Finishing Off the Old Testament: “Progress”
This entry has nothing to do with Instructional Technology, so skip on to the Pitch announcement if that’s the kind of thing you’re interested in.
My wife and I have been reading the Old Testament a few pages each night for the last five years or so, off and on. Over the Thanksgiving holiday we finally finished the it (not only have I read the entire Old Testament, I’ve read it all out loud). Maybe it’s just the holidays causing me to wax nostalgic, but I found myself thinking about the “progress” civilization has made in the intervening years since the books Old Testament were authored.
(This entry does have a point (I’ll get to it at the bottom)… it just doesn’t have anything to do with Instructional Technology.)
Where is our society now as compared to then? I’m specifically interested in the rules and mores that govern behavior. For an snapshot of the Old Testament world, let’s take something basic and probably familiar like the ten commandments. Here they are in all their King James glory:
- Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
- Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.
- Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
- Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.
- Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
- Thou shalt not kill.
- Thou shalt not commit adultery.
- Thou shalt not steal.
- Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
- Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's.
It seems like the “progress” of western civilization is, now-a-days, measured in terms of the number of these commandments which it is now socially acceptable and, in an increasing number of cases, perfectly legal, to violate. I’ll regroup the ten commandments according to what I (with biases) perceive to be their current status in the US.
Clearly socially acceptable and legal:
Worshipping someone other than God, Making idols, Taking the name of the Lord in vain, Working on the Sabbath day, Coveting.
Possibly socially acceptable and legal:
Dishonoring parents, Adultery.
Clearly socially unacceptable and illegal:
Killing, Stealing, Lying.
A number of finer distinctions could be made. For example, if adultery is understood to mean sex outside of marriage, it definitely belongs in the clearly socially acceptable category. If it means sex with someone other than the person to whom you are married, it may be still be socially unacceptable. As another example, killing is clearly socially acceptable and legal in some circumstances (abortion).
Either way, there seems to be a trend in the data here. Over the years it becomes socially acceptable, and finally legal, to break the old rules. I imagine readers of my blog could not imagine a time when it was illegal to work on Sunday, and would consider a nation who still held to such a law “archaic” or “outdated.”
It all makes me wonder, and this is the whole point of this entry, where does the sliding stop? How long will it be until killing, stealing, and lying are socially acceptable, and finally, legal? Ten years? Fifty years? One hundred years? Two hundred and fifty years? Historical bias may cause you to say: killing, stealing, and lying should never be socially acceptable or legal. But in so saying, you would be guilty of the same narrow-mindedness that plagued early believers who thought their current system should remain unchanged.
Can this slow softening of traditional morality be called progress? Who can say? In my own biased opinion, I would argue that “recent” changes in the way our society views women and their equality with men are extremely positive. But what would the ancients have said? Unless one is willing to admit that a supreme being can provide the foundation for such decisions, are we left to pin our morals to continuously negotiated and renegotiated social contract?
Posted by david at December 2, 2003 12:37 AM
| TrackBack