Deutoronomy 25:11-12: My favorite Biblical references (really)

To all those people out there who hold up signs citing their favorite Biblical verse by chapter and verse without elaboration (as though we should all know what they intend to say), here are a few of my favorites that should send the Bible thumpers scrambling to the nearest Holiday Inn so they can actually read beyond their 2 or 3 favorite cherry-picked verses they have memorized:

Genesis 12:19  God punishes the Pharaoh for taking Abraham's wife as his own; the Pharaoh realizes Abraham lied when he said his wife was his sister,  confronts Abraham, telling him to take his wife and leave Egypt.
Genesis 22:2  Abraham believes god wants him to murder his own son so prepares him for slaughter, only to then believe god calls it off at the last minute.
Genesis 4:1  First sex in the Bible.
Genesis 5:8  Seth lives for 912 years
Genesis 5:3  Adam was a proud father at age 130 when he fathered Seth
Genesis 5:20  Jared lived for 962 years!  Whoah!
Genesis 6:3  God shortens man's life to "only" 120 years
Genesis 6:5  After taking all the trouble to create the earth and life and everything, God said he would kill everything he had created including animals because "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually"
Genesis 1:14 Shout out to astrology - god creates stars "for signs"
Ezekiel 20:25-26  God shows he's a badass by killing a bunch of babies, so that everyone can know how awesome he is:  "I also gave them over to statutes that were not good and laws they could not live by; I let them become defiled through their gifts—the sacrifice of every firstborn—that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the LORD. "
Leviticus 20:9  "If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death."
Deuteronomy 22:20-1  A girl caught having premarital sex must be stoned to death by the men of the town.
Deuteronomy 22:13-21 A woman who marries and is found not to be a virgin shall be executed.
Exodus 35:2  Anyone caught working on the Sabbath should be killed (I'm looking at you, Super Bowl players, staff, and announcers!)
Deuteronomy 14:6-7 You can't eat rabbits or camel.
Leviticus 11:20-22  Insect-eating is OK except "you may eat any kind of locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper."
Psalms 104:5  The Earth is not hurtling through space but resting on a Foundation, whatever that is, and can never move.  God said so.
Genesis 2:23 Adam goes to sleep and God "took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof" and made the rib into a woman.
Judges 11:35  Jephthah murders his daughter because he made a bet with god, promising he would kill the first family member to cross his threshold if god would let him slaughter his enemies on the battlefield.
Genesis 19:8 Lot offers his daughters to be gang-raped in Sodom.
Genesis 19:32-6  Lot while drunk is seduced by each of his daughters (one each night) who have sex with their father, getting pregnant by him. "Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father."
Mark 8:12  Jesus says to stop looking for signs of god's arrival - there won't be any.
Mark 8:33  Jesus calls Peter Satan.
Mark 9:43  Jesus advocates amputating your hand or plucking out your eye rather than risk going to hell whole.
Mark 10:11-12  Divorce and remarriage is the same as adultery.  (Sorry, Newt)  "Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery."
Leviticus 20:10  Those who commit adultery should be killed (when is General Petraeus's execution?  And does this mean that those who divorce and remarry should be killed?)
James 5:14-15  Faith-healing works, doctors don't.
Genesis 6:15  Noah's house boat is only 450 feet long
Genesis 7:6  Noah was 600 years old when the flood hit.
Quran 29:14 (if you really want to confuse folks)  Noah was 950 when the flood hit.
Genesis 7:19-20  "The mountains were covered" with 15 cubits to spare, meaning Noah's ark must have had oxygen and some kind of heating system and ice-breaking technology (since this would have been higher than Mount Everest, where water freezes and oxygen is thin).
Luke 14:26  If you don't hate your family, you can't really be Christian.  "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."
John 14:27 AND Matthew 10:34 (this will really confuse them)  Jesus says he DID bring peace and also that he DIDN'T.  "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you."  but "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword."
James 5:1  Rich people are going to hell. "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you."
Matthew 19:23-24  Ditto.  "Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
Mark 10:23-25  And again, more rich people burning.
Deutoronomy 25:11-12  No penis, no testicles, no hope of heaven.  "A man whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off may never join the assembly of the Lord."
Titus 2:9  Slaves should be submissive to their masters "in everything" and be "well-pleasing and not argumentative."
Leviticus 25:44-45  You can own slaves, but only from neighboring countries or from temporary residents in your own country.
Exodus 21:20-21  If you beat a slave to death, you have to pay the slave owner some money.
Deuteronomy 20:10-17  God wants you to commit war crimes, killing every last man, woman, child, fetus, and animal, even if they try to surrender.  "When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. . . . This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.  However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them —the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you."

If This Were Fiction, No One Would Believe It...

If events in Washington were fictional (sometimes we all wish they were), and we were all part of some screenplay, the first thing a good editor would tell us is to rewrite the whole damn thing, starting with the names.  The conversation might run something like this...


