Bible Ethics Denounced

[Doug]

My letter to the editor.
Northwest Arkansas Times

Posted on Thursday, May 17, 2007

Gladys Cole explains [Times, May 13 ] how important the Bible classes were in her education in the Dallas public schools. She recommends that our public school children receive similar classes. Kurt Cypert of Fayetteville had a letter the same day in which he says of Jay Cole, Jr., that “ your Christian fundamentalist tendency to historicize and literalize religious myth confines you to the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age in your thinking potential regarding the issues of today. ” This shows why Gladys Cole’s plan is unworkable. The ancient ethical practices of the Bible are often at odds with what our society now accepts. For example, the Bible treats women as second-class citizens. Even the Ten Commandments refer to women as though they are property. Slavery is immoral in our society, but the Bible enjoins it and never denounces slavery as an institution, even in the New Testament. Deuteronomy 20 says POW’s can be forcibly enslaved. Any U. S. soldier in Iraq who tried this would be arrested. Slaves from foreign nations were slaves for life, and could be inherited as property (Lev. 25 ). The United States fought a civil war to get rid of such thinking. The Bible has God ordering genocide (Deut. 20, Josh. 10: 40, 1 Sam. 15, and many other places ). In an era where school shootings are in the news, should we give our children a book that endorses such conduct ? Our society has moved past the ancient views of the Bible. We should continue forward, not backwards.
Doug Krueger / Fayetteville

See here.