Yesterday I raised the question “Can a logical, understandable, and workable system of morality be based on the Bible alone?”

In an attempt to answer this question, I began an analysis of the Ten Commandments – the part of the Bible that many seem to believe offers the best possible foundation for a system of morality.

Having examined the background of these Commandments as well as the First Commandment in detail yesterday, I’d like to continue that analysis today by turning to the Second Commandment.

#2 – “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images, 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….”

That’s not quite all of it, but it’s enough to begin with.

Reading it as generously and as openly-mindedly as I can, it seems to be an attempt to re-emphasize and clean up the first: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Had that one just said “I’m the only God – accept no substitutes!” this one would have been unnecessary. I guess the tendency to worship “an idol or a fetish carved in wood or stone” (my dictionary’s definition of “graven image”) must have been a real problem back then and the author of the Commandments felt it merited special condemnation. As I look at the world today, however, I don’t see the bowing down before carved idols as one of our top ten problems. And I don’t think that’s because people have taken this Commandment to heart and cleaned up their act. I think the author of the Ten Commandments was just trying to stamp out an odd inclination among certain ignorant ancient people and that the demand of some people today that we post this commandment in all our high schools is about as bizarre as someone’s wanting to post a warning against The Evil Eye or bad vapors in all our medical schools.

That’s admittedly just my opinion, however. There are, of course, others, but I’m not sure you’ll like them any better.

Some people interpret this Second Commandment as meaning that we shouldn’t reproduce the image of any life form at all. Some Christians think Catholics violate this Commandment when they bow down before statues of Mary. Others look at all those paintings, statues, and other depictions of Jesus and others in Catholic and many Protestant denominations alike and shake their heads. Catholics and others defend these practices by saying that they’re not worshiping the depiction of Jesus or Mary but the holy person the depiction symbolizes – and through them, God Himself. Most Muslim artists seem to have traditionally concentrated on patterns and intricate designs because they believe God forbids most if not all depictions of the human face and form. Still others say that virtually all visual images of any kind are bad – that TV is a modern “graven image” and that anything at all that distracts from God is to be shunned because of this Commandment.

Adding to the confusion: The fact that Moses himself made a bronze serpent after he allegedly got this Commandment from God. (See Numbers 21:9.)

My conclusion: Any law that is open to so many radically different interpretations is badly written.

You say God wrote it and so it must be well-written – we’re just too stupid to figure it out? Well, guess what – the Bible itself says that sometimes God writes bad laws! He does it to lead people astray so He can punish them.

Ezekiel 20:25
Moreover, I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live.

How… special. But then this is a God who allegedly hardened Pharaoh’s heart just so He could hit him with another plague for having a hardened heart, isn’t it?

Moving on to the rest of the Second Commandment…

“… for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God…”

My dictionary defines “jealous” this way:

“1. Fearful or wary of being supplanted; apprehensive of losing affection or position. 2.a. Resentful or bitter in rivalry; envious. b. Inclined to suspect rivalry. 3. Having to do with or arising from feelings of envy, apprehension, or bitterness. 4. Vigilant in guarding something. 5. Intolerant of disloyalty or infidelity; autocratic.”

Fearful… wary… apprehensive… bitter… envious… vigilant… autocratic…. Gee, are you starting to understand why the Hebrews might have preferred a golden calf?

Why is it that qualities and emotions we dislike in people we’re expected to accept and love in a god? Any ideas?

And if anyone can explain how the God of the Old Testament is better than the highly emotional, mere-humans-with-super-powers gods of the ancient Greeks, feel free to pass that information along, too.

But wait – let’s put the above fragment in context first. It’s wrong to take things out of context, after all.

“… for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto the thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.”

Ok. Alright. This clears everything up, doesn’t it? If you hate God and show it by violating God’s law, your children, your grand-children, your great-grandchildren, and your great-great-grandchildren are gonna pay – apparently even if they themselves happen to be the holiest, most God-loving people who ever lived.

All those who think this makes perfect moral sense, raise your whip hands.

All those who think this provides a rational basis for a system of morality, please help us pass an amendment to the U.S. Constitution allowing for the great-great-grandchildren of Benedict Arnold to be hunted down and hung for treason and the great-great-grandchildren of Jesse James to be imprisoned for holding up a stagecoach in 1871.

Ludicrous? If so, you really ought to be used to it by now – the God of the Bible does this sort of thing repeatedly. Adam and Eve allegedly sin, and all their descendants are punished as a result. Humanity sins, so God sends a flood that allegedly destroys virtually all animal life on earth. Pharaoh refuses to let the Hebrews go, so all Egyptians suffer plague after plague after plague. In Joshua, chapter 7, one Hebrew steals and God punishes masses of other Hebrews. When David takes a census against God’s orders in 2 Samuel, God kills 70,000 of David’s people – and apparently doesn’t even slap David’s own hands. In fact, 1 Kings 15:5 says David always did right in God’s eyes save for that little matter of sending a man on a suicide mission so he could legally steal away his wife, Bathsheba, whom he’d already gotten pregnant.

Now consider what happened to the Hebrews after they made their beautiful golden calf. What happened was that Moses ordered 3000 Hebrews put to death even while doing nothing to Aaron, the guy who made the calf in the first place.

Some may be able to look at all this and see a good foundation on which to base a moral system. Inherited guilt. Collective punishment. Punishing people not because of their own personal crimes but because of the ethnic or national group they were born into. Failure to make the punishment fit the crime. Punishing people and making them guess why they’re being punished. Delaying the punishment of some people like Cain (and Hitler) until they’re dead while striking down others like Onan almost instantly for the high crime of “spilling his seed upon the ground.”

I think it’s nuts, but maybe I’m misguided.

Maybe things will get better as I examine the remaining 8 Commandments.

At the moment it’s hard for me to imagine them getting any worse.

But then I’ve been surprised countless times in this regard before….

Continue to the Third Commandment…

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