The Ten Commandments: Moses and Solon

This is an exerpt by a guy named Richard Carrier and my response to it. The original exerpt is in italics and my response is not.

"Let us now turn to the Ten Commandments of Solon (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 1.60), which run as follows:

1. Trust good character more than promises.
2. Do not speak falsely.
3. Do good things.
4. Do not be hasty in making friends, but do not abandon them once made.
5. Learn to obey before you command.
6. When giving advice, do not recommend what is most pleasing, but what is most useful.
7. Make reason your supreme commander.
8. Do not associate with people who do bad things.
9. Honor the gods.
10. Have regard for your parents.

Unlike the Commandments of Moses, none of these is outdated or antithetical to modern moral or political thought. Every one could be taken up by anyone today, of any creed--except perhaps only one. And indeed, there is something much more profound in these commandments. They are far more useful as precepts for living one's life. Can society, can government, prevail and prosper if we fail to uphold the First Commandment of Moses? By our own written declaration of religious liberty for all, we have staked our entire national destiny on the belief that we not only can get by without it, but we ought to abolish it entirely. Yet what if we were to fail to uphold Solon's first commandment? The danger to society would be clear--indeed, doesn't this commandment speak to the heart of what makes or breaks a democratic society? Isn't it absolutely fundamental that we not trust the promises of politicians and flatterers, but elect our leaders and choose our friends instead by taking the trouble to evaluate the goodness of their character? This, then, can truly be said to be an ideal that is fundamental to modern moral and political thought.

Now, two of the commandments of Solon are almost identical to those advocated by Moses: do not speak falsely, and have regard for your parents. Of course, Solon does not restrict his first injunction to false accusations or testimony against others, as Moses does. Solon's commandment is more profound and thus more fundamental, and is properly qualified by the other commandments in just the way we believe is appropriate--for Solon's rules allow one to lie if doing so is a good deed (no such prescription to do good appears in the Ten Commandments of Moses). And whereas Moses calls us to honor our parents (in the Hebrew, from kabed, "to honor, to glorify"), Solon's choice of words is more appropriate--he only asks us to treat our parents in a respectful way (in the Greek, from aideomai, "to show a sense of regard for, to have compassion upon"), which we can do even if we disobey or oppose them, and even if we disapprove of their character and thus have no grounds to honor them.

In contrast with Moses, Solon wastes no words with legalisms--he sums up everything in three words: do good things. This is an essential moral principle, lacking from the commands of Moses, which allows one to qualify all the others. And instead of simply commanding us to follow rules, Solon's commandments involve significant social and political advice: temper our readiness to rebel and to do our own thing (which Solon does not prohibit) by learning first how to follow others; take care when making friends, and stick by them; always give good advice--don't just say what people want to hear; shun bad people. It can be said without doubt that this advice is exactly what we need in order to be successful and secure--as individuals, as communities, and even as a nation. The ideals represented by these commandments really do rest at the foundation of modern American morality and society, and would be far more useful for school children whose greatest dangers are peer influence, rashness and naivete.

There is but one that might give a secularist pause: Solon's commandment to honor the gods (in the Greek, timaô, "to honor, to revere, to pay due regard"). Yet when we compare it to the similar First Three Commandments of Moses, we see how much more Solon's single religious commandment can be made to suit our society and our civic ideals: it does not have to restrict religious freedom, for it does not demand that we believe in anyone's god or follow anyone's religious rules. It remains in the appropriate plural. Solon asks us to give the plethora of gods the regard that they are due, and we can say that some gods are not due much--such as the racist gods and gods of hellfire. In the end, it is good to be respectful of the gods of others, which we can do even if we are criticizing them, even if we disbelieve in them. This would remain true to our most prized American ethic of religious liberty and civility. Though it might better be rendered now, "Respect the religions of others," there is something fitting in admitting that there are many gods, the many that people invent and hope for.