Now you've got to change the names here. You can't have a president who has the middle name Hussein and use that name for your villain in Iraq. And what are the odds that his last name - Obama - shares every letter but one with the other bad guy's first name - Osama? It's weird. 
You're already asking the reader to buy the idea that Americans would vote for a black man after a century of owning them and another century fighting like hell to keep them from voting.   IF that would ever happen, you've got to make it believable, starting with the name.  Only in a novel would more Americans vote for a guy with a name like Barack Hussein Obama than for any presidential candidate ever. Right.  
And it just doesn't seem plausible that this pointy-headed academic Constitutional law professor named Obama would nail Osama in only 2 years when his predecessor - the one with the custom-made flight suit and the Mission Accomplished banner who kept falling off the bike - couldn't do it in 8.   Why build this Bush character up to be a man's man, a brush-clearing, smoke-'em-out, dead-or-alive sort of tough guy only to make him look so ineffective by comparison?    
But that's just the beginning.  Who is this guy Boehner. Really?  Don't tell me how it's SUPPOSED to be pronounced; readers are going to pronounce it as they see it and they will think of what it sounds like.  And this after an administration run by two guys named Dick and Bush?   Right.  
Then you have these shadowy billionaires financing the Tea Party and you just had to call them Koch... no, no, stop telling me how it's SUPPOSED to be pronounced; no reader will look at that name and think of COKE.   And he has to start a party of mostly white guys running around getting all excited and calling each other tea-baggers?   You've managed to take an explicit gay sexual act and turn it into something disgusting. 
And what's the name of this minor character from the Dick and Bush era who gets convicted of obstruction of justice but pardoned by the guy he lied for? Scooter?  You're pulling my leg, right?  I have never met an adult named Scooter.  I don't care if it's a nickname, it's weird.  Next you'll be saying there's a Newt in there... 
Oh, you've got to be kidding me! And this Newt fellow goes after a president for adultery in Act 1, Scene 1, impeaches the guy, but we learn in Act 2 that Newt was committing adultery during the impeachment process?  
And at the end of the book, the guy he went after is more popular than god, touring the world wiping out hunger with a rock star named... Bono; and this same rock star was giving advice to a Republican Treasury secretary about alleviating poverty in Africa and this Republican guy listened?   C'mon.  It's just not believable. 
OK, so Newt gets voted out of office, but makes a come back after writing a series of books on Saving America from - is this right? - a "Right Wing Secular Liberal Machine"?  Those are really his words?   So he's not just a hypocrite, but a nut job.  Readers will feel insulted, especially Republican readers.   The Party of Lincoln, even in a novel, would not stoop that low.  You have to make him likable at some level. 
And you' can't have a bad guy who made off with everyone's money named Madoff, and if you do, you can't have it pronounced that way. It's just way too heavy-handed. And if you're going to have another bad guy caught up in another massive scandal, do you have to call him Abramoff. What is this, Dr. Seuss?
And this Palin lady - at least her name doesn't sound like a body part - but you're seriously going to have her quit halfway through her term in Alaska, sign a multi-million dollar book deal, then claim to be a moose-hunting hockey mom?  She can't have her employer build a sophisticated sound studio in the basement of her house then claim that the "lamestream media" is trying to shut her up because she is conservative.  And lose the "lamestream" part - there is no way a woman with a disabled child would use a word like "lame" in that way.  If we want to like her, she has to have some sensitivity or compassion.
It's way too ironic having her teenage daughter get pregnant after she advocated  abstinence-only education while governor of Alaska. It's like you're making fun of these guys.  Do you think the Republicans would be so dumb as to run her if they knew what a mess her family was.  And no kids - none - are ever REALLY called Track, Trig, Willow, or Piper.  Bristol, fine, that's cute, but then you get her knocked up.  

You just can't make her so dumb.  What person with a pulse, much less one who wants to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, couldn't name a single supreme court decision or newspaper she reads, or thinks Africa is a country?   If you're going to have her talk about death panels why immediately alert the reader to the fact that they don't exist?   It kills the plot; once again we have a bunch of crazy people talking about things that they should know aren't real and why? 

Why not tease the reader along, or write some actual death panels into the plot.  This Obama fellow seems a bit too perfect, too polished, too likable.  If he had some sort of dark secret, this could be it.  But then you have to ask why he would be so stupid as to sneak something into a bill that he himself is signing, not writing. 

Oh, and don't have Palin put cross hairs over a likable Congresswoman whose husband is an ASTRONAUT no less (who just happens to have an identical astronaut twin (right!) who is in charge of the space station) then have this lady get shot.  It's too ironic and heavy-handed.   If you do carry out this ridiculous subplot, at least give Palin some capacity for introspection or remorse.  She can't go comparing herself to victims of the Holocaust or pogroms against Jews.  She sounds not just dumb and irony-challenged, but whiny.  I don't like her and I'll bet most readers won't either.  At least most readers have to be given some reason as to why intelligent voters would ever find such a person appealing. 

And if you're going to have an Axis of Evil introduced in Chapter 2, follow up.  You can't have one country invaded and the other two sort of fizzle out.  I like that phrase, by the way, it's got a nice zing to it, but do two of the countries have to share 3 out of 4 letters - you're asking a lot of American readers not to confuse  Iraq and Iran.  Why not fictionalize one, call it Iraqistan or something, or make the other one Canada?  

