Thou Shalt Not Commit [Yawn...] Adultery

In his Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris next turns his sights on the supposed indispensibility of the Decalogue for shaping a nation's moral character. He notes that the first four commandments "have nothing whatsoever to do with morality," but rather forbid all non-Judeo-Christian expressions of worship (on pain of death, he adds). Commandments 5-9 do address morality, Harris concedes, but he then expresses doubt about whether anyone obeys these commands because of the commands themselves, since:

"Admonishments of this kind are found in virtually every culture throughout recorded history.... It seems rather untimely, therefore, that the average American will receive necessary moral instruction by seeing these principles chiseled in marble whenever he enters a courthouse."

Harris then points out that if God exists and is to be taken seriously, then we must admit that we his creatures are not free to only obey the commands we like while disobeying the ones we dislike, nor can he simply relax the penalties he has imposed for our breaking his commands.

A few thoughts:

1. Sam Harris has a greater appreciation for common grace and natural law than many evangelical and Reformed believers today.

2. Though he wouldn't state it in this way, Harris rightly points out that the Decalogue, as such, is not "the moral law," but is a summary of that law covenantally formulated for those to whom it was originally given.

3. Unlike many non-believers, Harris actually sees the law (whose works are hardwired into him) not as suggestions to improve his earthly life while threatening no ill-effects if ignored, but as non-negotiable and inflexible expressions of who God is (if he existed).

4. But like all non-believers, Harris cannot fathom the transition from an obviously broken law to a program of redemption according to which the law's demands are honored, God's justice retained, and yet sinners are pardoned.

So I give Harris a point against the evangelicals for recognizing that a Judeo-Christian ethic is not indispensible for a just society, but the theonomic Reformed fare no better than their fundamentalist counterparts within evangelicalism on this score. Give Sam another point for recognizing the spiritual nature of the law and the serious consequences for breaking it, but as expected, he gets no points for recognizing a gospel he is blinded from seeing anyway.

WWMLKD?

Sam Harris needs a good, confessional, two-kingdoms suckerpunch (given in the love of Christ, of course). With every page I read of his Letter to a Christian Nation, the more I wish I could spend some time with him to administer that, umm, corrective myself.

The next section of his book deals with ethics. He remarks that "the idea that the Bible is a perfect guide to morality is astounding, given the contents of the book." He then goes on to cite all those verses about parents hitting their kids with rods, Israel chucking rocks at a guy for picking up sticks on the wrong day of the week, and how we should be nice to our slaves (unless, of course, they irritate us). The New Testament, he argues, doesn't offer much by way of improvement (despite the Golden Rule, which Harris likes but points out was somewhat well-worn by the time Jesus came on the scene). He then admits that someone like Martin Luther King is often seen as "the best exemplar of [the Christian] religion." The problem with this view, Harris argues, is that King learned his nonviolence not from Jesus but from Mohandas Gandhi. "The doctrine of Jainism," Harris concludes, "is an objectively better guide for becoming like Martin Luther King Jr. than Christianity is."

Where to begin?

Oh! I know: how about with the fact that Harris has no idea what the point of Christianity actually is?

Now, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he has been spending too much time with those evangeliberals whose entire understanding of Scripture is that it is essentially the same as William Bennett's Book of Virtues, only with a leather cover and those thumb-index thingies.

If I could explain one thing to Harris, as well as to the theonomists, Christian Nationalists, and others who have been fueling his crusade, I would say that the Bible is not intended to be read as a "perfect guide to morality," neither is the aim of Christianity to make the world a kinder, gentler place for our kids to grow up in. In fact, our religion is pretty useless for just about everything short of re-doing what mankind ruined by summoning a new, heavenly city from the ashes of the earthly one.

To put it more simply, I would explain the difference between the law and the gospel, (and hint: neither of them asks, "What Would Martin Luther King Do?").

Can Harris Habeas the Corpus Christi?

As we continue to consider Sam Harris's attempt to "demolish the intellectual and moral pretensions of Christianity" in his book Letter to a Christian Nation, we come now to a glaring flaw in his argument. Part of the problem is that Harris is confused about whom he is attacking, as should be apparent when he writes:

"Consider: every devout Muslim has the same reasons for being a Muslim that you have for being a Christian.... The Koran repeatedly declares that it is the perfect word of the creator of the universe. Muslims believe this as fully as you believe the Bible's account of itself."

Harris asks his readers why they don't lose sleep about whether to convert to Islam since they (most likely) cannot prove that Gabriel did not appear to Muhammad in his cave and give him his commission. The burden of proof, he says, is not on you to disprove it, but on them to prove it, which they cannot do. Well, since you know what it's like to be an atheist with respect to Islam, you can now hopefully understand why Harris is one with respect to Christianity, as well as all other religions that rest on an unsubstantiated and unverifiable claim to divine authority.

It is at this point that Harris's confusion becomes apparent. A typical evangelical would have a difficult time responding to this argument since his faith is largely based upon his experience of Jesus not unlike that of the Muslim (or the Mormon for that matter). But if Harris's opponent is, as he claims, someone who believes in Christianity "because it is true" (such as a confessionalist), then this argument presents no problem at all.

I believe the doctrines of Christianity because Jesus rose from the dead, not because he was visited by some angel in his secret bat-cave and then wrote a tell-all book about it later. The resurrection of Christ is something so profound that it has not only not been disproven (even by his enemies immediately afterward, or for 2000 years since), but it immediately, as in a few weeks later, began to alter the course of history.

To put it another way, Christianity, unlike Islam or any other religion, is instantly disproveable. So if Harris can habeas the corpus Christi, then he will have succeeded in his aim of destroying the Christian religion. But even if he can and does, he still will have been wrong that we believed for the same reason that Muqtada al-Sadr does.

Atheists 1, confessionalists 1, evangelicals 0.