It is clear then, that if anyone's commandments ought to be posted on school and courthouse walls, it should be Solon's. He has more right as the founder of our civic ideals, and as a more profound and almost modern moral thinker. His commandments are more befitting our civil society, more representative of what we really believe and what we cherish in our laws and economy. And indeed, in the end, they are essentially secular. Is it an accident that when Solon's ideals reigned, there grew democracies and civil rights, and ideals we now consider fundamental to modern Western society, yet when the ideals of Moses replaced them, we had a thousand years of oppression, darkness, and tyranny? Is it coincidence that when the ideals of Moses were replaced with those of Solon, when men decided to fight and die not for the Ten Commandments but for the resurrection of Athenian civil society, we ended up with the great Democratic Revolutions and the social and legal structures that we now take for granted as the height and glory of human achievement and moral goodness? I think we owe our thanks to Solon. Moses did nothing for us--his laws were neither original nor significant in comparison. When people cry for the hanging of the Ten Commandments of Moses on school and court walls, I am astonished. Solon's Ten Commandments have far more right to hang in those places than those of Moses. The Athenian's Commandments are far more noble and profound, and far more appropriate to a free society. Who would have guessed this of a pagan? Maybe everyone of sense."

And here's my response:

There are several points at which I disagree with this.

First, there is the implicit assumption that it is a bad thing to be "outdated or antithetical to modern thought." Of course there are plenty of people who find something sorely lacking in modern thought, myself included. I would much prefer, and indeed do much prefer a mode of thought that is quite antithetical to modern thought, and I like it better that way, because it seems more likely to me to contain what is missing from today's society than something that fits so neatly into our culture which "almost anyone of any creed could take up." Commandments that fit so easily seem to me to be of no consequence, since apparently we already follow them so well (of course, we don't even do *that* very well).

Second, and this is related to the first one in a significant way, I reject the command to "honor the gods" but I also reject the command to "make reason your supreme commander." I'll just go with Nietzsche and Pascal on this one. I will not make an idol out of reason. Reason has limits and they are obvious. Reason cannot prove or disprove presuppositions, or "first principles." It can only take first principles as a starting point and go from there to discover what conclusions follow from what starting points. Indeed, taking reason as one's supreme commander only represents starting with the (unprovable and unreasonable) assumption that reason is supreme. In any case, I find such a view of reason quite unreasonable. I think it only honest to accept that there is a much different process by which we come to choose our first principles that has little to do with reason.

The third point I make is that these commands, unlike the commandments of Moses, do not contain the resources that would make it possible to follow them. In fact, they contain their own destruction and contradiction, as is pointed out in the essay. One is free to break any of the commands if by doing so one is "doing a good thing" and since reason is the supreme commander, we can also break any of these commands whenever it seems to us to be reasonable to do so, even if it isn't good to do so. I think this point explains perfectly well why almost everyone in our society would agree that these are good commands and should be followed but very, very few actually do follow commands like "do not speak falsely", "do good things", or "do not abandon [friends] once made" in any meaningful way.

The commandments of Moses, on the other hand, start out with the very key to following them: "Thou shall have no other gods before me." Since these commandments require loyalty to something outside of and greater than oneself, they do not allow for such finagling, and they provide the sort of loyalty one needs to actually carry out such commands even when one does not want to, no matter how good one is at rationalizing. I think there is something powerful in this that modern american society, with its rampant individualism and avoidance of commitment as a barrier to happiness, is missing badly.

I think, though, that we would do better than either Moses or Solon if we would put up the words of Jesus summing up the greatest commands: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength." and "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Responding to "Beyond God the Father" by Mary Daly

In the section of Beyond God the Father assigned in my class, Mary Daly argues forcefully that Christianity is a patriarchal religion that has reinforced the oppression of women by placing the blame for sin on woman and making her out to be weak and vulnerable. She claims that women must break out of the societal restrictions that have resulted from the Judeo-Christian worldview and effect change by operating on the borders of patriarchal entities. She says that by doing this, women will be able to unify their divided selves, stop being complicit in their own oppression, and ultimately help men as well to reach a new consciousness that transcends gender identity.

Daly points very powerfully to the insidious ways in which women have been oppressed and been conditioned to reinforce that oppression to themselves and each other. She points out that the ways men have limited the female identity and failed to consider female freedom as important as male freedom have dehumanized both women and men. I found these points striking and compelling.