And this Birther subplot sounds bizarre.  Why are all these Tea Party guys so convinced the president, the first African American president, is really only African?  And everyone who obsesses over this mysterious birth certificate that you tell the reader in Chapter Three was never in doubt and in fact had been released just happens to be white?  Come on.   Readers do not like racist characters, even crafty villain types and these guys aren't even crafty.  
Readers are going to lose patience with these guys.  I know I did.  Move on already. 
And you can't have these Republicans threatening to go after Medicare, Social Security, Head Start, healthcare for poor children - poor children! - AND help for 9-11 volunteers.  We're talking VOLUNTEERS!  On 9-11!   People would be on the streets if this really happened.  And why?  You're trying to make the case that this party is smart but crafty, but here they just seem dumb, trying to plug a trillion dollar hole with a few pennies.  
I like this Rose character who goes into women's healthcare clinics with a hidden camera to nail workers saying stupid things; you have the beginnings of a likable anti-hero, a single issue woman out to single handedly take on this evil organization, but there has to be more.   The organization has to be evil, or she just looks like another nut.   You can't have her going after a group that mostly provides cancer screening and medical care to poor women and girls.   Again, it sounds mean-spirited.  Why not have her infiltrate a hedge fund or oil company?  
You have all these random characters running around with their pet issues and none of them make any sense at the end of the day.  But you could work with her.  I would make her a former porn star or stripper, someone who maybe felt pressured to have an abortion when she was working her way through college, doing tricks on the side, that sort of thing.  Gets real mad, maybe work in a feminist angle.  Abortion as the subjugation of women or something.  It would be unexpected, counter-stereotypical, and might just work. 
But she has to really find a real scandal, otherwise she just looks like another nutty character pursuing her pet issue.   How about something along the lines of higher ups in this evil organization selling fetal body parts on ebay to a diabolical Chinese manufacturer of puppy dog chow?  Now THAT would be a scandal.   This stuff about a bonehead employee counseling fake pimps about dodging reporting requirements does nothing for me.  It's not the sort of stuff Republican lawmakers would present as evidence on the floor of Congress.  
And lose this white loser side kick who dresses up as the world's most unconvincing pimp and goes after all these black organizations like Acorn and what not.  He's too overtly racist, too much of a scumbag.   I'm telling you, most readers are going to feel that you're mocking them and some do care about these issues.  
That Trump character - Trump is the best you could do? - comes across as an evil megalomaniac with an obsession for birth certificates everyone in the book has seen but him.  How can a guy have a helicopter but not an internet connection?  He looks thoroughly moronic sending his "people" off to Hawaii to look for a birth certificate while the president is busy producing Osama's death certificate.  Readers don't like stupid characters, even villains.  And all this stuff about his hair is gratuitous.  Give him some off-setting virtue, maybe make him a really good juggler or something.  
And I guess that's my biggest problem with the book:  why do all these white people think this Obama guy is so bad?   You've got to make the economy heading toward a depression, not on the mend.  The stock market should be crashing, not double what it was 2 months after he took office.  If he lowered taxes for the very rich and everyone else, but they keep calling him a socialist, after awhile these white guys just look angry and kind of dumb.  It makes no sense.  
Where's the catastrophe?   Where is the deep, dark secret that he is desperately trying to hide?  Look, if you want to make this guy into a disaster, bring some of that bad stuff the Bush and Dick people did, like have Obama be the one deregulate the financial industry, watch it blow up as a result, then turn around and hit up the tax payers for $700 billion to fix his mess.    Can't you move this Hurricane Katrina - the only name I like in the book - to Obama's watch?   Having all these poor black people abandoned by a black president would be a twist; having a rich white guy do it is a stereotype.  Too much.  
I like the oil spill, thought you were going somewhere with that, but it sort of made all those Republicans chanting "Drill, baby, drill!" or whatever sound massively discredited.  Again.  C'mon, they have to do something right. 
Have Bush and Dick find something in Iraq, some suspicious powder, a suicide goat stuffed with plutonium, a diabolical anthrax lab.  They can't go charging in and find nothing; hell, at least have them plant something.  
You can't have all this bad stuff happening on his predecessor's watch, then have him look so good by comparison.
And I've got problems with these other names.  
Like Huckabee. Why not just call him Aw-Shucks-abee? When I hear Huckabee, I think of a barefoot guy on a raft drifting down the Mississippi River with a straw hat and a runaway slave.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not very presidential.
Mitt Romney - is a name maybe we can work with but why not give him a real name like Mitchel or Michael or something. Mitt is something you use in baseball to catch balls.  And frankly, we don't need any images that can be worked into a crude joke, even indirectly.
And you can't have Mitt running against his own healthcare reform plan.  It's just too sloppy, too ironic, plot-wise. 
I guess you have to ask if you're writing farce or fiction.  If it's fiction, it's got to be believable.  Even a farce has to give the Mitts and Newts and Kochs and Boehners some redeeming qualities, starting with their names.  You can't have all these angry white guys with bad names reflexively hating the first African American president for the flimsiest and weirdest of reasons.  There is no way the press in a free country would let them get away with that sort of crap.  No one would ever believe it.  

Ten Commandments Upgrade 2.0

Background

As is true with most things, before discussing the Ten Commandments, it's helpful to at least read them.  Only 14% of all Americans could list them (although 25% could list the ingredients of a popular hamburger).  In another poll, 78% could not name 2.   Even some politicians who made the most noise about posting the Ten Commandments prominently were unable to name them, as were 68 of 200 Anglican priests.

The so-called Ten Commandments were the first 10 of 613 commandments or mitvot that all good Jews had to follow.  Since 10 is easier to remember (and follow) than 613, these first 10 have been emphasized from the time of King Josiah to the present.  

There is a long tradition of reducing a complex, legalistic, often contradictory set of rules to a few that can be followed and obeyed.   Centuries before PowerPoint, teachers have recognized the importance of a few, easy-to-remember bullet points.

Rabbi Hillel famously reduced it to one:  don't do unto others as you would not have done unto you (the rest is details).  

Jesus, when asked which of the commandments one had to follow, said five plus a variant of Rabbi Hillel's teaching:

And Jesus said, 

    ‘You shall not murder; 

    You shall not commit adultery; 

    You shall not steal; 

    You shall not bear false witness; 

    Honour your father and mother; 

        also, You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’

    

        —Matthew 19:16-19

The Ten Commandments themselves can be divided into 5 that are specific to a particular religion (Judaism) and 5 that are universal behavioral or civic commandments:  

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

1. You shall have no other gods before me.

2. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male or female slave, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.

5. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.

6. You shall not kill.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

10.  You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Problems with the Ten Commandments

So what is the problem with posting these Ten Commandments written a couple thousand years ago in front of the court houses of a modern, tolerant, democratic, pluralistic society?  

The question almost answers itself.  

First, the historical, ethnic, and religious specificity and exclusivity of the first five of the commandments make them not only inapplicable, but offensive in a secular society with no official state religion and that includes citizens who worship many gods, other gods, or no gods at all.   It would be wrong to assume all citizens are either Jewish or Christian, and although the Koran has a similar set of commandments virtually identical to these Ten, the selection of this particular formulation from the Torah connotes religious preference for one or two Abrahamic traditions over the third, violating the Separation Clause of the Constitution. 

Second, the Second and Third Commandments clearly violate First Amendment free speech protections.  One man's "graven image" is another man's holy icon.  How could such a law be defined, much less enforced?   Not only does this forbid the manufacture of such images, but explicitly forbids their worship, even in the privacy of one's own home.  This would be a clear violation of First Amendment guarantees of religious freedom.   Prohibiting speech, even speech as mildly offensive as the phrase "Oh, God!", flies in the face of our freedom of expression.  

Third, part of the Second Commandment is not a commandment at all, but a threat issued by a "jealous God" not just against those who would worship "graven images" but against their great grandchildren ("to the third and fourth generation") which clearly undermines our Constitutional rights to be held accountable for our behavior only, not that of our great grandparents.  The idea of collective, genetically-endowed punishment is deeply offensive to the rule of law and our Western tradition.  

Fourth, as the Orthodox in Israel have discovered, enforcing a Sabbath is deeply problematic in a modern society.  How can one safely staff emergency rooms, protect crops about to be damaged by hail, or rescue people at sea if all labor must cease on Saturday?  And which Sabbath would be enforced, the one referred to here, or the later Christian variation (Sunday)?  

