It is almost universally taken for granted that Jesus’ moral teaching, whatever else we might want to say about him, is exalted, if not perfect. Even Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, suggests as much. As he puts it, making sure that no one should misunderstand what he is saying – giving respect where, in my view, it is not due — and confuse it with his earlier description of the Old Testament god:
Well, there’s no denying that, from a moral point of view, Jesus is a huge improvement over the cruel ogre of the Old Testament. Indeed Jesus, if he existed (or whoever wrote his script if he didn’t) was surely one of the great ethical innovators of history. The Sermon on the Mount is way ahead of its time. His ‘turn the other cheek’ anticipated Gandhi and Martin Luther King by two thousand years. It was not for nothing that I wrote an article called ‘Atheists for Jesus’ (and was later delighted to be presented with a T-shirt bearing the legend). [250]
Some Christians might retort that Jesus did not so much anticipate Gandhi or Martin Luther King, but that these two modern heroes learned from him. However, not to put too fine a point on it, during my years as a priest I kept stumbling over Jesus’ morality, until, in the end, it seemed clear to me that, on the whole, I preferred the Old Testament god. Certainly, there are unlovely features of the Old Testament god, but the best of the Old Testament — or what should more appropriately be called the Jewish scriptures, the Tanach — presents us with a loving and caring god, concerned with justice, and at least dreaming of peace. Jesus, on the other hand, is quite different, and, I believe, morally far less defensible.
I want to take the Sermon on the Mount as the basis of this discussion (Matthew chapters 5-7), since this is what people reflexively refer to when they are thinking of the purity and perfection of Jesus’ moral teaching, but which I think shows, not a perfect man, but someone able to dream up a list of sentimental comforts, and append to them a morality so grotesque in its cruelty and inhumanity that it should be rejected by every thoughtful, caring human being.
We start with the saccharine:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Most of these are simply empty ”sublimities.” For some of them, all you have to do is to take Aristotle and invert him. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” is exactly the reverse of the Aristotle’s ideal of megalopsychos, the man (and, of course, for Aristotle, it was always a man) who ‘thinks himself worthy of great things and is really worthy of them’ (see Peter Goldie on Kristjan Kristjansson’s Justifying Emotions: Pride and Jealousy). “Blessed are the meek” is a similar inversion. And despite the influence of Christianity, and its ideal of humility, there really is no great benefit in humility as such, and sometimes it is appropriate to welcome praise when it is due. While I enjoy being praised — doesn’t everyone? – especially when I think I have done something worthy of it, I am still reluctant — indeed, there is a psychological block impeding my ability to accept it without making others feel awkward and embarrassed for having offered praise in the first place. There is nothing blessed about this at all, and it is a product of my religious upbringing. Prideful arrogance, of course, is the opposite of Aristotle’s megalopsychos, for it demands recognition of something worthy of pride without being in clear possession of it. Saying that those who mourn are blessed, because they will be comforted is like saying that the injured are blessed, because they will be healed. That’s just stupid. Saying that people are blessed because they are persecuted for righteousness sake — and what is righteousness? – you may well ask — but living a life that is pleasing to god — which makes this beatitude circular. And people who insist on being righteous in this sense, like some insufferable people who bear with the slings and arrows of outrage when they picket abortion clinics, or parade in defence of what they think their god demands of all of us, whatever some of us may think, may be blessed, but there is very little I am prepared to say for their morality in terms of which it is admirable to impose your values on others, even though those others may give contrasting, but equally valid, reasons for thinking and acting as they do. And while peacemaking is to be admired, there is nothing admirable in peace at any price. As for being persecuted on Jesus’ account: well, this is the kind of arrogance that is only warranted if you accept the claims that are made for him, claims which are deeply implausible, and it is hard to think of this as an expression of meekness, so undoubtedly something written on Jesus’ account, and not something said by the man to start with. I know nothing of purity of heart, and have never met it.
As for mercy. That depends, I think. When someone has taken someone who once looked like this:
And turned her into someone who now looks like this by pouring acid over her face and body:
mercy is not the first thing to come to mind. Nor, in my view, should it be. We may want to treat the vile person who did this thing, according to law, and make sure that there are laws which will appropriately punish such behaviour, but mercy will not be the guiding hand that drafts such laws or commits people to the penalties prescribed in them. (You can see the BBC video, from which these pictures are captured stills, here – h/t Egbert.)
