What are christian values?

The Ten Commandments

»Feeling offended because an idea has been criticized is an act of intolerance."
Volker Dittmar

Table of Contents:
Flexibility as the basis
Construction of a moral need
If you can justify all values, you have none
Inconsistency is not a foundation!
The Ten Commandments
1. You shouldn’t have any other gods besides me
2. You should not misuse the name of the Lord your God
3. Remember the Sabbath day: keep it holy!
4. Honor your father and mother
5. You shouldn’t murder
6. You shouldn’t break your marriage
7. You shouldn’t steal
8. You should not testify wrongly against your neighbor
9th and 10th: You should not desire .
Conclusion
Love thy neighbor as thyself

Flexibility as the basis

As far as the Old Testament commandments are concerned, Christianity has the greatest possible flexibility: the commands can be accepted at will or declared irrelevant. Jesus clearly says:

The following text is given as a counter argument:

It says there, Jesus be the Lord of the Sabbath. This gave rise to the idea that the commandments should serve people and that they decide and not Jesus. Not all people, only the bishops of the church.

One can fully agree [Atran 2004]: Religious morality combines two contradictory functions. On the one hand, a solid foundation on which the values appear as an immovably reliable basis. On the other hand, the flexibility to stretch and bend the rules as desired to adapt them to situations and needs.

Construction of a moral need

You can add the first of the top two text passages or the second as required. This makes it difficult to determine what "Christian values" are. Then the question is whether one prefers to take the written morals or what was lived? And by whom? Catholics or Protestants? From the mass of believers or from individuals?

It is clear that the more flexibility you allow, the easier it will be to take Christianity as the basis of our European values today. It becomes all the more arbitrary and vague at the same time, because at the same time one can use the values as the basis for a narrow-minded, warlike slave-holder society like a modern constitutional state. The fact is that both can be justified equally well. Christianity has been used for most of its history to justify and legitimize the models of a despotic, monarchist, warlike slave-holding society.

For most of the time, things were legitimized by Christian law that were not compatible with modern European society. Examples: monarchy / autocracy, nobility, women’s oppression, torture, death penalty, slavery, child labor, anti-Semitism, racism, crusades, heretic burns, book censorship, suppression of freedom of expression, prohibition of interest and much more.

If you can justify all values, you have none

If you think that you can build the values of a modern European constitutional state today, it proves the almost backbone flexibility of the values, which you can adapt to everything. For example, I would not bet against Christianity celebrating itself in 50 years because it "guarantees" the fundamental value of same-sex marriage..

Christian values span a broad spectrum. One can say that a genocidal tyrannical slave society as well as a modern European constitutional state can rely on a "Christian foundation". Both can be legitimized equally. Humanistic human rights do not have the flexibility. Which means that they are better suited as a reliable basis. You can use verbal hocus-pocus to derive basic rights from Christianity, as well as the exact opposite in the same way.

One wonders why "Christian rights that can be legitimized" only became established late, and only after the political power of the churches was limited by the church criticism of the Enlightenment. I think a basis of values from which everything and its opposite can be justified is useless and senseless.

Unlike the previous monarchy, the modern, democratic state does not need Christianity to legitimize it or to "guarantee" its values. The people recognize whether a church is involved or not does not play the slightest role. The times in which the state needs ecclesiastical-Christian legitimation have passed since the last coronation by a pope. For good reason, human rights never refer to Christianity or Christian values and do not require a "Christian justification".

Why? Because Christianity has no basis to establish its own values. I have shown this in detail in problems of monotheistic morality. In order to serve as a foundation, one would have to show how to derive values consistently. Christianity fails in this.

The morals and values of a modern state arise in which the people democratically agree on it. It no longer matters what the values are derived from. It may be that a society temporarily takes over slavery based on biblical Christianity. If you mean all responsible citizens as "the people", one day you will overcome the idea. At the latest at the time, no one can say that you have a "Christian foundation" here, exactly has been overcome. It is a strange ↑ logic to stylize the "overcoming of Christian values" as a kind of "Christian value base".

Inconsistency is not a foundation!

If you were to design it consistently, you would have to realize that all of our values are pagan in nature. For the very reason that such logical thinking is alien to Christianity, it cannot form the basis of our values.

It’s more like this: Let’s wait and see in which direction the values of society develop. After the decision, no matter how it turns out, we can provide the "Christian reasoning" thanks to our flexible interpretation. Do you want a slave owner society that mercilessly kills dissenters? We deliver the justification and the foundation! Do you want people-friendly democracy? We subsequently provide the justification and the foundation!

There is less a "Christian morality" than a subsequent justification (rationalization) of the existing morality, which is stamped "Christian" – [Boyer 2009] describes this as the core of religious morality. It is clear that you are lagging behind the current morality. This is where his criticism comes from. Christian moral criticism of the Catholic Church is limited to: Why not do it as we found it correct 100 years ago? That means that there is almost every moral innovation against Christianity must enforce.