Fifth, the Commandment to unconditionally honor your father and mother would clearly be inappropriate in the case of rape, incest, or parental neglect or abuse.  Since many of those involved in the court system disproportionately suffered from these things, institutionalizing a blind obedience to genetics over the rule of law or ethics could undermine justice, even if subliminally.  Some parents quite frankly should not be honored and many children unfortunately must be protected from or even separated from abusive or neglectful parents.  

Sixth, we have a long tradition of outlawing behavior, not thoughts or feelings.  Coveting or desiring something maybe undesirable for many reasons, but it is not criminal and a Commandment against it gives the state an implicit right to regulate something it should not and cannot control - the desires of its citizens.  If I steal my neighbor's flat screen television, I have broken the law, but no modern court should be in the business of telling me I cannot look longingly at it.  Also, the listing of my neighbor's "wife" along with his slaves, animals, and other property reflects a misogynistic Biblical view of women as chattel, possessions of her husband, a view completely incompatible with the society in which we live and the family law that views all citizens regardless of gender as equal.      

Finally, the explicit references to slavery, something abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment, show how badly dated and incompatible with the United States Code these Commandments are.   We live in a world in which slavery and religious intolerance, even though both exist in some form, elicit almost universal revulsion.   The Ten Commandments were written in a society that legalized and encouraged both. 

A Badly Needed Upgrade

Societies evolve.  Degradation of women and the ownership and sale of other human beings, as well as capital punishment for eating shellfish or talking back to your parents have gone the way of witch hunts and alchemy.  If we absolutely must reduce morality to ten easily remembered and universally accepted (however imperfectly followed) points, why not upgrade those parts of the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments that clearly were historical artifacts of the men who wrote them?  

Many alternatives exist, including those cited by Richard Dawkins.  None is perfect and need not be.  That's not the point.  The idea is to find a few cross-culturally robust, metaphysically independent ethical norms. 

We need not even start from scratch, since a few of Version 1.0 of the Big Ten are quite good.   In fact, the best of all religions - including Judaism and Christianity - can be boiled down to a few simple rules:

 - Treat others as you would be treated yourself.  Treat all human beings with dignity and respect.  Period.  If you own animals, treat them humanely and with the respect they deserve as our close relatives.  All other commandments follow this one.

  - Don't kill.  Don't cause pain to other sentient creatures unless you absolutely have to.  Don't rape, don't commit war crimes.  Avoid not just violent behavior but violent speech and metaphors.  

   - Don't steal.  If it's not yours, don't take it.  Don't own other people - parents do not own their children and husbands do not own their wives.  Slavery is the ultimate theft of another person's labor, freedom, and dignity.  

   - Don't lie.  Especially to children.  Don't say things you know not to be true.  Separate what you feel or want to be true from what you have actually experienced or witnessed.  Separate facts from speculations, reporting from editorializing.

  - Embrace doubt and honest questioning.  Question your assumptions, gather data, then form and modify your world view.  Never accept something on authority alone.  Trust but verify.   Be prepared to modify your world view if the weight of evidence says you should; there is no shame in changing your mind.  Approach spiritual questions with as much openness and honesty as you would approach other questions for which there are no concrete answers and over which intelligent people disagree.  Doubt and humility are  the beginning of wisdom, not its enemy.  Never let faith be a substitute for doing your homework.  

  - If you must cite religious texts, at least quote them accurately.  Don't misquote Jesus.  If you're going to thump the Bible, first read it.  

  - Tolerate criticism; never threaten or silence dissenters.  Understand that the Bible is a collection of orally transmitted documents translated multiple times and liberally edited by scribes and local authorities.  It's OK to pay some attention to the man behind the curtain.  Stop threatening those who disagree with you with torture or hellfire, whether directly or outsourced to a projected deity.

  - Let kids be kids.*  Don't impose your own beliefs on them, especially if those beliefs are potentially traumatic.  Even if you believe in hell, it will still be there when your child turns 18 - why the rush to terrify them at age 8?  Let children decide as adults what metaphysical beliefs if any they wish to adopt.  There is no such thing as a Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Hindu child.  If you expose children to one particular religious education or tradition, allow them to witness and experience the rich diversity of other beliefs and traditions also.  Never misrepresent your particular world view as having a monopoly on truth or risk losing all credibility when they find out that it doesn't.  Be humbled by the fact that no religious tradition comes close to claiming a majority of the world's citizens as its adherents, so whatever we believe, we are outnumbered!   

 - Do the simple good that is in front of you.   If you can't feed 100 children, feed one.  There is enough work to be done here and now to alleviate poverty, combat global warming, and simply raise our kids to be good human beings without tearing ourselves up over whether god exists, is one or many, is male or female, cares about us or doesn't think about us one way or the other, or has really big feet.  If god exists, he's probably not as petty and easily offended as we are. 

 - Seek happiness.  Suffering is inevitable, but misery is optional.  We often confuse pleasure and happiness, but whether we believe in one god or many or none at all, we can all seek and find happiness here and now, and help others to find happiness also.  Indeed, this may be our only real duty and is entirely consistent with the others.  

* This is the only "commandment" that is probably NOT shared by most world religious traditions, most of which start with the assumption of having a monopoly on truth and recognizing the need to indoctrinate children early to pass on this "truth" to the next generation.   I would argue, as does Dawkins, that if a truth is so self-evident and robust, it will be as true at age 21 as at age 4.  

That's it.  I'm sure there are others you can think of, and perhaps there are some here that will not meet with universal agreement, but I imagine most people, regardless of the specifics of one's geography or faith tradition (and the two are highly correlated), already try to live by several if not all of these.  

The main point is that we share remarkable moral and ethical principles that are not that difficult to codify.  We don't insist on making 1982 personal computers run 2011 software; why on earth should we force a society that has liberated women and emancipated slaves to twist itself into following without modification the moral injunctions of an agrarian culture and the religion it created?   Anyone who engages in the biblical "abominations" of eating shellfish, working on Saturday, or wearing clothes of a cotton-polyester blend (mixed fibers, forbidden in Leviticus) already upgraded whether they realize it not.  Why not take the upgrade one step further and make it explicit?

