So right, and yet so wrong

I don't think I've mentioned I Drew This on this blog yet, so it's time I rectified that. IDT is a webcomic drawn by DC Simpson, illustrating his take on news, politics and the world in general. Polemic webcomics aren't always that good (when any artform is co-opted to make serious points, the art tends to suffer), but this one's pretty impressive. More to the point, it provides an outlet so that not too much politics gets mixed into Ozy and Millie, his other (and, I think, considerably better) strip. Simpson is one of those people you really want to have a coffee with at some point - obviously very intelligent, holding strong opinions, and willing both to share them and debate them.

Fortunately, he's provided a means of doing the latter, at least, through his contributions to the Bird Brains blog. There's usually a lot of interesting stuff on there, most of which I agree with; obviously, though, there will be bits where I disagree. One of these popped up last month, when Simpson wrote a long post stating his opposition to the use of the Ten Commandments for...well, anything. I've been meaning to write about this, as he does make a number of compelling points. Sadly, they're kind of buried under a whole lot of other misunderstandings (to put it mildly), so I thought it would be worth having a look at the separate claims made. I'd better warn you that this is likely to be rather a long post, so you may be better off leaving it unless you've got plenty of time!

Simpson starts out by looking at the Ten Commandments themselves, describing them as "lame". He divides them into "God being insecure", "thought policing" and "ridiculous religious rules", along with three "modern moral precepts". The first category contains the first three commandments, and yes, they do look as though God's trying to protect himself. The problem with that, though, is that protection clauses are always there as filler, in order to instil people with awe so that they won't disobey the other clauses; the overarching theme of much of the Old Testament, though, is about the people of Israel's failure to keep these first three commandments. In other words, "you shall have no other God but me" is not a lead-in before the good stuff, it is the most important commandment, and one that is echoed in Jesus' "first commandment" to "love the Lord your God" with everything available.

This does sound weird to us - surely the commandments are for our benefit, as the basis of our society? Well, no, that's not their primary function - they're supposed to regulate our relationship with God. And as such, it does make sense that they will focus on him first, and us second. On to the second group, then, the "thought policing" - honouring your father and mother, no bearing of false witness, and no covetousness. Honestly, I can't see thought police activity anywhere in the first two, which are purely about actions - more to the point, they're excellent standards to keep to if you want to maintain good familial and interpersonal relationships. The last one does talk about thoughts, but the clear distinction drawn Biblically between temptation and action (even Jesus was tempted, but didn't sin) strongly suggests that this commandment is talking about indulging covetousness - using it to shape your thoughts and actions - rather than the odd random temptation that flits in to your brain. Once again, a guide for interpersonal relationships, although again it is worth noting that it's not explicitly meant for building a society.

The "ridiculous religious rules" section doesn't appear to contain anything except the prohibition against working on the Sabbath, which Simpson twists into "doing nothing but worship on Sunday". That's again not the point - it's a commandment that's there to give us space to be with God, not a rigidly scheduled and legalistic framework. Again, look at Jesus' actions on this front - healing a man with the words "it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath". If we then move on to the "modern moral precepts" - no murder, no adultery, no theft (and to be honest I don't see much that's exclusively "modern" about those) - Simpson skates over the latter two and misquotes the first as "you shall not kill", then seems surprised when this straw-man commandment is broken by the Israelites waging war. The commandment is actually "you shall not murder" - and murder pretty obviously doesn't include warfare or accidental manslaughter, as shown by the existence of the cities of refuge in Israel.

I've brought up the concept of war in the Bible, so let's move on to what Simpson has to say about that. He refers to the wars of the Old Testament as "merciless slaughter of neighbouring tribes who weren't obviously doing anyone any harm". Well, let's ignore for a minute the many tribes who attempted to exterminate Israel over its existence (Assyrians, Babylonians, Philistines, Hittites, you name it...), and address the point that I think he was probably trying to make, that of the seemingly greedy and rapacious conquest of Canaan recorded in Joshua. First, notice that the conquest of the various cities noted was not for material gain - indeed, Israelites found taking plunder rather than destroying it were executed. Secondly, and more importantly, it was made abundantly clear to the Israelites that they were acting as God's judgement on the people they were invading. They weren't in Canaan because they were the good guys, but because there would be room for them after God had punished another nation for its sins. I'll admit that that doesn't sound a whole lot better immediately, but I'll come back to that later.

