Another 11th Commandment

Another 11th Commandment

My wintertime pastime has been ripping vinyl LP 33 1/3 RPM records onto my computer. For the geek-impaired reader, ripping an LP means copying the music onto a computer and including album and track information associated with the LP. Unlike ripping a CD or DVD which can be done in minutes, ripping an LP means actually playing the entire record while the computer digitizes the music.

My wife and I are products of the late 50's and early 60's, and we came into our marriage in the 1965 with a lot of LP records. These aren't just records; they have the music that we listened to and enjoyed during our youth, and they elicit tons of pleasant nostalgic feelings from both of us. My pastime of ripping these records so we could play the music on our 7.1 sound systems was designed to be one of my Christmas gifts to my wife (and to me, if truth be told).

Alas, I was ripping and listening to one of my favorite albums from The Four Lads. Among the songs they were singing was an old favorite mine, “Standing on the Corner, Watching All the Girls Go By.” Of course, I was hit with a bunch of those nostalgic feelings.

But I was really struck by the times the lyrics represented. Standing on a corner, watching all the girls go by was considered, oh, let's call it a bit of a risqué behavior in that time. Now, many years later, we live in a society where we don't talk of risqué behavior anymore; no, we don't, but we do talk about risky behavior.

Wow! How our societal boundaries of mores and moral behavior have changed! And they have made these monumental changes in the space of what, a generation? One and half generations? Risqué behavior, risky behavior, what a contrast!

How could our standards of socially acceptable behavior have possibly changed so much in so short a time? We now think little to nothing of unmarried couples, homosexuality, promiscuity inside and outside of marriage, illicit drug use, … topics that were rarely discussed, much less accepted, “in my time.” Boy, am I an old fuddy duddy or what?!!

But, wait. Doesn't our behavior and our acceptance of behaviors stem from our values? Don't our values come from our beliefs? Of course they do. They always have. They always will.

But this relationship works both ways. If we change our behavior, then we must change our values and then we must change our beliefs so that our behavior is acceptable within the context of our personal values and beliefs. If we do not change our values and beliefs to embrace behaviors that we find acceptable, then we must be living in a state of hypocritical conflict. While we all have our personal hypocritical peccadilloes, I believe that we as a society have, in fact, changed our values (that's pretty obvious) and our beliefs (that's harder for us to accept.) Oh, and those changes have been monumental.

The bedrock of our values has historically been our society's Judeo-Christian beliefs. One can certainly argue that we as a society have become more accepting of other religions and their values. One of these alternative religions is no religion. This is but one explanation of society's evolving beliefs.

But the significant observation is the acceptance of these new societal behaviors by Christian churches. The Christian church, like the rest of us, cannot accept these behaviors without changing its beliefs. But, how can that be? Are the church's beliefs not founded upon and based upon scripture? Does the church follow societal norms? Isn't the church supposed to be a bedrock of leadership? What made the church change?

I believe that we have a new instrument of change. This is an instrument that has become a giant lever that permits a small number of people to foist upon our society values that we as individuals and as a society would otherwise not accept.

This new lever of change is what I shall call “Another 11th Commandment.” The commandment is simply stated: Thou shalt not offend.

So? What's wrong with that? Thou shalt not offend sounds compassionate and Christian. Somehow it just seems sort of right, good, OK.

The problem is that it turns things upside down. The world of psychology has taught us for decades that we are each responsible for our own feelings; we are not and cannot be responsible for another's feelings.

“To take offense” is the proper perspective. That is, we each choose where we wish to take offense and where we wish to not take offense. Thou shalt not offend makes it incumbent upon the speaker or writer to be aware and mindful of all of the choices or even supposed choices that his audience has made regarding their personally taking offense. When the speaker or writer understands that taking offense is an individual and personal choice, he is freed to express his beliefs as our founding fathers intended in the 1st amendment to our constitution. He is free to ignore the Thou shalt not offend 11th commandment.

I personally refuse to accept the legitimacy of this 11th commandment. To do otherwise would mean that I must suppress expression of my own beliefs. If you accept this 11th commandment, then you cannot express your own beliefs in any but the most familiar of environments without risking “offending” someone, or, heaven forbid, lots of someones.

