Biblical Morality vs. Modern Ethics
The Fundamentalists claim that the Bible provides moral guidance that is relevant to modern life.
The best argument against this is the Bible itself. As it turns out, very few living in the modern United States would truly wish to live under the moral code of the Bible. It describes a world where slavery is understood as a fact of life, where women have few rights, where people with disabilities are shunned as "unclean," where rape victims are ordered to marry the man who raped them, where gay men must be put to death, where children receive the punishment for their father's sins (as if they were his property), and where the population receives punishment for their king's sins (again, as if they were his property).
Fundamentalists claim that the Bible teaches corporal punishment, while modern evidence proves that this makes children more, not less, prone to violence and crime.
There are in fact a number of places where the Bible, as a collection of texts written over the span of a thousand years, show changes and evolution in moral thought. Jesus stated many things in direct contradiction to the moral code of the Old Testament. For example, he spoke out against divorce, which was allowed under the Old Testament, and even argued that this part of the old law came from Moses, not from God. (Thus Jesus himself smashed, in one blow, the idea that the Bible comes from God!) He prevented an adulteress from being stoned to death, though the old law would have required it. He declared all foods clean (freeing us from the requirement to keep kosher), and he defended his disciples when they were accused of doing work on the Sabbath.
Many Fundamentalists, faced with these objections from the Bible itself, try to argue that the sacrifice of Jesus "freed" us from the old law. This brings up a number of problems, not the least of which is the fact that if Jesus died according to the old law, then his sacrifice holds up the old law, showing it to be the will of God. Christians might be freed from purity requirements of the Old Testament, but they must still, in this view, represent what God "really" wants from us. And if God really wants us to stone adulterers or homosexuals to death, well, then why did Jesus tell us otherwise?
In the eyes of Jesus, the Fundamentalists come up short when it comes to feeding and clothing the poor, caring for the sick, and visiting the imprisoned. During the twenty-five years they have dominated American politics, the gap between rich and poor has increased, more children than ever before live in poverty, more people than ever before have inadequate access to healthcare, and America has the highest proportion of its population in prison than any other country in the world. Someone should tell them that Jesus said, quite clearly, "Only those who do the will of my Father in heaven will enter the Kingdom of God."
The Fundamentalists have been proven wrong in the past. For example, they offered many Biblical arguments in favor of slavery, or in opposition to interracial marriage -- arguments which were just as tortured and tenuous as the kind of arguments they make today in opposition to homosexuality or abortion.
The Bible contains a commandment to Christians to respect the divine mandate given to their government. This means that historically, the American Revolution, insofar as it represented rejection of the "divine mandate" given to King George III of England, was against Biblical morality! The Bible would have had American colonists -- and oppressed people everywhere -- kowtow to unjust governments.
It adds up to this: the Fundamentalists are just plain wrong about Biblical morality!
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