We
all agree that murder is a bad thing. Some of us believe that
adultery and fornication are bad things. But, once you've permitted
the killing of animals and bacteria, and the killing of human beings
in war and self defence and euthanasia; and accepted that people may
sometimes choose to commit suicide; then "Thou Shalt Not Murder"
turns out to mean "You are not allowed to kill anyone except
those people who you are allowed to kill". And even if you agree
that the only permissible sexual intercourse is between married
people, you can hardly to fail have noticed that society keeps on
changing its mind about what counts as "marriage". Cousins
are sometimes allowed to marry and sometimes not; the age of legal
marriage can be quite young or surprisingly old; societies can't even
come to a firm decision about how many husbands and or wives a man
and or woman is allowed to keep on the go at once. So "thou
shalt not commit adultery" turns out to mean "you are
forbidden from having sex with anyone except those people who you are
permitted to have sex with": a variation on "you should do
whatever you should do".
I
came across a person on the interwebs who affected to be genuinely
astonished when I suggested that the Christian church, and therefore
very possibly the Christian God, approved of some kinds of killing
but not others. I said that it would be rather odd for YHWH to give
detailed instructions about meat preparation if by "Thou shalt
not kill" she had meant "Thou shalt not kill anything,
ever, full stop". I said that since YHWH shows no sign of being
a pacifist; and seems to think that very naughty people -- witches, for example -- should be executed, she probably things that the killing of one soldier by another
solider in a properly declared war, or the killing of a criminal by
an executioner after a perfectly fair trail wasn't murder. So there was no necessary inconsistency in being a Christian warrior or a Christian supporter of capital punishment.
But
it says "thou shalt not kill" in the BIBLE, he kept saying,
and yet these Christians support WARS. Haven't THEY read their own
BOOK? HAVEN'T they READ their own book.
("Can you imagine Jesus in any army uniform" is not a very helpful contribution to the debate. I can't imagine Jesus playing cricket, and, come to that, I can't imagine the Queen going to the toilet. A clever person on the interwebs recently remarked that if you can't imagine Jesus with an erection, you a probably really a docetist.)
Some
people believe, or pretend to believe, that no-one ever really
believed in witches. The whole concept was dreamed up by sad
individuals who had a bit of a thing about setting fire to old ladies
and needed a flimsy pretext to indulge their rather specialized
proclivities. Mrs Thatcher (speaking of witches) used to comically
and ludicrously claim that there was no
political element
behind the campaigns of assassination and bombings by the Irish
Republican Army: they blew people up because they were the kind of
people who liked blowing things up.
A world of bad people who were bad because they wanted to be bad; where no-one ever does a bad thing for a good reason, or a bad thing for a bad reason which looks like a good reason from their point of view. How nice it would be if life were that simple.
I know: let's pretend it is!