a story of creation, pt. 5

A bit like you, male and female created;

reasoning kind, with one another participated;

gifted with you name, the earth officiated.

Carrying your image, marching in likeness,

thinking as One and living as Three,

man stands at the height of your making

and a reflection of thee.

Come on, Chris

This past April, ardent self-proclaimed anti-theist Christopher Hitchens published his monthly article in Vanity Fair about the Old Testament's Ten Commandments. His article, "The New Commandments," leads with an intentionally evocative subhead: "The Ten Commandments were set in stone, but it may be time for a re-chisel. With all due humility, the author [Hitchens] takes on the job, pruning the ethically dubious, challenging the impossible, and rectifying some serious omissions."

Hitchens proceeds to work through each of the Bible's Ten Commandments (OT, Deuteronomy 5:6-21), giving various explanations about how that particular commandment came to be and its function within Ancient Israel. Then comes his grand conclusion:

What emerges from the first review is this: the Ten Commandments were derived from situational ethics. They show every symptom of having been man-made and improvised under pressure. They are addressed to a nomadic tribe whose main economy is primitive agriculture and whose wealth is sometimes counted in people as well as animals. They are also addressed to a group that has been promised the land and flocks of other people: the Amalekites and Midianites and others whom God orders them to kill, rape, enslave, or exterminate. And this, too, is important because at every step of their arduous journey the Israelites are reminded to keep to the laws, not because they are right but just because they will lead them to become conquerors (of, as it happens, almost the only part of the Middle East that has no oil).

As if this conclusion isn't convincing enough, Hitchens again rehearses the content from each commandment, this second time explaining what needs to be "pruned" from the commandments for a new context. And then after liberating his readers too-accepting minds, he offers a final verdict concerning one of history’s most recognizable teachings:

It’s difficult to take oneself with sufficient seriousness to begin any sentence with the words “Thou shalt not.” But who cannot summon the confidence to say: Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color. Do not ever use people as private property. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature—why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and destroy them? Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly. Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife. Turn off that fucking cell phone—you have no idea how unimportant your call is to us. Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions. Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above. In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form.

Since sometime during my college years, I've casually kept up with what Hitchens says. Naturally, I disagree with almost everything he propagates concerning Christianity and religion. But I have always appreciated Hitchens' breath of knowledge and his clever use of language in communicating his fervent dislike of any form of theism.

"The New Commandments" represents a fail by Hitchens. I expect more from this admired atheist. Aside from his surprisingly sloppy use of words, the author's conclusions about the intent and extent of the Ten Commandments are foreign to anything in the texts themselves, and Hitchens' lazy use of sources doesn't inspire much confidence in his research. Now, of course, an article in Vanity Fair isn't held to the rigorous standards of an academic journal. But if he intends to displace a body of teaching Jews, Christians and secular persons have embraced for thousands of years, then Hitchens should put a little more thought into his arguments. And where is that humility about which his subhead talks?

NY Times top ten of '10

Here is the New York Times top ten books published in 2010. An intriguing mixture of biography, collected writings and fiction, the list provides a nice spring-board to reading deep-and-widely.

a story of creation, pt. 4

Straining for life, for a place next to Him,

Adam tasted the inverse of his with.

Breath, which once anticipated an enduring career,

now kneels at the merciless feet of time.