Do People Follow the Ten Commandments? Behavior and Beliefs Often Don't Match

Do People Follow the Ten Commandments?
Behavior and Beliefs Often Don't Match

By Austin Cline, About.com Guide
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There are lots of debates over the cultural and political status of the Ten Commandments, but in all of those debates there is a common assumption that devout religious people are already following them and everyone else should start. Is it true, however, that religious people currently follow the Ten Commandments with any degree of consistency?

Jews presumably do a fair job at trying to follow their Decalogue, but it’s Christians — and conservative evangelicals in particular — who do the most to promote these laws in civil society, so perhaps we should focus on them. When we do, we find something interesting: not only do they not consistently follow the commandments, but in fact a couple are broken so regularly and casually that it doesn’t even appear as though anyone really tries.

The second commandment, at least according to Protestants, is a prohibition against “any graven image, or any likeness of any thing.“ The more literally one reads this, the more that would have to be forbidden: crosses, crucifixes, statues of Jesus, status of saints, icons of any sort, even photographs and realistic paintings. Muslims adhere to such a rule strictly, and as a consequence, artistic decoration consists of abstract design rather than the human figures that one typically sees in many churches.

Most Christians today, if they accept this commandment at all (it’s not included on Catholic lists), don’t interpret it literally. At most they read it to mean that one shouldn’t make any idols designed to represent God (although statues of Jesus, who is also God, are somehow exempt from even this most mildest of readings). Once we allow this commandment to be interpreted mildly or metaphorically, however, what’s to stop us from doing the same with the others? Should the commands not to kill or steal be read metaphorically?

Even more significant is the breaking of the Sabbath. The Ten Commandments require that people work for six days and then rest on the seventh, which is Saturday. This is what Jews and some small Christian groups do. Almost all contemporary Christian denominations have placed their sabbath on a Sunday, however, which is the first day of the week.

This might not seem like such a huge issue — after all, Christians are still working six days and resting one, which is one of the points of this commandment. Another point of the commandment, however, is to commemorate God who worked six days and rested on the seventh; Christians who don’t rest on the final day of the week are quite simply getting things backwards. God certainly didn’t start off the grand task of creating the universe by taking a coffee break.

Furthermore, Christians today don’t adhere to the prohibition on working as strictly as orthodox Jews. Christian may go to church services and they may not go to the office, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t work. On the contrary, most do quite a bit of work on their sabbath: yard work, house work, school work, etc. Very few Christians actually refrain from any work whatsoever, and I doubt that you will find many who go to the same lengths as orthodox Jews who refuse to drive, turn on lights, light stoves, etc.

Suggested Reading

* Ten Commandments: Introduction
* Ten Commandments: Analysis
* Ten Commandments: Different Versions

11 Things The Bible Bans, But You Do Anyway

By 11Points
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Yesterday, I found myself in a discussion about the anti-abortion people. The reason: It’s just incomprehensible to us that people get so zealous about that issue that they’ll go as far as to murder doctors who perform abortions and bomb abortion clinics.

The conversation then took its natural turn to selective, self-serving interpretations of the Bible… finding a few verses that you can use to justify a position that lets you impose your morality on someone, and riding those verses hard and fast for the rest of your life.

So I thought it’d be a good time to find a bunch of stuff that the Bible bans… stuff that’s a lot LESS convenient. Don’t worry, though… just because I’m pointing it out, that doesn’t mean you now have to follow it. It’s a lot easier to keep discriminating against gay people for no particular reason than to stop eating bacon, after all.

Here are 11 things that are technically banned by the Bible. (All quotes are translations from the New American Standard Bible, but, because I’m actually trying to maintain serious journalistic integrity here, I cross-referenced several other translations to make sure I wasn’t missing the point.)

1. Round haircuts. See you in Hell, Beatles… and/or kids with bowl cuts, surfer cuts or (my favorite) butt cuts. Leviticus 19:27 reads “You shall not round off the side-growth of your heads nor harm the edges of your beard.”

2. Football. At least, the pure version of football, where you play with a pigskin. The modern synthetic footballs are ugly and slippery anyways. Leviticus 11:8, which is discussing pigs, reads “You shall not eat of their flesh nor touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you.”

And you’re doubly breaking that if you wake up, eat some sausage then go throw around the football. Or go to the county fair and enter a greased pig catching contest.

3. Fortune telling. Before you call a 900 number (do people still call 900 numbers, by the way?), read your horoscope or crack open a fortune cookie, realize you’re in huge trouble if you do.