So much, then, for the saccharine in Jesus’ teachings regarding morality. I just noticed this morning, that Gary Gutting has something up about the Sermon on the Mount in the New York Times, in which he suggests that it does not provide us with a way to live our lives, and ends up by saying something completely inapropos, in my view:
Read alone, the Sermon on the Mount will either confuse us or merely reinforce the moral prejudices we bring to it. To profit from its wisdom we need to understand it through traditions of thought and practice within or informed by Christianity. This does not require membership in any particular church, but it does require immersion in the culture and history of the Christian world. In this sense, to forget the church is to forget Jesus.
But this is just a form of prevarication. If this is the kind of thing that Jesus has on offer, perhaps we should forget Jesus altogether, rather than going to school with him to those who claim to understand him more generously than the words themselves allow. Gutting has certainly not given us any reason to remember him.
The problem with Jesus’ morality goes much deeper, however, than the saccharine ”beatitudes,” which sound more profound than they really are; because he immediately follows them up with a moral philosophy which is simply horrifying in its implications. He begins by affirming the letter of the Jewish law — which then begs the question why Christians are not Jews — a debate which played itself out in the Pauline churches scattered around the littoral of Aegean. Which reminds me that Paul (or pseudo-Paul, depending on attribution) said to Judaisers in the district of Galatia, that, when they are circumcising new members, he hoped the knife will slip and they would castrate themselves — a lesson in mercy and love that was not lost in centuries to come when Christians encountered “heretics” (a variable in a moral equation which equals “thinks differently about matters of faith than us”) or believers in other gods.
However, back to the Sermon on the Mount. Having expressed himself instransigently on the letter of the law, Jesus goes on to amplify the law, so that we can tell he is really taking it seriously. The Ten Commandments forbid murder; but Jesus amplifies this in such a way that it includes being angry, or calling one’s brother (= follower of Jesus) a fool. Of the latter, he says, without qualification, thus showing forth his mercy, that the man who calls his brother a fool is worthy of the hell of fire. The same goes for another famous commandment: Thou shalt not commit adultery. In Jesus’ amplification anyone who looks at a woman — the morality is clearly about men — to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her (so, one might think, it would be as well to be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and, adultery being more fun, might as well consummate the deal right there and then). Just for clarity’s sake, let’s let Jesus say it himself:
But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
Well that’s fairly clear, anyway. Couple that with another of Jesus’ sayings in the same gospel:
… there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. [Matthew 19.12]
Now that really does put a shine on the injunction: “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.” And there were some Christians who did precisely this. Origen, the great Egyptian theologian, whose affirmation of “Universalism” — that is, the doctrine that hell will be empty — except, of course, for Hitler — cue George Pell — amongst other things, earned him a posthumous condemnation as a heretic, heard Jesus’ words and went out and castrated himself.
However it’s the mercilessness of Jesus’ morality that should worry us. Yes, we are to show mercy, but, no, God won’t — but yes, he might, if you love Jesus. Don Cupitt points out the problem:
One begins to realize that at the very heart of traditional objective theism there is something utterly dreadful and horrible, the worst idea that we poor humans have ever had, a virus in the brain so soul-destroying and yet tenacious that one wonders how we will ever be able wholly to rid ourselves of it. Do you know? – there are a few ideas and conditions that remain a cruel lifelong curse to those who are afflicted by them, and this one is the worst of them all. At the core of monotheistic faith is an experience of sheer black all-consuming terror, the terror of a damned soul that knows it cannot die. And that is why we have been so frightened of breaking the rules, and so fascinated with the spiritual power wielded by those who administer the rules. [The Old Creed and the New, 11-12]
And whether it began with Jesus or not, Jesus certainly made it his! However, notice another thing about this idea. According to Jesus, there is simply no way to avoid going to hell, for the amplification of the commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is impossible to obey. Human beings are just so constructed that they respond to sexual stimuli. It’s really that simple, and if responding to sexual stimuli — looking at others “lustfully” — which is particularly prominent at certain stages of life — is equivalent to adultery, and earns us eternal punishment in a place of fire, then we are all lost — or at least men are. Of course, but I forget: that’s what Jesus is all about. While we will inevitably fail, he is there to save us. So, all we have to do is to sin boldly, and then throw ourselves on god’s mercy. The trouble with this is that, while Jesus had to be encouraging to his friends, he also had to be dismissive of any who did not follow him. ‘Twas always thus. But it doesn’t really leave much room for truly moral action. Like all religious morality, this is a recipe for submission, not one to encourage moral growth or progress. Morality has to start somewhere else.
