"Because God Said So" Is No Basis for a System of Morality
Personal morality needs to pass the sniff test
Growing up as a conservative Christian, my moral understanding was pretty shallow—more ten commandments than “love thy neighbor,” and, being raised Presbyterian, we all knew that the right answer to any hypothetical moral question was the most moderate one. When I was in middle school, LGBT issues started to come to the forefront of our church. The pastor and church members couldn’t condone the “gay lifestyle” but they seemed apologetic about it, like God was their uncool dad whom they privately disagreed with.
Many protestant Christians lean hard into sola scriptura—the idea that the Bible is the infallible word of God on Earth. The idea was that by reading the Bible we could know God’s will free of our own personal biases. I learned an absolutist view of the ten commandments, with certain convenient worldview-affirming carve-outs (“It’s ‘thou shalt not murder’ not ‘thou shalt not kill,’ so killing someone in combat isn’t a sin!”) The end of most moral questions was “because God said so,” or, if I was really pushy, “because God said so and who are you to question God?” That was (and is) a deeply unsatisfying answer.
Conservative Christian organizations such as Focus on the Family have done a lot to promote the idea of moral absolutism, often citing verses such as Hebrews 13:8-9, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” I can see the appeal in such thinking: it makes things simple and saves a lot of moral grappling. Following such an anachronistic worldview is difficult but if you can manage it, you earn a sense of belonging and a feeling of superiority to others who can’t.
Yes, there is an appeal to this kind of black-and-white thinking, but it ultimately comes at the cost of cognitive dissonance. To hold onto a morally absolute worldview, you have to ignore a lot of evidence. As the world becomes more connected and multicultural, we can see that these supposed absolutes don’t hold up across time, culture, or history, nor to much close scrutiny.
One theology professor I studied under would explain the pitfalls of absolutism this way. First, he asked who would agree with the statement, “adultery is always wrong.” The entire class would raise their hands. Then he gave us this scenario: imagine a genocidal dictator has had members of a certain ethnic group arrested and plans to execute them. A guard tells a married female prisoner he will release her if she has sex with him. Presuming he’s an honest jailor, would it be wrong for her to commit adultery? Wouldn’t it be better for her, her spouse, her family, and her community to violate her vows in this instance? Can adultery be called wrong in such circumstances?
It’s an extreme example, and one that asks us to whistle past some questionable consent dynamics, granted, but, at a smaller scale, life is full of decisions that don’t easily fit into a black-and-white, good-versus-evil worldview, because a list of rules cannot ever rise to the level of complexity of the human experience.
Take the commandment against lying. Is all lying wrong? Is it all equally wrong? A moral absolutist would say that a sin is a sin and all sins are equally wrong. But if that’s true, that would mean equivocating a lie like “your haircut isn’t that bad” with a Karen lying to a 911 operator about a Black birdwatcher “threatening” her. If we only look at these actions through the prism of “thou shalt not lie” we miss the consequences, context, and intentions behind these behaviors.
Growing up, the companion piece to “because God said so” was the voice of the Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit, I learned, that made me feel guilty/ashamed when I did something bad. (Never mind that I felt guilty all the time, for basically everything.) If I dropped an F-bomb when I stubbed my toe, I felt shame, even if I was alone, because I *knew* God heard me and was disappointed. That bad feeling was the voice of God through the Holy Spirit.
But actually, this shame response is not innate, it’s tied to culture. From Scientific American:
According to philosopher Hilge Landweer of the Free University of Berlin, certain conditions must come together for someone to feel shame. Notably, the person must be aware of having transgressed a norm. He or she must also view the norm as desirable and binding because only then can the transgression make one feel truly uncomfortable. It is not even always necessary for a disapproving person to be present; we need only imagine another’s judgment.
Shame is a learned response specific to cultural norms. We can see this when we think of public nudity. In some parts of Europe, topless or nude sunbathing is acceptable, but most Americans would feel ashamed to be naked in public. While some may assign a moral judgment to nakedness based on their feelings of shame, I would argue there’s nothing inherently wrong or harmful about public nudity.
Realizing that these shame responses are learned from culture rather than divinely inspired offers a certain freedom. We can question and push back against these feelings of shame and develop our own moral code. And philosophy, rather than being there to “tempt” us away from God, can help us wrestle with what it means to be a good person. Which was the point of all this religion, anyway, right?
Journal/Discussion Questions:
If you could write your own personal ten commandments, what would they look like?
Has your view of morality changed since you were a kid? How so?
What would be the most awkward place to be naked in public?
Eliminate the first four (they are nothing more than methods of perpetuating the myth),The remaining are a pretty fair guide,to live by. Missing is the concept of "doing better for others,than you expect them to do for you" and "don't take yourself,too seriously". The rest I leave to others. It has become much more fluid. It can only seem "awkward",if you decide that you've suddenly been gifted with the ability to read (care about) the thoughts of others and forgetting that one's body is beauty. I revert to who said so? When,Where,Who else heard it Or is it another facet of the Abrahamic Mythos.
Morality-based approaches often fail. As you said, the idea of "bc God said so" just isn't a good operating system to live by. Or said another way, it doesn't provide good guard rails. I prefer wisdom-based approaches. Failing at morality is often nebulous, but failing at wisdom is pretty clear. It's like, hey, I don't want to drive my family (or career or whatever) into the ditch so I should probably use some wisdom here.