Newt Gingrich: To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine - my review

Newt Gingrich:   To Save America:  Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine - my review

This is how your review will appear:  Beyond Garbage, March 10, 2011 By  Mark Vakkur - See all my reviews     This review is from: To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine (Paperback) To really save America, you might start by pledging never to read this book. Not only is it bad history (stunning for a man who apparently taught the subject and wrote a few works of historical fiction), but it advances as facts spurious, disrespectful, inflammatory charges that have virtually all been widely discredited. The fact that Newt Gingrich must know this, but writes it anyway, indicates that his fidelity to the truth is no greater than his fidelity to his first two wives. Mr. Gingrich can't even get the title right. First, it's PRESIDENT Obama. He earned that title by winning the election, receiving more votes than any American president in history. Second, President Obama is a Democrat, not a socialist. There is only one member of Congress who is a socialist, an easy fact for Mr. Gingrich to check. Third, the breathless reference to a "secular-socialist machine" is simply not supported by anything President Obama has done, stated, or written, and it most certainly is not backed up by anything Mr. Gingrich writes. Fourth (and perhaps this is technical) socialism by definition is secular, so the secular part is gratuitous and redundant (and probably should not be hyphenated). It does add a certain alliterative punch though, which is perhaps why the author chose to throw it in there. Mr. Gingrich alleges that there is a Vast Left Wing Conspiracy with the diabolical aim of empowering government to rule the people rather than serve them. As evidence of this, he cites the Justice Department's respect for the rule of law and the Geneva Conventions in the treatment of suspected terrorists (in Newt Gingrich's world, they are already guilty, and trials and attorneys are a redundant (and tax-supported) burden. I always find the idea of an American Left (which Mr. Gingrich capitalizes for emphasis) as amusing, considering that in Europe, where I live, the Democrats would be considered a right-of-center party and the Republicans a far right party. Issues the Republicans view as socialist plots to deprive us of our liberties - such as universal healthcare, worker's rights, federally-funded daycare, extensive public transportation - have long been settled here with generally outstanding results. In fact, the United States spends more on health care but (as I write this) leaves 59 million of its citizens without health insurance, a problem Newt Gingrich does not address directly (although he has two chapters on health care, mostly about how to reduce costs and the dangers of death panels, a Sarah Palin fabrication whose critics he ridicules (p. 56)). Perhaps Gingrich feels his audience will not get his message unless he overstates it, but instead of saying that he opposes healthcare reform, he titles the chapter in question, "The Secular-Socialist Machine's Health Bill Disaster" (p. 85). Wow, if that doesn't make you run into the street waving a Lipton's tea bag, I don't know what will. It's interesting that the same man who does not believe our children need health insurance believes that what we do need is a gun in each household and that - even with our government's advanced arsenal - a family could and should be able to keep those weapons just in case that government ever gets tyrannical (p. 294). This myth of the gun lobby - that guns can protect you not just against intruders but against your own government - is reminiscent of Sharron Angle's "second amendment remedies" rant and her intent to "take out" Senator Reid. If Gingrich's first name was Saddam, he likely would be getting a visit from the Department of Homeland Security for making even veiled terroristic threats against his government, but Newt is very, very white, and a new convert to Catholicism, so apparently gets a free pass. The book is not only sloppy in its logic, but mean-spirited. Mr. Gingrich tells us he is a Christian, but don't expect any evidence of charity or compassion in these pages. People who are on the Left are not like you and me, Gingrich assures us. They believe in theft rather than work, union bureaucracy rather than "productivity", corruption rather than honesty, and "secular oppression" rather than "religious belief." Now, I'm not sure how much stock to put in a lecture about honesty from a man who cheated on two wives with much younger women (one while crucifying the President of the United States for cheating on his wife), and I don't know how committed Gingrich is to "religious belief" if he has been one of the most vocal critics of his fellow citizens exercising their religious beliefs in lower Manhattan. But this collection of cartoon-like false dichotomies which he lists on page 7 is not only insulting, but completely uncorroborated by anything that follows. If you want a reference to any of these dastardly traits from that oppressive Secular Left (did I mention they have a Machine?), you won't find one. If many of these stereotypes sound familiar, that's because they are rehashed talking points from Fox News, who pays Gingrich $1 million a year for repeating them. The fact that Mr. Gingrich's personal life is so sordid and deviates so widely from what he pontificates should matter to us all, since he has advocated repeatedly that the personal, sexual life of public officials is not only fair game, but a fantastic litmus test for measuring their righteousness. By that measure, Gingrich fails, and this book does nothing to explain the yawning gaps between his serial adultery and his preaching of Christian morality. Comparing the president of the United States to Mao or Hitler while calling him something Gingrich knows (or should know) he is not is beyond irresponsible, especially during a time of war. The idea that a president who just extended massive tax cuts for the rich, who has advanced or passed no serious firearm legislation, who has kept Guantanamo Bay open and escalated the war in Afghanistan is a socialist is beyond nonsensical, and Gingrich should be ashamed for advancing such a lie, especially in the title of a book. But a man who can present his wife with a divorce agreement while she is recovering from cancer surgery probably has a much higher threshold for shame than the rest of us. Your Tags: fascist, tea party, hypocrite, adultery, cancer, multiple sclerosis, fat, islamophobia

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Governments Grant Freedoms; Religious Fundamentalists Do Not