Leviticus 19:31 reads “Do not turn to mediums or spiritists; do not seek them out to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God.” The penalty for that? Check Leviticus 20:6: “As for the person who turns to mediums and to spiritists, to play the harlot after them, I will also set My face against that person and will cut him off from among his people.”

Seems like a lifetime of exile is a pretty harsh penalty for talking to Zoltar.

4. Pulling out. The Bible doesn’t get too much into birth control… it’s clearly pro-populating but, back when it was written, no one really anticipated the condom or the sponge, so those don’t get specific bans.

But… pulling out does. One of the most famous sexual-oriented Bible verses… the one that’s used as anti-masturbation rhetoric… is actually anti-pulling out.

It’s Genesis 38:9-10: “Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so when he went in to his brother’s wife, he wasted his seed on the ground in order not to give offspring to his brother. But what he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord; so He took his life also.”

Yep — pull out and get smote. That’s harsh.

5. Tattoos. No tattoos. Leviticus 19:28 reads, “You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the Lord.”

Not even a little butterfly on your ankle. Or Thug Life across your abdomen. Or even, fittingly enough, a cross.

6. Polyester, or any other fabric blends. The Bible doesn’t want you to wear polyester. Not just because it looks cheap. It’s sinfully unnatural.

Leviticus 19:19 reads, “You are to keep My statutes. You shall not breed together two kinds of your cattle; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor wear a garment upon you of two kinds of material mixed together.”

Check the tag on your shirt right now. Didn’t realize you were mid-sin at this exact second, did you? (Unless you checked the tag by rolling off your neighbor’s wife while you two were having anal sex in the middle of robbing a blind guy. Then your Lycra-spandex blend is really the least of your problems.)

7. Divorce. The Bible is very clear on this one: No divorcing. You can’t do it. Because when you marry someone, according to Mark 10:8, you “are no longer two, but one flesh.” And, Mark 10:9 reads, “What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

Mark gets even more hardcore about it a few verses later, in Mark 10:11-12, “And He said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.’”

8. Letting people without testicles into church. Whether you’ve been castrated or lost one or two balls to cancer isn’t important. The Bible doesn’t get that specific. It just says you can’t pray.

Deuteronomy 23:1 reads (this is the God’s Word translation, which spells it out better), “A man whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off may never join the assembly of the Lord.”

Oh, and the next verse says that if you’re a bastard, the child of a bastard… or even have a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchild of a bastard, you can’t come to church or synagogue either. Deuteronomy 23:2 reads, “No one of illegitimate birth shall enter the assembly of the Lord; none of his descendants, even to the tenth generation, shall enter the assembly of the Lord.”

9. Wearing gold. 1 Timothy 2:9 doesn’t like your gold necklace at all. Or your pearl necklace. Or any clothes you’re wearing that you didn’t get from Forever 21, Old Navy or H&M.

“Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments.”

10. Shellfish. Leviticus 11:10 reads, “But whatever is in the seas and in the rivers that does not have fins and scales among all the teeming life of the water, and among all the living creatures that are in the water, they are detestable things to you.” And shellfish is right in that wheelhouse.

Leviticus 11 bans a TON of animals from being eaten (it’s THE basis for Kosher law); beyond shellfish and pig, it also says you can’t eat camel, rock badger, rabbit, eagle, vulture, buzzard, falcon, raven, crow, ostrich, owl, seagull, hawk, pelican, stork, heron, bat, winged insects that walk on four legs unless they have joints to jump with like grasshoppers (?), bear, mole, mouse, lizard, gecko, crocodile, chameleon and snail.

Sorry if that totally ruins your plans to go to a rock badger eat-off this weekend.

11. Your wife defending your life in a fight by grabbing your attacker’s genitals. No joke. Deuteronomy actually devotes two verses to this exact scenario: Deuteronomy 25:11-12.

“If two men, a man and his countryman, are struggling together, and the wife of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him, and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals, then you shall cut off her hand; you shall not show pity.”

That’s impossible to misinterpret. Ladies, if your husband is getting mugged, make sure to kick the mugger in the pills. Do not do the grip and squeeze (no matter what “Miss Congeniality” might advise). Or your hand needs to be cut off.

As a final note, I know that nine of these 11 cite the Old Testament, which Christianity doesn’t necessarily adhere to as law.

To which I say: If you’re going to ignore the section of Leviticus that bans about tattoos, pork, shellfish, round haircuts, polyester and football, how can you possibly turn around and quote Leviticus 18:22 (“You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.”) as irrefutable law?