Excellent article. This is the heart of the question about the phoniness in Jesus’s morality.
It explains and justifies Christopher Hitchens’s anger against it.
However, when mentioning a book, like “The Old Creed and the New”, it would be much better to show the name of the author and the date of publication. This is the minimum of scholarship requirements.
Roo: Your’re quite right. I owe everyone an explanation. I wrote this yesterday, previewed it, and for some reason lost everything after the first picture of Shama and the quote from Don Cupitt. When I finished rewriting the last part this morning, I took it for granted that the first part, up to that point, was still intact. I was wrong. So I have now added Cupitt’s name as the author of the quotation, added as a edit after publication. Sorry to make this confusing. I should also say that the quotation is perhaps two separate quotes, since they are from my notes, and I cannot lay my hands on the book just now. That said, it seemed an apt quotation.
I have often thought that there are many signs in the OT of a development away from primitive tribal morality towards a truly humanitarian ethic. The trouble is, it is infected by the persistance of the tradition of Yahweh as the special god of the Special People and the written word as his Law: “not one jot or tittle shall pass away” (or words to that effect). One can very well put up with a god for whom an acceptable sacrifice is mercy and a pure heart, but one who thinks that it’s OK to steal the milk and honey with extreme violence, rapine and enslavement just to give it to a bunch of greedy grasping goatherds is not a worthy object by any measure. Consequently, the OT doesn’t properly represent a journey towards moral enlightenment but something more like three steps forward two steps back at some times, and at other times four steps backward, three steps fore. Because it’s a mish-mash of writings about this and that for this and that reason of ancient politics, all stuffed into a single cover. And the fact that it’s all God’s word, so there, is a serious problem, to put it mildly.
Jesus seems to be a case in point: on the one hand, the letter killeth and the spirit giveth life (and all those heated debates with the philthy phurtive Pharisees) and on the other “salvation is of the Jews”, and all that stuff about not feeding dogs with young-people-food (though actually, I’ve always thought of that not as something hostile but simply as a test, which the Gentile woman passes; similarly, the jot-and-tittle bit, taken in context, surely means something completely different from what your bible-thumper has in mind). Then there’s the murder of innocent pigs and fig-trees, and all that stuff about hating mum and dad and carrying crosses (I mean, I can understand that one might have to go one’s own way — you know, being grown-up and all — but hating perfectly ordinary people just because you confuse them, and one’s own family, to boot…? And what about loving one’s neighbour, and what about loving one’s enemies? And all that stuff about bringing swords instead of peace, which the event shows to be his one-and-only true prophecy?).
Jesus, in fact, is a muddled and inconsistent figure, the tool of every evangelist’s special agenda (which is one reason why I doubt that he existed). Paul, on the other hand, does genuinely seem to have tried to bring the Gentiles into the fold, which, given his peculiar ancient-world beliefs, was actually rather good of him. Except that it’s a horrible (and, from my cultural perspective, totally stupid) idea. Sorry, I haven’t looked anything up. Just my two penn’orth.
Re humility. Actually, I think that humility is the one truly great virtue, because it is all-encompassing, and it is utterly different from “modesty”, which is a social corruption. It’s about accepting things as they are, and not trying to impose one’s wishes on them (as in religious belief, for example). It’s the virtue of the skeptic, the virtue of the decent human being, the virtue of compassion and of simple kindness. It’s not about grovelling, it’s about truth.
It’s about accepting things as they are
I see that that’s ambiguous. I do not mean being willing to put up with the intolerable (“meekness”) but accepting what there is — that is, you must see as clearly as you can what there is (which you can’t do if your ego gets in the way, as with religious belief or political agendas). Unless you do that, you will never understand what steps, if any, are needed to proceed or make changes. Humility is the only possible remedy against egotism. Religious people see humility as servitude to their god (The Truth™), but their god is a projection of their desires. Humility is actually acceptance of (seeing) “how things are”.