At his inaugural breakfast, Wisconsin Governor Walker said, “The Great Creator, no matter who you worship, is the one from which our freedoms are derived, not the government.”
This is a very strange formulation I hear many Tea Party and fundamentalists type make, but it makes absolutely no sense on several levels. 
First, anyone who believes that our government cannot grant freedoms should talk to the descendant of a former slave liberated by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of OUR GOVERNMENT.  The faith of the slaves was legendary, and to this day some of the most inspiring and truly Christian (if I can say that), heart-felt worship can be found in the gospel choirs and pews of historically African American churches throughout the South.   But all that faith did not liberate them; a federal employee named Abraham Lincoln did along with a few hundred thousand other federal employees in the Army of the Potomac.  
A century later, it was federal courts that insured African Americans had the right to vote.  If anything, Christianity may have prolonged and justified the torment of slavery.  Slavery, Jefferson Davis pointed out "was established by decree of Almighty God… it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation."  Sadly, he is correct.   Put bluntly, slavery is biblical, conservative, and traditional; emancipation is a secular, liberal, modern development. 
(For a great contrast between this approach and the stodgy, white bread variety Bush's and Kerry's ancestors (yes, they were cousins and Mayflower descendants) imposed on Massachusetts, check out Bush's stony face at the funeral service for Coretta Scott King, and contrast it with the reminders from speaker after speaker about who was closer to the true message and spirit of Jesus of Nazareth.)
Second, throughout the revolutionary turmoil of the 18th and 19th Century, Christian conservatives were consistently on the wrong side of the barricades.   (It was deists, after all, who founded our country, not religious fanatics, and the anti-clerical zeal of the French revolutionaries was legendary.)   It is possible the Conquistadors would have been as cruel if they did not believe that God was on their side (and that indigenous people, as non-Christians, had no real rights not to be worked to death in their silver mines), but to really stick it to someone, it helps to have it in your head that God is on your side (and only yours). 
Monarchy and Christianity went hand in hand; virtually every sovereign stated that his ability to rule his people and siphon off a portion of the loot for himself claimed God gave him that right.   It makes sense, actually; there is nothing at all democratic in the idea of a Yahweh in the clouds, meting out eternal punishment for all but a tiny elect (and he's not telling).   There is no appeal, simply an all-powerful executive, sometimes cruel, but always reliably in charge.  Having a parallel command structure as your state religion can be a unifying force, which is why both Emperor Constantine and later the Prophet Mohammed found the idea of monotheism so appealing. 
Parliamentary representative democracy, on the other hand, was not just pluralistic, but messy, unpredictable, and placed a power in the individual that none of the agrarian societies that wrote the Bible ever dreamed of.  All of the hallmarks of liberal secularism - the end of slavery, universal male suffrage, representative democracy, limited government and the rule of law, women's suffrage, the abolishment of torture and then capital punishment (in Europe at least - we are still waiting in the United States) and separation of church and state - came not because of but DESPITE religious conservatives and their values.  There is nothing in the Bible supporting any of these ideas and much against them.  The Bible condones slavery, says women should be quiet in church, never approach the alter when menstruating, and if they have questions, ask their husbands later (whom they must obey).  It says nothing about judicial oversight, parliamentary procedures, or the abolition of cruel and unusual treatment - in fact, it recommends quite a few, including stoning, drowning, eye-gouging, and hand-amputating for crimes such as talking back to your parents or working on Saturday (the Sabbath).  
So, yes, we can have a Bible-based society or we can have a parliamentary representative liberal democracy, but we cannot have both.  I believe this is the source of much tension in the United States between the religious right and the other 80% of the country:  they have a formula that if rigidly followed is not only incompatible with democracy but antithetical to it.  No issue today makes this issue more salient than abortion:  how can you have a democratic process that demands compromise and submission to laws of men, even those with which you passionately disagree, while embracing a belief system that demands that one's ultimate obedience is to god as you conceive him?   Unless theocracy were imposed, there would be conflict between these two models, and it's not just abortion.  Quakers and other pacifists must support the Pentagon.   Those opposed to the death penalty must nevertheless pay their state taxes that help pay for the lethal injection and the executioner's fee.   Welcome to democracy, which will always be fundamentally at odds with the top-down, authoritarian absolutism of Mediterranean Monotheism. 
There are of course many countries that have not instituted the liberal reforms of parliamentary democracy including separation of church and state, but I would not like to live in any of them.  The  Islamic Republic comes to mind, as does Saudi Arabia, and certain tribal areas of Pakistan and Taliban-controlled territory in Afghanistan.  I would not like to live in any of them.  
People of course have the right to advocate for whatever form of government they want, and to move to those countries where there is less daylight between religious and secular authorities.  But it is historically and logically nonsensical to equate freedom and theocracy, especially if that theocracy is of the Mediterranean Monotheistic variety.  
Yahweh is not interested in your freedom; he demands your obedience, absolutely, always, and without question.  If he says kill your son, sharpen your knife and fire up the barbecue.   If he says roast your daughter because she is the first to greet you after you have returned from the slaughter of your enemies, well, you better do that to.  The god portrayed in the Bible casts Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden not for murder or stealing or war crimes but for eating a piece of fruit.  Because it was low-hanging and tasted good.  They were not obedient, so they were cast out forever, women were made to suffer labor pains during childbirth and men had to work.  Or so it goes.  
Yahweh allegedly drowned every man, woman, and child except for the Noah clan and the animals he could cram into his 450-foot (300 cubits) houseboat, not because the people had raped or plundered but because of the "imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually"  (Genesis 6:5).   It seems such puny stuff for a mass extinction, but again, it is a violation of the cardinal rule running throughout this book:  obey and submit, even in your innermost thoughts. 
Jesus is a vast improvement over Yahweh, but the New Testament offers no Disney-like ending either.  In fact, Jesus makes clear repeatedly that he has come not to replace the law but to enforce it, to gather lost sheep and point them back, presumably toward Yahweh.  When his disciples asked him how to pray, he urged them to ask only for their daily bread, then that the will of God - not theirs -  be carried out.   Yes, he preached compassion, forgiveness, a radical redistribution of wealth that would make Karl Marx blush, and offered a new definition of adultery that included divorce and remarriage (allowed under Jewish law).   When asked how to get into kingdom of heaven, his followers are given a set of rules that involve submission and obedience, not freedom.   There is no evidence Jesus was particularly interested in democracy, although as an educated Jewish man he may have read about Athens, but there was (sorry, small government libertarians) lots of evidence that he preached obedience to the state, including the paying of taxes. 
The sister faith of Judaism and Christianity, Islam advances a virtually indistinguishable set of dietary, social, and reproductive rules that have the same end:  obedience.   It is no coincidence that Islam means complete surrender to the will of God.  
Again, this is not to say that these ideas are bad; there is some evidence that people might be happier if more choices were made for them, instead of leaving us in existentialist Angst (read Dostoevsky's the Grand Inquisitor for the most eloquent (but nakedly anti-Catholic) exposition of this theme).  Certainly  there are many problems in today's society resulting from people abusing their free will.  Freedom gives us many choices, and not all of them are healthy.  More people download pornography than Proust (even though both are available free online).   Free people sometimes elect Republicans.  Who tell them that their government does not have the power to grant (or presumably protect) freedoms. 
No, apparently a government they head will not be granting people much freedom anytime soon. 

