# Doesn't Most Wondrous Biblical Wisdom Seem Like Common Sense? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 18, 2017, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633 "2017-09-18T14:02:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2017, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/21 "2017-09-18T19:38:05Z")
Plenty of religions teach don’t steal, don’t murder, etc. What makes Christianity different from most is the teaching of turning the other cheek, NOT taking an eye for an eye, about loving one’s enemy, etc. Now, whether most “Christians” actually live by those teachings is another matter. But doctrinally, that makes Christianity different from many others, and really against the grain of the time. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2017, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/22 "2017-09-18T20:12:00Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#): > > It does. Some examples: > > - There were fruit trees growing before the sun was created. > > - A betrothed woman raped inside city limits should be stoned to death. She must have wanted it, or she would have yelled louder. By a miracle? Why not? This is not true. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2017, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/23 "2017-09-18T20:23:26Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > If you cherry-pick the stories you like, the Bible is wise. If you do the same with stories that you despise, it’s a ridiculous collection of nonsense, inhumanity, and bigotry. On average, I’d say…meh. Civilization can do better. Honestly, it’s pretty easy to find books that are mostly if not entirely made up of _good_ morals, and entirely without the mandatory familial cannibalism. You don’t credit the writings of the Unabomber by appealing to the bits he gets right, you rightfully point out the insane terrorism and write it off - there are other neo-anarchist luddite writings that _don’t_ do that. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2017, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/24 "2017-09-18T20:29:12Z")
Wisdom doesn’t lie in knowing what is wise. Any fool can tell you that. Wisdom lies in actually _doing_ what is wise. I’m a teacher. I’m constantly seeing students making bad decisions, and when I ask them if what they’re doing is wise, they say no, and then do it anyway. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2017, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/25 "2017-09-18T23:08:07Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Not always common sense, no. > > Did the story of the prodigal son really strike you as common sense? Didn’t you ever think that maybe the dutiful son had a point? He stayed, did what he was supposed to do, while his brother took his share of the inheritance and lost it all on Biblical versions of hookers and blow, and then returns to get everything handed to him. Did that story really make you nod vigorously and say, “Yep, that’s fair and right?” What prompted the first son to leave, that is most likely the state expressed by the second son. This was answered in scriptures: Luke 15:31 “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me ( **and so is the other son** ), and everything I have is yours." Bold mine The second son just had to realize that he also was a son and not a servant. It is a learning process to step into the role and claim his inheritance. Again just like the other son, lost, not knowing who he is. The Father allows this for a time, but when we are ready to learn the lesson he will permit that as well. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2017, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/26 "2017-09-18T23:32:09Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > I suppose I would miss that wisdom, because it’s not wise. It’s nonsense. Thought crime is not actual crime. Everyone hates. Everyone lusts. Everyone _feels_ things, and while we can suppress those feelings, and not act on them, we can’t _not_ feel them. I _hate_ my ex-boyfriend who ran off with my ex-girlfriend. Does it make any difference whether or not I act on that hatred? > > (This is not a hard question. The bible gets it wrong.) Feeling them is not the issue, we can. Suppressing them is once sin has already established a foothold and is our own efforts to resist and too late. But the first moment we feel these things towards another, to also consider how it effects the other (and yes it does), and our relationship to them and choosing my a free will decision a better emotional response to a fellow human, member of the same family, is the split in the decision tree that leads to good or evil. The Bible helps us realize where that split was and helps walk us through that healing process once we exceeded that and are turning to things like suppression or addiction. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2017, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/27 "2017-09-18T23:34:57Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Wisdom doesn’t lie in knowing what is wise. Any fool can tell you that. Wisdom lies in actually _doing_ what is wise. I’m a teacher. I’m constantly seeing students making bad decisions, and when I ask them if what they’re doing is wise, they say no, and then do it anyway. Good thing you are not God, wisdom is often learned in making mistakes. As my fire chief said to the lieutenant during a training session, step the fuck back and let them make mistakes, that is how we learn motherf\*cker. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2017, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/28 "2017-09-18T23:43:21Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > I’m glad you were able to use the Bible so well then. Honestly, I mean it. > > Actually the whole concept of harboring anger and envy and lust being tantamount to committing heinous acts was also a part of my upbringing. Along with concepts of doing good for the love of righteousness, and not for praise from others or the hope of a reward. > > Not that I regret this. I think my strong morality is a good facet of my being. But still, it’s nothing that any thoughtful human couldn’t come up with on their own without divine guidance. > > Also, it’s interesting that there is a disconnect between the way humans are expected to behave under Christian philosophy, and the portrayal of God Himself in the Bible. God has plenty of grudges that he can’t let go of, against Ham and Canaan and all of those folks, and you could argue, against mankind itself for the whole forbidden fruit thing. The sins of