But that’s me trying to introduce logic to religious fanaticism (or, at least, trying to counter some mix of ignorance, bigotry and narcissism with logic). And I should probably know better.

Religious Morality vs. Civil Law

Religious Conflicts over Neutral, Civil Laws -
Why Do Religious Believers Put Religious Morality Over Civil Law?

By Austin Cline, About.com Guide

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When, if ever, should personal religious morality take precedence over neutral, public laws and standards of justice? In a civil, secular society the answer should probably be "never," but not all religious believers agree with this. One issue which underlies so many religious conflicts, not to mention religious extremism, is the conviction held by many religious believers that their religious morality, supposedly from their god, should take precedence when they believe the law has failed.

The underlying principle behind this is the belief that all proper or just morality, law, standards of conduct, ethics, and authority ultimately derives from God. When civil authorities fail to execute what one believes to be the wishes or standards of God, then those civil authorities have failed to live up to the standards which justify their existence. At this point the religious believer is justified in ignoring them and taking God's wishes into their own hands. There is no such thing as a justified civil authority independent of God and thus no valid civil laws which can excuse godless, immoral behavior.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of this sort of thinking comes from Iran where six members of a state militia were found innocent of murder by the Iranian Supreme Court because the six human beings they brutally killed were all regarded by the killers as "morally corrupt."

No one denied that the killings happened; instead the killings were justified in a manner analogous to how one can justify killing someone in self-defense. Rather than claiming that their lives were in danger, however, the killers claimed that they had the authority under Islamic law to kill people who had not been properly punished by the state for grossly immoral behavior. All of the victims suffered greatly by being stoned or drowned, and in one case an engaged couple was killed simply because they were walking together in public.

Three lower courts had originally upheld the men's convictions, finding that a belief that someone is "morally corrupt" is insufficient grounds to justify killing a human being. The Iranian Supreme Court disagreed with the other courts and agreed with senior clerics who have argued that Muslims have a duty to enforce the moral standards handed down by God. Even Mohammad Sadegh Al-e-Eshagh, a Supreme Court judge who didn't take part in the case and who says that killings done without a court order should be punished, was willing to agree that certain moral "offenses" can be justifiably punished by the people — offenses like adultery and insulting Muhammad.

In the final analysis, this ruling means that anyone can get away with murder by simply claiming that the victim was morally corrupt. In Iran, personal religious morality has been given precedence over neutral civil laws and standards of conduct. Under civil laws, everyone is supposed to be judged by the same neutral standards; now, everyone can be judged by the personal standards of random strangers — standards based on their own personal interpretation of their private religious beliefs.

Although the situation in Iran is extreme, it is in principle not too far different from the beliefs of many other religious believers around the world. This is, for example, the underlying principle behind attempts by Americans in various professions to avoid being held to the same standards and do the same job that others in the profession have to do. Rather than abide by neutral laws and standards of professional conduct, individual pharmacists want the authority to decide for themselves — based on their personal interpretation of private religious morality — which medications they will and will not dispense. Cab drivers want to do the same with respect to who they will and will not transport in their cabs.

This is an issue which is usually discussed in the context of church/state separation, but it's one which cuts right to the heart of whether church and state should even be separated. What it comes down to is whether civil society will be governed by neutral, secular laws created by the people based upon their own determination of what is and is not right, or will society be governed by the interpretations of allegedly divine revelations by ecclesiastical leaders — or even worse, by the personal interpretations by every religious individual acting on their own?

This isn't simply a question of accommodation, which involves simply making it easier for religious individuals to follow their religion and conscience. You accommodate a person's religious needs by adapting procedures to work around those needs, but when you exempt them from having to do the very basic requirements of a job you go beyond mere accommodation. At this point, you enter the same realm which the Iranian Supreme Court has already deeply penetrated: you abandon neutral, secular standards of conduct applicable to everyone in favor of personal religious standards adopted and interpreted by each individual at will.

This is incompatible with a multi-faith, multicultural, civil society. Such a society requires secular standards that apply equally to all people in all situations — that's what it means to be a nation of laws rather than of men. The rule of law and justice depends upon publicly disclosed, publicly debated, and publicly decided standards rather than the arbitrary whims, beliefs, or faiths of individuals who happen to occupy positions of power and authority. We should expect doctors, pharmacists, cab drivers, and other licensed professionals to treat us according to independent, public standards — not arbitrary, personal religious standards. We should expect the state to deliver justice in a neutral, secular manner — not protect those who seek to enforce a private vision of godly conduct on us.