But I still have several questions. What about differing interpretations of the Fall, such as the on offered by Pope John Paul II in The Theology of the Body? His interpretation suggests that the message of the Fall, rightly understood, does not condone the oppression of women, but instead predicts and condemns it. How is Daly so sure that a Judeo-Christian understanding is the real culprit and not human nature, which twists Christian stories to it's own ends? Also, why is sexism more fundamental than racism? Can they not both be seen as ultimately manifestations of the same inner instinct, namely the instinct to subjugate and objectify that which is other? And as far as the conflict she points out between black liberation and women's liberation, why must one supercede the other? Indeed, how can there be hope for a solution if we are all still clamoring for our own rights? It seems to me that our only hope lies in the possibility of considering others better than ourselves, so that we are all clamoring for each other's rights. And finally, do men not face a unique oppression "as men" since they are forced by societal conditioning to participate in a process that dehumanizes them as well as those they oppress? I would suggest that getting back men's humanity is important enough to warrant an equal place for men in this movement. But how can we get either back if it must be either men or women who figure it out and teach the other? Maybe women alone are just as ill-equipped to solve this problem as men alone and the only solution lies in truly working together and putting each "other" before ourselves.

What Will Suffering Teach Us?

My girlfriend subscribes to Elle magazine and every so often there's an article that piques my interest. This time it was an article about a new and very expensive rapid form of detox. In traditional detox, you would simply have to wait out the awful effects of withdrawals until your body recovers naturally. In rapid detox, they accelerate the process and sedate you for the duration of it, condensing a process that can take more than a week down to a few hours.

I think it is noteworthy that with our wealth we find more and more ways to do evil without paying the consequences. This process is apparently becoming more and more popular as higher numbers of people become hooked on painkillers. This of course, is linked to a significant rise in the prescription of painkillers. We create more painkillers, not simply as a legitimate response to pain, but as a way to deal with the symptoms of our unhealthy and extravagant lifestyles. We would rather take pills than exercise or eat differently or lift with proper technique. We need more painkillers to prevent the consequences of abusing our bodies.

But painkillers have proven to have consequences as well: they can be addictive. Dealing with addictions is physically and emotionally painful, not to mention time-consuming and embarassing! So do we stop prescribing so much and start dealing with our problems the way that is both cheaper and more effective? Of course not. We use our wealth to invent a quick and painless solution to our invented problem.

It is not surprising that intially such processes caused several deaths. But what are a few lives in exchange for a reliable way to circumvent natural consequences? This seems to be the way we deal with everything. We use our wealth to save ourselves from inconvenience or pain. We use oil to save us from having to walk so much, and to bring us luxurious goods from far away. Then when there isn't enough oil around here to support our not-walking and our need for luxury items, we use our wealth to get oil from far away. Then, maybe when far away lands with oil have problems that might jeopardize their willingness to sell us oil, we might send our soldiers to bring us oil. Maybe we've done that and maybe we haven't. It wouldn't be out of character.

The problem isn't with the inventions. It is possible that nothing is wrong with oil or with painkillers. It is imaginable that we could use oil conservatively rather than to subsidize our laziness. We could use electricity more sparingly and ride bikes and walk more, and live without so many luxuries from far away places. It is possible that people could use painkillers responsibly, only to help themselves on the way to making lifestyle changes, rather than to save them from ever having to make them. We could use them conservatively enough to avoid more than a few of the addictions that seem to happen.

But that is something that our culture is not equipped to do. We do not know how, and I will admit that I do not know how, to take a gift and use it responsibly and carefully. There is something in me that only knows how to abuse gifts and make idols of them. I do not know how to play a video game just for an hour and then do my homework. I have to do my homework first or I will inevitably play much longer than I should. I have a very difficult time figuring out how to use my intellectual gifts solely for God's glory and not abuse them for my own pride. And in this respect, I feel very at home in this culture.

What is it about our culture that creates people like this? I cannot claim to know definively. I am only speaking as one who shares the problem. But there was something in this article that seemed to me to illustrate the problem as well as anything. In defense of the use of rapid detox, a woman is quoted as saying "Why should Gabrielle go through 10 days of anxiety, vomiting, and diarrhea? What will that suffering teach her?" (emphasis mine). At the heart of the problem, I think, is the fact that our cultural resources no longer contain a use for suffering or hardship. There is nothing wrong with using medicine to avoid suffering assuming no other harmful consequences, but in our wealth and prosperity we have deluded ourselves into believing that it is our right not to suffer and that suffering has nothing good to teach us.

