Law of Liberty?!

25. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

--James 1

St. James refers to the Old Testament law as the “law of liberty.” Many conservatives say likewise: “This country was founded on Biblical principles,” or “Our Founding Fathers were are students of the Bible. This is why they were able to craft a free country.”

Old Testament Law? Freedom?

My atheist and pagan friends beg to differ! “The Old Testament Law was harsh and authoritarian! It is full of death penalties!” They have a point. Consider the following death penalty offenses:

Working on the Sabbath (which is Friday sunset to Saturday sunset, BTW) [Ex. 31:14, 35:2]. Even gathering sticks or lighting a fire on the Sabbath could get you killed! [Num. 15 for fire]
Cursing a parent. [Lev. 20:9]
Adultery and certain other sex crimes. [Lev. 20:10-16]
Being a medium. [Lev. 20:27]
Cursing God. [Lev. 24:14]
False prophecy. [Deut 13:5]
Worshipping other gods. [Deut, 13:6-9, Deut 17:2-5]

This is not a complete list. In some ways the Old Testament system was harsh and authoritarian. My atheist and pagan friends have a point. Many on the Religious Right who would confirm this opinion, since these fundamentalists would gleefully would take away many of the freedoms that remain in our nation, and would put yet more people in jail.

Perhaps this “law of liberty” language is really just spiritual language. I have encountered many a pastor who would say thus. Perhaps following these laws is the way to obtain the greater liberty that comes with the Resurrection. Perhaps looking for political liberty in the Old Testament is a misinterpretation. Surface argumentation would seems to back this up, giving us agreement between atheists, pagans, the Religious Right, and certain “spiritual” flavors of Christianity. Maybe those conservatives who claim that the Bible led to political liberty are merely misguided traditionalists.

On the other hand, there is the data. Take a look at a map of the world and note those countries that have a degree of freedom, prosperity and political stability. Compare this with a map of nations dominated by Protestant (i.e., Bible-thumping) Christianity. The overlap is almost perfect. We do have some outliers. Japan is relatively free and quite prosperous, but it was recently conquered by the United States who imposed Japan’s current government. Take a look in the Middle East and you will find little in the way of stable democratic countries – except Israel, which is, of course, heavily influenced by the Old Testament.

Yes, I know plenty of freedom-loving freethinkers, atheists who are more libertarian than most Christians. Many of them even claim that to have a freer society requires getting people to reject religion and to study philosophy instead. However, we have had many nations that tried this; they were called communist. Such nations had a tendency toward bureaucracy, prison camps, genocide, and other terrors.

I know some pagans who claim that a tolerant society requires a pagan revival. Those who believe in many gods are supposed to be more tolerant of other beliefs and lifestyles than those who restrict themselves to one god—and a jealous one at that. This is an interesting theory, but recent data are not promising. The biggest pagan revival of modern times was Nazi Germany. Hitler was a nature-loving vegetarian with an interest in reviving ancient German folkways, including its old religion. The results were not pretty.

In between there was The French Revolution, an attempt to have a country adopt a “rational” religion accompanied by a Reign of Terror.

The data indicate that the religious conservatives are right. There is a correlation between Bible study and liberty, albeit imperfect. Bible-thumping Christianity has not always led to liberty, especially when it has been polluted with racism. But on the whole, its record is better than the alternatives.

But why is this so, despite the authoritarian elements in the Law of Moses? Coincidence? Divine intervention? Or what?

While I do think that divine intervention is a factor, there is a more mundane mechanism hidden in plain view: there are many libertarian elements to the Law of Moses, far more than generally recognized. Many of the libertarian guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution are also called for in the Old Testament. There are also as are quite a few liberties mandated in the Law of Moses that we currently do not have in the U.S. Some of the tyrannical ideas called for by the Religious Right are violations of the Law of Moses. The problem with certain Fundamentalists is that they are not fundamentalist enough!

In what follows I will focus on the Old Testament law, that is, what was to be enforced in the Holy Land. Please note that just because something was permitted does not mean that it was or is moral, only that there was no mandate for punishment by government. For example, polygamy was legal, but it was never the ideal, as Jesus pointed out.

Note also that the New Testament sets a higher standard of personal behavior, but it gives even less mandate for forcing its standards upon others. Jesus set an example of forgiving acts that were punishable under Old Testament law and called for his followers to do likewise. As such, I think it is safe to say that the Old Testament law forms an upper limit on what Christians are allowed to force upon others and a lower limit on Christian standards of personal behavior. That is, if an act is punishable under Old Testament law, then Christians may or may not have a mandate to enforce such a law today, but if it was not punishable under Old Testament law, Christians definitely do not have such authority. (Space does not allow me to expand upon this assertion here, but I intend to cover this in a future article entitled “The Power of Mercy.”)

Next: Size of Government

In this Chapter:

Spread the Word

Del.icio.us