Simpson then presents ten commandments that he thinks we should follow (taken from Ebon Musings) and contrasts them with the Biblical list, claiming that these are much better commandments to live one's life by - from the perspective of building interpersonal and social relationships. To be fair, the list he finds is full of good things, but his conclusion - that these commandments have "far greater morality" in them than the Biblical ones - is not really a comparison that can be accurately drawn, given the much greater Biblical focus on one's relationship with God and the almost cursory attention given to society-building. What's more, some of the contrasts he makes between these new commandments and Biblical concepts are just plain wrong. Take commandment 7, with Simpson's commentary in parentheses.

7. Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be
ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them. (This
one wins the award for most diametric opposition to Yahweh's whole "believe with
no evidence, or I'll let Satan torture you for eternity" thing.)

Many people have commented on the misappropriation of the word "faith" to support the concept of "blind acceptance" - I'll simply say that nowhere in the Bible are we ever told to "believe with no evidence". In fact, "test all things" is an almost direct quotation from 1 Thessalonians 5:21 ("Test everything. Hold on to the good.") You can also see at least one point in the new commandments where a Biblical concept is explicitly more "moral" than the new one - Simpson says that he prefers "forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted" to Jesus' "turn the other cheek". To very loosely paraphrase Matthew 5:46, "Why is it 'good' to only forgive people who are nice to you? Even Stalin would do that." What's more, the fact that it's possible to make a list of other commandments that are also good to follow is not evidence that the first list was not good - rather, it could be taken as evidence of an innate moral sense, a "knowledge of good and evil", if you will. Other writers have taken that tack much more successfully than me, though, so I'll leave that branch as an exercise for the reader.

We're nearing the end of Simpson's essay, but he still has a few points to make, notably that Christians who actually do show love and compassion "have to disregard huge sections of the Bible to do it". It's true that a lot of the bits of the Bible are incredibly difficult to handle, but simply disregarding them is not productive. No, it makes much more sense to think about them, pray about them, and make decisions based on both them and one's own experience and knowledge.

I know that a number of evangelicals reading this are probably going apopleptic after reading that last sentence, but hear me out - we do read the Bible through the lens of modern experience. We have to, because we read everything through that lens - it's impossible not to, because we are not living in Biblical times. That doesn't mean that we put our own experience above scripture, nor does it mean that we disregard scripture if it doesn't conform to our viewpoints. It does mean that everything we read has to be carefully weighed (1 Thessalonians again) to see how it applies to us today - and, read in context and with care, I strongly suspect that a lot of it is directly applicable.

If you've read this far, you may be surprised to know that on one major point, I do fully agree with Simpson - the Ten Commandments are not the sole basis of our modern society, and should not necessarily be, for example, hung on courthouse walls because of this. They were given to us as a summary of how our relationships should work - first with God, and secondly with others around us. Overarching societal rules are not really addressed there, because they were more specific to the society that had to be ruled at the time, and so were presented throughout Leviticus and Deuteronomy. This emphasis on a relationship with God means that those who are not Christians simply cannot be expected to accept the Commandments - it's like telling a footballer that he should follow the rules for tackling other players as laid down in the laws of rugby. He's not in that context. If we want our footballer to play by the rules of rugby, we have to go to him where he is, and ask him to play rugby instead.

This metaphor is about to break down spectacularly, so I'll leave it where it is. As a Christian, I do believe that the Ten Commandments are a useful and relevant guide to living. I don't think, however, that they are the only rules; nor are they useful unless seen in context. We've been given the ability to speak with God, to think and to act. Let's use all three.