This problem manifests itself in many ways. Recently, I was reminded of a passage I read in high school from a sermon by Jonathan Edwards delivered in 1741 entitled "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" that depicts with vivid imagery the precarious position of sinful man in relation to a just but merciful God. A sermon like that would never be preached today. We would never dream such a portrayal of God. I admit that even as a Christian, such a vision did not sit well with me at the time.

In the time since then, Christianity and time have given me resources for understanding such a perspective. As I have lived more and searched the Scriptures more, I have become more and more convinced, by the Holy Spirt I believe, of the depths of my own guilt. I have begun to understand why "It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." (Hebrews 10:30) I understand why Peter, upon witnessing a miraculous catch of fish, would exclaim, "Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!" (Luke 5:8). I think I have begun to understand just a glimpse of just how evil I am without God. There is no way God could be just is if were not angry at the things I have done. I do not believe such evil is, as a good friend puts it, the deepest truth about who I am, thanks be to God. Yet it is, at least for now, a truth about who I am. Christianity gives me a way to understand that truth about life without being consumed by it. Our culture's only answer would be that I am simply being too hard on myself and have low self-esteem.

What is it that has led us to believe we have a right to a life without suffering no matter how badly we abuse our bodies, our minds and our souls? What is it that leads us to expect that God would not be angry with us no matter how we ignore Him, or abuse the poor? I believe that we as a culture have idolized our wealth. Indeed, wealth makes these promises that God does not: wealth will save us from the discomfort we bring on ourselves, it will numb us from pangs of conscience, it will deaden us to all spiritual worries, and it will never punish us, if only we would bow down a worship it, seeking it above all else. Wealth has offered us comfort in exchange for our souls.

The book of Hebrews, I think, was written to a group of Christians with a similar problem. It seems they had lost those resources to understand suffering. They had grown comfortable in their Christianity and they grew to love that comfort. I would like to submit three passages from that book, which, I think, have much to say to our culture.

(1)"Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions." Hebrews 10:32-34

The writer reminds them of times when they suffered willingly and joyfully, and he reminds them why. It was because they knew there is something better than not-suffering. American history can offer this to our culture, in its own way. But our present generation has forgotten that there is something larger and more important than itself and its comfort.

(2)"During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. ⁸Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered." Hebrews 5:7-8

Here we are reminded the Jesus suffered and that he learned from it. We like to think that we can learn everything we need to without suffering and without experience. We live in a culture of arm-chair quarterbacks, arm-chair preachers and arm-chair Christians. But we cannot learn obedience to God without suffering. Indeed, "suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope" (Romans 5:3). Our generation must remember that there is value in suffering. We can learn something through it. We can develop character through it. It is certain that the generations who lived through the Great Wars and the Great Depression and the Revolution knew more about perseverance and had more character than ours does. It is probably true then, that they also knew something about perseverance, character, hope and obedience that most of us do not.

(3)"Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. 'Make level paths for your feet,' so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed." Hebrews 12:7-13

Finally, we have this passage, rich with understanding so different from what we have today. It is not surprising to me that this idea is so foreign to us when one of the premises the writer holds as an assumption is so untrue for us. Those of us in our generation who had "fathers who disciplined us" are truly rare and blessed. The image of a father disciplining a child seems almost as foreign and archaic in our culture as the idea of a angry God. And yet the underlying idea here is so powerful that we cannot turn away from it: something beautiful and good often results from something painful. Even more foreign to us is this: if God did not discipline us, He would not really be loving us. If we grab hold of this passage, would we be so eager to spend such a large portion of our resources simply to save ourselves from suffering?

I believe these passages contain Truth that our generation sorely needs. I believe they contain Truth that I sorely need. I have attempted here to relate them to elements in our history in a perhaps misguided effort try and communicate them better. But I do so not in an attempt to idealize those Americans or to Americanize those ideals but instead in an attempt to illuminate the specific ills of this generation through contrast with previous generations, who admittedly had their own problems where they did not share ours.

I am convinced that our generation will learn the lessons of suffering one way or the other. It is my hope that we can learn them by choice rather than by force when all choice is gone. It is my hope that we can learn to be responsible with our gifts, and to honor the gift-Giver, before our abuses lead to their natural conclusion. But I fear that it may already be too late.