An Open Letter to My Conservative Religious Friends

I wrote this as a letter to an individual with whom I had a disagreement, in an attempt to clarify my views and make peace, but realize the message [scrubbed of personal details] is appropriate for a broader audience:

Dear Friend, 

I honestly do not believe providing healthcare to women (the latest issue that evoked such a strong, hostile response from you) is controversial.  I am saddened that expressing such views could prompt the impugning of my motives or even integrity.  

I disagree with the Republican push to defund Planned Parenthood and this is no secret, but this is not the only area where programs helping women and the children they disproportionately care for are being systematically defunded.   Certainly slashing Medicaid or WIC have nothing to do with either Planned Parenthood or the Mother of All Wedge Issues, abortion.  

In fact, the defunding of Planned Parenthood has nothing to do with abortion, since no federal dollars can directly support abortion by law.  Yes, dollars are fungible, but then we would have to make it illegal for private donors to give to Planned Parenthood also, and that would be going down a path I hope none of us wants to take.  If you wish to overturn Roe v. Wade, the law of the land for over 3 decades, do so openly through the legislative process.  Do not defund all of Planned Parenthood, because 3% of its services involve abortion.  The other 97% is life-saving work (and ironically prevents far more abortions). 

I do not reflexively dislike Christians in general, or Catholics in particular, as you seem to imply.   I have tremendous respect for many of the intellectual and artistic creations that they helped sponsor, and for their ability to evolve and grow as an institution, embracing ideas that would have sent shivers through the spine of the first authorities in the Roman branch of Western Christianity before it rose to relative ascendancy, then broke apart into dozens of warring denominations that have since tried, however haltingly, to make their peace.  At least we are not burning each other at the stake or torturing each other for worshiping in the "wrong" way as we once were, or condemning King George III as the anti-Christ because he granted Catholics in captured Quebec territories to practice their faith, but historically speaking, those events occurred yesterday.

Yes, I am concerned they could happen again, and little from what I read of the religious right makes me reassured that they all got that Enlightenment religious tolerance memo.  It is quite clear that a number of lawmakers do not understand the importance of separation of church and state, or pretend not to (always a possibility when playing to the Least Common Denominator sort of TV-based politics we now enjoy). 

I feel deeply, passionately, and strongly that we have a moral obligation to the least among us.  If this obligation is not reflected in the policies of our society then it represents empty words, an unfulfilled promise, a banging gong.  

I have not read about healthcare, I lived it and saw it.  I witnessed people getting substandard treatment or losing everything they worked for because a for profit healthcare plan cut them off, "lost" their third submitted claim, or told them they ran through their lifetime cap.  I have seen premiums soar and bureaucrats get heavily involved in the doctor-patient relationship decades before the Koch brothers invented the disparaging (and insulting) term "Obamacare" which is years away from full implementation and cannot possibly be blamed for the premium surges that predated its conception not just passage into law.

Government maybe inefficient - like any large organization, it is far from infallible - but in a modern, complex economy, it provides the only hope for millions of our citizens.  It keeps our elderly out of abject poverty and finances their healthcare.  Thanks to President Bush's push to expand the role of government in healthcare, it now pays for prescription medications also.  For the least among us, there is no viable hope beyond the government for financing the pap smears and chemotherapy and surgery.  If the donation basket at Sunday services could do the trick, we would not have the scandal of 59 million Americans without insurance, or 45,000 Americans under 65 dying each year for want of insurance.  Health care costs would not be the cause of over half of all bankruptcies.  In fact, the United States is alone in the developed world for all of these things.   If private charity could manage something as complex as a modern healthcare system, then the mortality of those without insurance would not be 40% higher  than the insured.  

I do not believe you must believe in the divinity of Jesus to understand what he wrote and said.  And that message of social justice made it quite clear where he would have stood on this issue.  I would hope that whether one believed in the resurrection or transubstantiation or not, we would all help the man beset by robbers or the woman seeking healthcare or the child in need of a well-paid teacher. 

Like Jefferson, I believe Jesus was a great voice of moral reason in an age, like ours, steeped in hypocrisy dressed up in the finest religious garb.   The idea that only those who believe in  a particular metaphysical interpretation could "get" the far more accessible moral teachings of Jesus is at best highly questionable, at worst arrogant and self-serving.   There is something intellectually dishonest about this approach (particularly since all Christian denominations disagree about particular literal articles of faith), somewhat akin to stating that unless I am a Stoic, I could never understand the teachings of Zeno of Citium.  I believe his message was universal, for all of us ("let him who has ears hear").   

Metaphysical beliefs do not alter one's understanding of the moral message Jesus was teaching through easily understandable parables and stories (although belief in his divinity would, you would think, increase the sense of urgency about following it).  He constantly chastised his followers for looking for "signs" and for ignoring the obvious good that had to be done in front of them.  He equated how we treat the poor, homeless, imprisoned, and sick as how we treat him and follow his message, making quite clear that those who lived their lives in rectitude, following all the rules, but who did not care for the least among us would be in for a rude awakening when their judgment day came.  Pretty harsh stuff, and at some level deeply insulting to the religious hypocrites of his time, but he was saying this for a reason, trying to shock his audience into doing something radical, something that even today is condemned as "wealth redistribution" or "socialism" or punishing the "economically successful."  Jesus never said anything about a moral imperative to create jobs or grow the bottom line of a business, but said much negative about focusing on the accumulation and hoarding of wealth.  Oh, and he said we should pay our taxes (that whole "yield under Caesar" thing). 

His was a universal message and I deeply resent anyone telling me that they and only they have the One True Interpretation.  This "There Is No God But God" exclusivism has caused so much cruelty and suffering throughout history (and still does today although thankfully less so in the post-Enlightenment West).   