This means that religion as commonly understood is a corruption of the drive towards truthfulness and the service of truth, and a perverting of the desire to improve the human condition towards the service of an idol (just have faith and it will all be all right, in the end, eventually, at the last judgment…). I think one of the reasons for this is laziness: it’s easier to have it all in black and white, and not to have to worry about thinking every step of the way (such hard work!). Another reason is the power of the manipulative and the weakness of wanting to be led — not just laziness, but fear of the complexity of things, as well as fear for oneself and one’s mortal frailty.
My suspicion is that Jesus (mythical, historical, whatever) was an apocalyptic preacher. He wasn’t teaching *us* how to live, he was teaching Jews of his generation how to die.
Of course some people have exploited the opportunity to work out their prejudices, and 60 generations on the ‘be good you are all going to die real soon now’ message is hopelessly buried.
Great article, once again, Eric! It speaks to the central problem of montheistic moral systems: good (as virtue) is defined into existence, and if one does not conform, one is condemned. Thus all are condemned. I can’t tell you the number of times I felt (while I was a believer) a choking sense of doom just for thinking “impious” thoughts! Don’t question, just follow. Disgustingly paternalistic and a sure road to tyranny.
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A great article,indeed.
However…
I sometimes feel your sentences are too long, and even (not here) that you have lost your way in them. The sentence beginning “And people who insist on being righteous in this sense” forced me to slow down and work out where the main verb was.
Gordon Willis: I think you’re basically right that a sort of humility — epistemological humility, in which one assiduously avoids the all-too-easy assumption that one has a direct line to the truth — is an important foundation for the very possibility of seeking and learning new truths. However, that sort of epistemological humility bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Christian understanding of humility as a virtue, which is all about self-effacing obedience to authority: The meek whom Jesus declares will inherit the earth would not dare even presume that they had any right think independently and seek out truths for themselves — which is why he goes on in the very sermon where he declares the meek’s inheritance to tell them that obedience to Jewish law and to his own interpretation of that law is the path to earning it.
I’ll stick with Aristotle for moral insight; there’s precious little, if any, to be found in holy books.
As Jason Rosenhouse said, back in 2010, “If you want literary depth and moral force, you will do much better with Shakespeare, Hugo or Dostoevsky than you will with the Bible.”
My name is Ken Schei and I founded “Atheists for Jesus” in 1989 (however, I didn’t give Richard Dawkins the T-shirt). I found your article (and the responses) to be well thought out and well written. If any of you are interested in a different point of view, I would like to invite you to listen to my (free) podcast series: “Atheists for Jesus: Rescuing Jesus from the Bible.”
The podcasts are available from iTunes or on my website: http://www.rescuingjesus.org.
I’d be very interested in your feedback.
That, in part, is what I meant. Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I agree with your every point. Religion corrupts morality because it exploits our moral sense and our desires in the service of an idol: it’s brain-washing, in fact.
However it’s the mercilessness of Jesus’ morality that should worry us. Yes, we are to show mercy, but, no, God won’t — but yes, he might, if you love Jesus. Don Cupitt points out the problem
Eric, I think this is profoundly true. Religious morality is impossible, and God is ruthless. Why? It makes no sense at all. Some believers rationalise it as something like unbelief is rejection of God and rejection of God is rejection of the ultimate ground of our being so we put ourselves in hell by our own will: but this, if I’ve represented it accurately, is clearly inconsistent nonsense, and, as far as I can see, dishonest. And one of the features of the behaviour of religious people is the readiness with which their immoral behaviour is excused: The Truth™ clearly has no necessary connexion with truth.
As to the terror that Cupitt discusses, I would guess that it’s an (intensified) inheritance from much more primitive fears of the baffling natural world. It seems to me that religion is a continuation in one form or another of the earliest dim perceptions of an animal with an evolving brain.
If atheists can win the ethical argument, and I think they can, then religion just might be defeated. Though the religious are happy to hold ridiculous supernatural beliefs, I don’t think they would be as comfortable if they were morally conflicted. I see a great many of the newly converted persuaded by moral arguments more than intellectual arguments. And it is to the ethical that are our most important allies.
I admit too much ignorance to really argue with much clarity on religious ethics, and so Eric’s great knowledge and insights into Christianity and ethics in general is extremely helpful, so thank you Eric, and please feel free to use long and complicated sentences!
David Evans, I’m sorry about the long sentences — though the one you indicate is quite clear as to the main verb (subject and verb bolded).
