Asking better questions

The supreme court had a major decision this week regarding gay marriage.  The main argument  - you heard it too many times already - is that the new ruling is "against the word of the bible" or "against God's will", which is - you heard this one too too many times - marriage is defined as a union between a man and a woman.  On the other side of the argument the progressive folks are bringing "evidence" from either the church or the bible that there are no such writings, therefore it's open to interpretation.  The progressive folks reasoning is that the church does not have a monopoly over such decision.  And yes, the progressives too are bringing God and the bible into the argument.  Unfortunately, both sides leave the most critical questions out of the argument:

Who wrote the bible?
When?
Wait, there's more than one version?  How so?
And which God?  There are thousands of gods out there, which one are "we" listening to? 
Why this god's word is important and not other gods? 

The answers to such questions are crucial to the conversation, because without them it may seem that all people believe in the same god or gods and follow the same bible.  And we all know that this is not the case.  The goal of this document is not to examine the bible itself or God.  Rather, we will try to show how the we, the people who choose which laws are governing us, don't ask the right questions.

Before we dive into the discussion about God, which might be more complex, let's quickly clarify the biblical question, because with all due respect, it's just a document.  It was authored by humans at a certain time (and was rewritten several times since).   Science now knows a whole lot about it than ever before.  So let's start there.

One more thing, sort of a disclaimer:  I'm writing this piece fairly quick.  Maybe some language is not formed well; maybe not all the facts are precise.  But the main idea is there.  Alright, here we go.

The Bible

Well, the first question to ask is "which bible"?  The Hebrew one (the Old Testament)?  The New Testament?
The next question would be:  Which version?  

It is agreed upon by most biblical scholars that the Hebrew bible, the one everything else was based upon, was first written around the 6th century BCE or, roughly 2600 years ago.    While not all the stories in this early version can be explained by modern science, we do know the name of the Judean king who ordered it written - Josiah.  And it was written according to his religious and political agenda.  We will not dive into that discussion right now.  The above is just a reference point in time.  So we know who wrote the first version of the bible, when, and why.

But, and this is key to the conversation, we don't have that very early version of the bible.  What Jews are reading today are later versions, which changed again and again over the years.  For example, the idea of monotheism did not exist yet when King Josiah's authors did their work.  Each author or authors changed things - according to their own time and agenda.  These are well known facts.  The idea of monotheism was inserted into the Hebrew bible only after Jews returned from Babylon to the land of Israel.  Anyway, I made this comment not to discuss monotheism but to show how the bible changed according to whoever edited it at the time.

And then Christianity.  I won't go into the history of who wrote what and when.  For one, I'm not a scholar.  I don't know enough about it.  But I do know enough to know that early Christians were actually "new Jews" and that Christianity caught on 200-300 years after Jesus.  This, too, is sort of irrelevant to the discussion.  What's important is that the New Testament was written "late" (compared to the Old testament) and was modified even later.  The version that is used today was written by King James only 400 years ago.  And if you study the subject you would find that he shaped this version, like many of previous authors, according to his era and his own agenda.  So what you read today is not the word of Jesus; not even Paul or Mathew.  These are the words of King James's authors.

So, without judging which bible people talk about and what's in the bible itself, we already see that all documents were written for a much earlier times.  Society was different.  For example, women had no rights at all; sick kids were left to die; people owned slaves "legally"; it was ok to conquer far away countries and rob all their gold for the church.  Etc. etc. etc. So if there's any  word about marriage, shouldn't it be taken into account nowadays who wrote it, when, and why?

And all of that without even mentioning other documents belonging to non Judeo-Christian tradition.  What about African/South American/south Pacific tribes?  Is gay marriage ok in such societies because they don't follow the bible?

Bottom line: Those who are quoting the bible - on either side of the gay marriage argument - never took the time to learn where this document came from.  They're assuming it's the word of God.  Which brings us to...

God

There are at least two ways to discuss "God's word".  One way would be to analyze which god (or gods) people talk about, the role of such god (or gods) in the bible (wait, which bible???).  If you study the above mentioned versions of the bible, you'd discover that the people at the time when the bible was written practiced polytheism.   Again, I could have dove into the complex question of the history of the concept of god, the different gods, and so on.  But I'm not sure how such discussion would have contributed to the argument at hand.  A better questions to ask, when presented the sentence "but this is the Word of God", might be: Which god?  What do you know about this god?  Where is he from (by this I mean, from which tradition and when and under which circumstances did this god came about)?  There's a whole exploration to do here.  To say "I believe in God and that's enough for me" is really not enough if you don't bother to explain it to yourself.

But the other way to discuss all of that is to simply realize that one person believes in God and the other not.  Since belief is equal between all humans, your belief is as good as mine.  It's just a belief - a feeling, complex or simple as it may be.  Just a feeling.  The concept of God, thus, is subjective.  As strong as your belief might be, you can't make anybody believe in what you do.  And since we're all different, we all have different beliefs, different values, etc.  So why do the constitution have one size fits all?  One god (it is still unclear which one), one bible (same story).  

In short, rather than trying to determine if gay marriage is according to the word of God or is permissible in the bible, wouldn't it be better if the high court dug into the sources of these?

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I'm not stupid (well....) and certainly not naive.  I know that this is unlikely to change.  People are not comfortable asking such questions.  We prefer to believe in the unknown rather than dig for the truth.  That is unfortunate.  But what is more unfortunate is that we deprive our fellow citizens of their rights based on our ill beliefs.  

So next time you either support the court decision or oppose it, maybe you'd take the time to ask the hard questions:  Who wrote the documents that our laws are based on?  When?  Why?  What was the religious and geo-political situation at the time?  How are such ancient writings still relevant to today's society and law?  Or, are they?