The Ten Commandments

If you ask about "original Christian values", you usually get two answers:

The Ten Commandments from the OT
The double commandment of Jesus’ love in the NT

Both of these, if checked, should provide clues to the Christian moral foundations of our society, shouldn’t they? Now there are different versions of the Ten Commandments, see → Ten Commandments. Because the Catholics make up the majority of Christians, I take the Catholic version:

1. You shouldn’t have any other gods besides me

This is a clear violation of the human right to freedom of religion. How many gods one reveres, whether one, one or dozen, is the private matter of each individual. Our society does not allow other regulations to be made. This applies to the ban on images, which requires a violation of the freedom of art.

Our constitution commands religious freedom. For this reason, the first commandment is a violation of our rights guaranteed by the constitution.

2. You should not misuse the name of the Lord your God

Violates the human right to freedom of religion and the constitution.

3. Remember the Sabbath day: keep it holy!

Small reminder: The Sabbath extends from Friday evening to Saturday evening. Clearly not a basis of our society, even if you postpone it to Sunday.

4. Honor your father and mother

That is not the basis of our order of values. It has been replaced by parental rights and obligations. What about children who are abused by their parents? Should they still honor father and mother??

5. You shouldn’t murder

Indeed, this is a requirement of our society – like everyone else who has not heard of Christianity, like communities that existed long before Christianity. If a commandment is of pre-Christian origin, it can be made Christian, so it has another basis, which is also that of our society.

6. You shouldn’t break your marriage

No longer a requirement of our society, no longer the basis of our values. This applies above all to desire, the expansion of Jesus.

7. You shouldn’t steal

The same applies here as for the 5th commandment. You don’t need religion to realize that murder and stealing are against the wellbeing of the masses. Not even a thief wants to live in a society where stealing is allowed.

8. You should not testify wrongly against your neighbor

This is the commandment that is most often violated in all societies when it is understood as: "You shouldn’t lie". In general, the bid makes no sense, only in certain situations, such as in court. Everyone knows this form, as do pre-Christian societies.

If one understands this as "defamation", then it is forbidden for us. We would have a hit.

9th and 10th: You should not desire .

One should not covet someone else’s wife or one’s property – this includes slaves as well as cattle or other goods. This justifies slavery – a clear violation of human rights. Desire is not the problem, basically our economy is based on wanting to own the same goods as others. You just mustn’t steal it from the other, which was already excluded in the 7th commandment.

In problems of monotheistic morality, I have drawn attention to the fact that God is not a good example. If, for example, it says "You should not murder", the Bible immediately calls for war and the murder of the Amalectites, is this either inconsistent or means a serious relativization: you should not murder members of your own tribe. You can kill others! You can execute tribe members if they violate the Sabbath law, pay homage to other gods, do witchcraft or break their marriage. And as a god I can commit genocide and, in the deluge, drown everyone, including women and children, as I please. Or like slaughtering people on a bet. Moral precepts either apply universally, or one pursues relativism. That, although it is often said that Christian values are not relativistic in the spirit of the times. Which is not true.

This applies equally to stealing; the Bible explicitly calls on the Israelites to rob the women of the vanquished during the war and to have them as slaves. That makes people spoils of war, a double immoral theft that requires murder.

Conclusion

There are only two, at most three, commandments that can be said to form the basis of our society: 5th and 7th and possibly 8th. It applies to everyone that they are both pre-Christian and not purely Christian. That is a meager yield. If you are good-natured and generous, you can say that 30% of the commandments apply to our society, only that they are not originally Christian. The rest is a breach of the constitution or is irrelevant.

The second problem: bids are not values!

Love thy neighbor as thyself

This is a moral maxim, not a value that Christians are no more guided by than non-Christians. As a double requirement that one should love God, it violates the human right to freedom of religion.

It can be said that the idea of Caritas can be derived from this and that the support of the poor and the weak is a Christian concept. At the same time, one has to admit that it is a moral concept of Judaism, like the Ten Commandments.

It is a Christian principle, as can be seen, to "borrow" values etc. from other religions and philosophies and to assert that they are originally Christian commandments. You plunder human rights, construct an outrageous interpretation of a few carefully selected biblical passages, and you have a "Christian value". You could say: theft of ideas and re-labeling is definitely a Christian value, more than any other.

The reason for this is non-religious with us, so it is questionable whether we have the Christian religion need. The idea in communism or in socialism is more radical than in Christianity: the point here is not to distribute alms, but to enable people as a whole not to need any mild gifts! Socialism / communism may have failed, the project remains.

I hope that the obedient godless god the clerics have held can no longer be given as a way to liberate man. No freedom comes from such a God. He, even creation out of fear, is co-creator of humiliating fear among people.
Horst Herrmann