This 11th commandment has given rise to and provided cover to a new body of “politically correct” restraint on speech. If the 11th commandment disappears, so too does political correctness. If the 11th commandment disappears, then a whole body of socially acceptable behavior which otherwise would be unacceptable becomes once again unacceptable.

If the 11th commandment disappeared, we could say all kinds of things that are now considered politically incorrect. For example, I could say “scientific evidence does not support the homosexuals' claim that they are born that way” without fear of recrimination. I could say “meteorological measurements have shown that the Earth has not warmed during the past 9 years” without fear of offending adherents to the Religion of Global Warming.

The 11th commandment is an insidious and evil lever that has been used very effectively by minority groups to gain acceptance of the majority of their behaviors, values, and beliefs. There is a big difference between my accepting your freedom to believe as you wish and my accepting your belief. Thou shalt not offend has been and is being used to force me as an individual and us as a society to accept your belief, not just your freedom to believe, and that is just plain wrong.

The churches have bought into this new commandment in a big way. They neither say this nor even believe this, but when you look at their policy of “inclusion,” their acceptance of Thou shalt not offend becomes obvious. In a recent planning meeting at our church, my wife Linda stated that their policy of inclusion would affect the churches beliefs. Oh, my, was this met with vociferous denial! But when she subsequently stated that the church should express from the pulpit its disapproval of unmarried couples or premarital sexual relations, the assistant pastor's thinly veiled body language reaction screamed “That train left the station decades ago, Linda, get with it!” Clearly, the church has already changed its beliefs, beliefs that are supposedly based upon scripture, not contemporary values and behaviors.

Mainline churches have adopted policies of inclusion ostensibly from a position of Christian love and acceptance. You know, Thou shalt not offend. In fact, churches have adopted policies of inclusion so as to increase the population pool from which they can draw members and believers. Statistics show that the inclusion strategy has backfired; the churches are not growing, rather they are losing membership. They have abdicated their responsibility of leadership.

So, who invented this 11th commandment? Why was it invented?

Well, this new commandment didn't come from modern psychology. As I mentioned earlier, we have been taught for years that we are responsible for our own feelings; we are not responsible for another's feelings. Just as I am not responsible for your feelings, nor am I responsible for your choices, or behaviors, or values and beliefs. You are. You're responsible for all that stuff that you yourself decide.

The church certainly didn't invent this Thou Shalt Not Offend commandment. It isn't scriptural. In the Old Testament, I suspect that the Canaanites took offense when the Hebrews moved into their land, killing and subjugating their people. In the New Testament, lots of people and groups took offense at Jesus teachings. The marvel is why the church has chosen to accept this commandment.

The First Amendment to our United States Constitution forbids Congress from making any law “abridging the freedom of speech”. While many believe that our government has taken too much freedom in their interpretation of the Constitution, I don't think the government can be stuck with the responsibility for the creation of Another 11th Commandment.

The Thou Shalt Not Offend Commandment came to us courtesy of the world of politics. The commandment was promulgated by and is promoted by those special interest groups that stand to gain from the widespread acceptance of the commandment and therefore the widespread acceptance of the beliefs that are protected by the commandment. I could give you a list, but I am sure that you have your own list of these special interest groups. There is no reason to suspect that my list is any better than yours.

This new commandment is insidious, because it has been accepted by our society without the questioning that it deserves. It hasn't been questioned because for the most part it hasn't even been recognized. It just quietly became culturally acceptable and then moved to a cultural imperative with most of us not even knowing what was happening. It is insidious because it appears innocuous at worst and even good, considerate, and obviously beneficial at best. It is evil because it subliminally encourages us to accept behaviors and beliefs that conflict with our own beliefs. Accepting another's freedom to believe as he wishes is a whole lot different that actually accepting his beliefs.

I do believe that it is important that we first as individuals and then as a society recognize what a powerful lever Thou Shalt Not Offend has become to suppress our freedom of expression. Once recognized, it is then important to understand that our individual acceptance of this commandment is a personal choice; I can ignore it, you can ignore it, everyone can ignore it and we can relearn to express our beliefs and our opinions within the bounds of old fashioned good taste, not new artificial commandments.



February 3, 2009