We are free to interpret, but not free to change or ignore the texts of the agree-upon books representing the moral teachings of Jesus.   I can read, and I can count words.  I can find significant omissions (such as of homosexuality, for example) and recurrent themes (such as the evils of adultery, hypocrisy, and the importance of social justice).  I can compare texts and I can try to reconcile conflicts, or use those conflicts as a reminder that we have to make a choice between 2 or sometimes 3 or 4 different descriptions of the same event (who exactly came to find the tomb empty?  what exactly were Jesus's last words?  did Jesus's family flee at one point to Egypt or not?).   Religious fundamentalists, who believe the Bible should be read with the literal concreteness of a physics textbook, are the only ones threatened by these sometimes annoying inconsistencies and contradictions.   The rest of us can recognize that however divine their inspiration, these works were written, translated, and copied by men with all their foibles and faults (and impulse here and there to insert or alter a word to support or refute a local argument).   To claim the Bible is inerrant and infallible as Jerry Falwell once did, is to place a blind faith in a chain of human beings we have never met to have gotten the story absolutely right.  

Any work of literature has to stand or fall on its own merit.  There is much that is troubling in the teachings of Jesus (his redefinition of divorce and remarriage as adultery, for example, was something few modern Christians agree with), but there was much that was about as plain as you could make it.  Be compassionate.  Don't just tolerate your enemies - love them!   Be prepared to give everything to the least among us.  Have faith.  Focus at least as much on your own shortcomings as on those of your perceived enemies.  Don't kill people, especially if you're not perfect yourself (none of us is).  Don't meet violence with violence - turn the other cheek, even if you are in mortal danger.  If you live by the sword, you will die by it.   Treat others as you yourself would want to be treated.  You are far more likely to be condemned by what comes out of your mouth (your words) than what you put in your mouth (dietary mitzvahs); don't allow the religious trees to make you miss the moral forest.   

I wish that more people of good will spoke up and said, "Now wait a minute..." when some of the more outrageous claims are made.  

We should all resist the urge to spurn the advances of those whose expression of faith is different than ours or nonexistent.  There is a reason we were told not to cast stones unless we ourselves are perfect.  Interpreting words and phrases such as "social justice" with deeper, more sinister meanings helps advance no cause or win any converts.  We are all interconnected and I think we have a moral duty to look out for each other and be good stewards of our planet.  I understand we may differ over means, but rarely over ends.  Very little of what a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or humanist believes differs in the things that really matter. 

We all love and nurture our children.  We all try our best to do what we believe is right and to live up to our highest ideals.  We all recognize (hopefully eventually) when we stumble.   Whatever labels we give ourselves, we are all members of the same species and our survival depends, as it always has, on our ability to put aside our differences, explore our reality fearlessly, then adapt, grow, and cooperate.  

Is Homophobia a Core Teaching of Christianity?

With the tragic death of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi exemplifying an ugly recent homophobic trend, the central question emerges as to 

whether one can be a good Christian without condemning homosexual behavior (along with the ingestion of shellfish, wearing clothes of a mixed fiber (polyester-cotton blends come to mind), rotating crops, and allowing menstruating women to enter a church or temple (which is apparently offensive to the Lord)).   Most of us find homophobia abhorrent, just as we find Biblically-sanctioned slavery and stoning of adulteresses abhorrent, but there is no evidence that Jesus explicitly condemned the passages in Leviticus used to condemn homosexuality. However, there is one enormous piece of evidence that Jesus was no homophobe: he never once mentioned homosexuality, although he had a lot to say about other specific "transgressions" including adultery.

Thank Zeus that most modern Christians have abandoned these Leviticus injunctions but not because of anything Jesus said.  Rather, times have evolved and so have our mores.  Most importantly, Western governments are now secular, so the church no longer has the power of life and death over citizens as it did as recently as the 1700s.

Although the potential universal appeal of Jesus's message has been seized upon to - among other things - justify its spread to Gentiles, Jesus was a Jew preaching to an all-Jewish audience about how to be a better Jew. The lost sheep he had come to save were Jews who were not properly following the mitzvahs (collected in what Christians have since come to call the Old Testament, although he would have found such a name strange, since of course there was no New Testament that had been written, nor would one be written until decades after he died).
The idea that he had come to replace the law would have been news to him; in Matthew, he told his followers that only if they followed the laws with perfection, every one of them, would they get into the Kingdom of Heaven, which he spent a great deal of time and energy describing:

• 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.    
• 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.   
• 5:19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
• 5:20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.  

                    - Matthew 5:17-20, emphasis added

When asked which of the many Jewish laws were most important, he gave various responses, but usually they involved the idea of loving God (Yahweh) with all your heart, not committing adultery, lying, or stealing, and not judging others lest you be judged yourself. The novelty of his message was his expansion on some of the mitzvahs.
He took Rabbi Hillel the Elder's formulation of what has become the Golden Rule to a new level, stating that you should not just tolerate but love your enemy, and if you have a falling out you should promptly make your peace (lest he be arrested and out you), and if he hits you, you should not just not hit him back, but turn the other cheek so he can hit that too!
His message of radical social justice and redistribution of wealth should be familiar to any reader of the Jewish prophets Amos or Isiah The rich are going to hell, Jesus said, unless they give away everything to the poor and follow him.
The only explicitly sexual message he gave was an expanded definition of adultery to include not just actual acts of sex but even sexual fantasies (what Jimmy Carter admitted to in a 1976 Playboy Interview) or remarrying following divorce. These last teachings in particular are said to have left his followers "amazed" but they certainly do not replace the Jewish laws he felt he was enforcing.
He did state that what comes from our bodies (our words and deeds) will condemn us far more than what we put into them (meaning pork or shellfish, for example), but that does not mean he was saying the teachings of Leviticus should be abandoned, only that they could not substitute for being kind to your enemies and treating the poor and outcast with justice.
It is quite clear from his teachings that he envisioned an imminent final judgment approaching that would come before his followers "tasted death" meaning in their lifetimes, which clearly was not the case, but may have explained why he didn't write anything down or if he did, why it was not preserved.
My fear of Christianity is the same as that of Chinese communism: although both have mellowed out quite a bit from their more blood-soaked days, there have been no statutory or formal doctrine amendments that would guarantee that Christians would not attempt to reimpose public executions of adulterers or Chinese would not shut down free markets and go back to the horrors of the Cultural Revolution.
Until and unless Christians come forward and formally renounce those doctrines such as slavery, the murder of accused adulterers or witches, misogyny, and homophobia (which most often involve other Christians), there is always the danger that the darker side of this faith will emerge again.