The rest of the sentence is made up of qualifying clauses. Besides, as I learned from reading John Donne, it is sometimes helpful to have to stop and think about what is really meant. We tend to speed read, and don’t really digest very much. Complex syntax is one way of slowing people down, and requiring them to respond to nuance. However — so that you don’t think I am being critical — you are right. Sometimes my sentences are too long. I write what I think, and do very little editing, I’m afraid, and I should go back over things and try to break my thoughts up into more accessible text bites.
So it appears that the only people who are going to make it to heaven are gay men.
No wonder the evangelicals are mad at them.
At the heart of all of Jesus’ teachings is not love for love’s sake, but simply taking yourself out of the judgement equation, because judgement is god’s and god’s alone. No, Jesus did not say be nice to each other because that’s just what you do, he said be nice to each other because you will be judged; and the wrongdoers will be sent to hell. A much harsher view of things than the god of the OT. At least when the OT god punished someone, they died and that was it. In the NT, punishment last for all eternity (or, until the “end of the age”).
There are a few decent things that can be attributed to Jesus as far as morality goes. “Do not be a hypocrite” or “do not seek vengeance for its own sake” are not all that bad. The idea that all people had equal merits in some way, albeit a strange afterlife punishment/reward kind of way, regardless of wealth or social status is also not bad.
Where Jesus really fails is in the justification stage, and of course he goes wildly off base in the many ways Eric has already pointed out. The idea of donating everything you have and letting a god take care of you is another terrible idea that was not mentioned, but with so many terrible ideas who could mention them all? Christian religious morality really just comes down to strict and blind obedience; a ruthless proceduralism which I don’t think can really be called morality at all.
As other commenters have already pointed out, Jesus’ words seem to be co-opted and changed by those who wanted to use them to their own ends quite frequently, so it is not surprising there is a lot of confusion in the message.
As other commenters have already pointed out, Jesus’ words seem to be co-opted and changed by those who wanted to use them to their own ends quite frequently, so it is not surprising there is a lot of confusion in the message.
Jesus’s supposed moral message is inseparable from his religious agenda, which is not true. The reason why so many people who should know better still talk about him as a great moral teacher is 2,000 years of propaganda. If he existed, he was a religious teacher, not a moral one, and his so-called morality is just a list of his god’s demands. Attempting to see him as a moral guide is quite enough to explain any amount of apparent “confusion in the message”.
@18
Good point.
That he may have stumbled onto one or two good ideas is eclipsed by the religious justifications that eliminate any consideration of consequences. I was thinking more alone the lines of how his messages tend to contradict each other, but you are quite right to point out that a rigid, immobile, religious obedience can never really be truly moral in any case to begin with.
John K.
I hope you didn’t think I was complaining. I basically agree, though I take issue with your implied sympathy for JC. For example, re your last, I don’t agree with you that JC even “stumbled onto one or two good ideas”, because the best ones are already there in the prophets (whom, pace Ken Schei [who is also really wrong about Paul and has obviously never thought about what he actually says] the Ebionites disapproved of), and it’s difficult to see JC’s teachings as any better than a selection of prophetic and Pharisaic “moralities”. Nothing that Jesus says works if you don’t belong to the Jewish religious tradition of the first century. Pace Ken Schei, Paul believed that the Gentiles could be brought into the fold and saved. Unfortunately, his idea of being saved is really horrible, and only a first-century Jew could have thought it a good idea (think of all those Islamic fundamentalists and their idea of a good society: Paul is heaps better than that, but it’s still blind faith and — from our cultural perspective — lunacy).
The question of religion as a guide to morals is the result of confusion. Through fear, ancient people wanted to appease their gods, and had to find out the “right thing to do”. On the other hand, the evolved instincts of members of a social species influences the idea of what is “right”. So there is an inevitable conflict, because the dictates of fear do not square with the day-to-day business of getting on with the other animals in the group, with all those necessary compromises and adjustments (I leave out the question of ambition and selfish goals, because these are not actually opposed by religious thought: the religious claim that they are, but in fact allowances are always made for the behaviour of group-members — witness the way in which the RCC deals with the problems of child rape and the abuse of girls and women generally). The main business of religious “morality” is subjugation to primitive fear, because that is what furthers the aim of bringing everyone into submission.
I mean:
On the other hand, the evolved instincts of members of a social species influence the idea of what is “right”.
Sorry, careless editing.
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Reblogged this on Skeptic Griggsy and commented:
The scam of the ages!
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