways, despite all the powerful signs he'd given them that he was real and demanded obedience. And it was serious, because some of the things they did were harmful, such as inviting prostitutes into the tents they lived in, when their wives can't have been very happy about that. So they might easily have been capable of worse things.
"You hear horrible stories about the things some people do. I even heard that millions of children in India are bought for a very low price from poverty-stricken parents, by men who promise that they'll be given jobs with good wages, and that they'll be trained in some useful skills; but they end up enslaved, working every day of the week all year round, and their parents often don't even know where they've been taken. So that's the kind of thing that can happen when some people think they can get away with things like that, because they're not scared of how they might be punished if they do them."
Deborah said, "Well treating children like that's horrible. But it's way way worse than what you said about the death penalty being given to just one man deciding to gather firewood himself on the Sabbath, which he might have done because he actually needed it! So wouldn't it have been fairer if there'd been different levels of punishment depending on how serious the breach of the law was, or else if Moses or God had taken into account that gathering firewood, without being forced to, was only a minor breach of the law, so the man could be let off with a more minor punishment, even just like being whipped a few times, if they really wanted to bring home that they thought it was still serious?"
Judith said, "You'd have thought so. But if all the people really were at a low stage of morality, if that had happened, a lot of them might have thought, 'Hey, that's not fair! I've been doing my very best to avoid anything that could be thought of as work on the Sabbath ever since this law was given, because I didn't want the death penalty, and here this man is, only being punished a little bit for breaking the law! Why should I bother carrying on doing this if it can't have been meant that seriously after all?'
"Or they might have thought, 'It's not fair! Some people would probably be given the death penalty for something no more serious than what this man did, but here he is, being let off with a lighter punishment than the law says people should get! Why shouldn't I break the law in that case, and make my children do a bit of work on the Sabbath, and then argue that what I did wasn't serious too? I mean, if I just make them work for five hours, instead of making them work all day like I do every other day of the week, it isn't as bad as making them work all day on the Sabbath!'"
Deborah said, "Well I think it would have been reasonable for people to have thought some of that, actually, since it seems like a really overly-harsh law to me."
Judith said, "It's easy for us to think that, with our comfortable lives. I mean, it can just seem practical for us to do things like catching up on our essays on a Sunday if we need to. But the consequences for a lot of people could have been pretty dire if the law had been allowed to break down because people stopped taking it seriously, so they stopped obeying it, like if servants or children were forced to work long hours every day of the week. Or people could have done that themselves and neglected relations with their families, so their kids had to grow up pretty much without them.
"Humans are capable of doing some terrible things when they're left to their own devices, - or at least some of them are. I read about conditions in factories near the start of the Industrial Revolution, before more and more regulations were eventually brought in to protect workers. They were horrendous!
"The governments of the time had a policy of just leaving employers to do what they thought would make them the most money, regardless of what kinds of conditions they made people work in, maybe because they thought the more profits businesses made, the better it would be for the country as a whole, because the more money they made, the more of it employers would be able to put into building more factories or getting more machines, and employing more workers; and then they'd make more money that they could be taxed on.
"And the governments might also have thought that more demand for new machinery would mean inventors would have an incentive to put their minds to inventing new and more efficient machines to entice employers to buy new ones, so technology would progress. And they probably thought that the more products were being produced, the more people who could actually afford them would be able to improve their lives by getting them. And that kind of thing. So they probably thought leaving companies to their own devices would be great for the economy, and for rich people.
"I'm not sure if they were thinking all of that, or if they simply didn't care about the workers, because they didn't think they were worth caring about or something. After all, poor people didn't have the vote in those days, and everyone in the government came from the rich classes. But in any case, the problem was that a lot of employers were pretty heartless, and didn't care a thing for their employees, as if they thought of them as money-making machines. At least, that's the impression I get, because they made people work really long hours, including young children, and they allowed safety standards to be appalling. People who accidentally got too close to machines could get parts of themselves caught in them and mangled, so a lot of people had to have fingers or even limbs amputated. And deadly diseases could spread fast because the conditions were often unhygienic and unventilated. Employers relied on strict discipline to make their employees keep working, no matter how tired they were.
"And women and even young children worked for long hours in mines as well, till laws were brought in that forbade the worst abuses, doing dangerous jobs where there were often deadly accidents.
"And it seems some employers made their employees work long hours for seven days a week, which contributed to ruining their health.
"Since it was mostly only rich people who could afford to get educated in those days, and most factories had horrendous working conditions, a lot of people didn't have much choice but to take work where they could get it, instead of being able to pick and choose among companies, so they could get jobs where the conditions would be better. It would often have been a choice between working in horrible conditions or starving, it seems, since there was no welfare state in those days, where unemployed people could get enough money to live on.
"It seems children would often have been made to work just as hard and long by their own parents in pre-industrial societies though, helping to do things like produce cloth for sale so the family could make enough money to live on, or else as much as they could, although families would have been a lot more free to take time off when they chose to.
"But that just shows what can happen when there are no laws to protect people's well-being.
"So having a strict law in Old Testament times that made people give employees and their dependents a day off every week would probably have prevented at least some of the kinds of abuses employers in those days could have inflicted on their employees and children; and that might often have been good for the health of those people, as well as for their quality of life.
"The death penalty for working on the Sabbath still seems pretty severe to me. But I don't know what kinds of abuses went on in those days that the law might have been trying to stop.
"Anyway, I'll explain more about harsh Old Testament punishments probably being meant to try to prevent people from exploiting others and things like that in a minute. But I was thinking of saying just a bit more about the story about Jesus and his disciples walking through a field on the Sabbath, and the disciples chewing on ears of corn, and the Pharisees criticising him for letting his disciples do what their rules had down as 'working', since I didn't quite finish it. When they criticised him, Jesus replied that the Sabbath was made for man's benefit, not man made for the benefit of the Sabbath! In other words, rules are supposed to make things better for people, not to be obeyed just for the sake of it!
"But about these stages of morality, I would imagine that most people can only get to the highest stages in fairly civilised societies, because if you're growing up around people who are only looking out for themselves, and will take what belongs to other people without many qualms of conscience, partly because they're greedy and selfish and only thinking about themselves, the only way you're going to be able to survive, or at least have a decent quality of life, is if you're willing to defend or take back what's yours, even with violence, or else people will take your things till you've got nothing left. So you can see how violent a society could get under those kinds of circumstances. And if there isn't even a decent police force to enforce the laws, it'll be difficult for things to get better."
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