Biblical Readings & Quesion 2

The bible tells many stories that are used as ways of teaching people how they could possibly live their life. While there are those who live exactly by the bible, there are also those who do not live their lives verbatim to what the bible says to do. When reading these passages, I noticed that they were all teachings of how one could live a moral life through the eyes of God. Between the different readings we read, there were many connections to the question that we are discussing this part of the semester.

Exodus 20:1-17 was one of the major readings that related to our question of: what is morally right? In this story, Moses has just lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt, where they were held in captivity by the Pharaoh. They break at Mt. Sinai where Moses climbs the mountain to speak with God. Here is where God bestows the Ten Commandments to Moses. These commandments are supposed to be guidelines that humans should follow in order to live a happy and good life.

This reading really digs into duty-based ethics, which is all about following rules and guidelines in order to determine what is right and what is wrong. The ten commandments speak of violence, lust, false prophets, greed and other topics that we deem today as being "hot-topics". It tells of how to deal with these topics and what is considered right and what is considered wrong in Gods eyes. However, it only speaks in general terms, it is not specific to one event. This leads people to interpret them as they see fit, which can lead to some disputes. Duty-based ethics would say that we as people need to follow the 10 commandments as they are written, so exactly word for word and apply it to any event that falls under its category. So, following the commandments will lead one down a path of good, while not following them will only bring evil. The duty-based people would be Christians who live their life by the commandments.

The second reading I read was Exodus 1:8-22 and it relates to the ethic topic of consequentialist. This was a story of how Egyptian mid wives were instructed by the pharaoh to kill any baby boys that were born, but to let the girls live because the Hebrew population was growing too rapidly. However, the mid wives went against the pharaohs orders and did not kill the baby boys, because they feared God and what he would do to them if they murdered new born children. This relates to consequentialist ethics by showing how the housewives were afraid of what would happen to them if they disobeyed their superior. While the pharaoh was their boss on Earth, they were under the influence of a higher authority; God. They knew that they would experience the wrath of God if they killed those baby boys, so they disobeyed the pharaoh and did what they felt was right, which was to listen to Gods demands. They based their actions off of what they thought would benefit them the most in the long run, and let the consequences of their actions be the determining factor of what was right and what was wrong.