the father to the seventh generation and so on. > > Geez, lighten up Yahweh. It’s to the 3rd generation, not the 7th. I don’t pretend to support Christianity as I studied the Bible independent of Christianity and never found such a loving God expressed in Christianity. Christianity is basically ‘Judaism light’ as it makes sense as the apostle Paul established Christianity by doing what he knew from Judaism in accomplishing his divinely appointed mission to spread the name of Jesus. In such it created a hybrid of the way that Jesus showed, and the old system, sort of a bridge between the worldly system and the eternal. As for the grudges, and you mention the forbidden fruit. there is much to say of the wisdom of limiting our life under us eating the fruit and the difficulties it causes. If you had a child who despite your warning did something very harmful to them and limited their life, would you not still love them. God’s grudges as you state it ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/29 "2017-09-19T07:20:07Z")
**kanicbird** , The bible does not expressly state those moral lessons in the way you relate them. It is left to you to apply a degree of interpretation and yours is by no means the only way of reading them. Now either the bible is a book that gives a specific single message (clearly it isn’t) or it allows multiple interpretations (of which yours is only one of millions). If the latter then I see no greater value than any other writing on philosophy or morals. Aesop’s fables or the writings of the ancient Chinese, Greek, Romans et al. So you may extract meaning from it but I suggest it is reflection on you as much as anything intrinsic to the book. ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/30 "2017-09-19T08:15:43Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > Has anyone here read something in the Bible that changed their life for the better? Or given them a perspective that changed their outlook and improved it? I won’t say that I read it and went, “Aha! _Now_ I understand!” Because, at the time, I didn’t; not really. Oh, I understood the words well enough, and got what it was trying to say. But it didn’t really hit home to my teenaged self. But, in time, which is kind of ironic, it became wisdom to soothe the soul. [Ecclesiastes, ch. 3, v. 1-8](http://biblehub.com/nasb/ecclesiastes/3.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/31 "2017-09-19T09:00:46Z")
Common sense? > [@Jesus](#): > > Matthew 15:1-9King James Version (KJV) > > 15 Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, > > 2 Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread. > > 3 But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? > > 4 For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. > > 5 But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; > > 6 And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. > > 7 Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, > > 8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. > > 9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Jesus is referencing the law in Deuteronomy that says you should have your son executed by the town if he is not obedient to his parents, and chastising the Pharisees for circumventing this law. Not talked about much in church, those lines. I would suggest that, to the extent that the Bible makes sense to you, it’s because the bits that don’t have been stripped out. But also that our society has been adapted to fit some percentage of the Bible teachings as well, such that those teachings seem natural. While the Bible does contain a lot of horrible things (including from Jesus and Paul), the New Testament’s emphasis on teachings like The Golden Rule have affected Western culture. An example I would give is comparing the 1001 Nights to the Arthurian Tales. In both stories, you have adventurers going around killing people, stealing treasure, raping women, etc. but the European version actually portrays some of those things as being _bad_ and, where it doesn’t, at least tries to make it seem like there was no helping it. The knight fell in love! He couldn’t help himself when he used a spell to make himself look like the woman’s husband! The 1001 Nights, on the other hand, has women being taken as slaves, raped, and tossed aside like nothing and it’s all described as the acts of a hero doing heroic things. And the key thing to note with that is that people of the Middle East - and even most people of the Victorian age, when they first encountered the work - do read the work as being about acts of heroism. People aren’t just pretending to go along when they read works that have a horrible message underlying them. And I don’t mean this as a slam on Islam. I am just noting that the Bible is, genuinely, a more benign religion than most others from the ancient world and that has had an effect on how our society behaves and how we view things. And while it’s true that you could find all of the same awful stuff that is in the Koran in the Bible, you can find a lot more to mediate it (particularly in the New Testament) and that has affected our outlook on morality. You have to ignore 95% of the book to get that mediating percentile, but that’s the 5% that probably seems like common sense to you. But the reality is that “common sense” isn’t common sense. It’s common sense to millions of people that homosexuality is evil. It’s common sense to millions of people (of both genders) that women should be obedient to men. It’s common sense to millions of people that the harvest will be better this year if you leave rice balls for the spirit inhabiting a stone figure in the nearby woods. Morality is not a thing that has any factual variant. People have been known to believe and support a wide variety of moralities that can include all forms of (by our standards) horrendous acts including human sacrifice, cannibalism, genital mutilation, pedophilia, etc. And, to a large extent, most of that has very little to do with the original teachings that they are based on. By all rights, the Bible is supportive of or at least ambivalent about abortion while being completely against divorce. (Protesting divorce is what lead John the Baptist to his death, after all.) That’s completely at odds with a modern Christian’s average understanding of the matter. Overall, there is no such thing as common sense; the Bible is mostly ignored where it doesn’t follow common sense; much of what we still read from it and take to be common sense probably doesn’t mean what it used to; and to the extent that it does mean what we think it means, it only seems natural because that’s the culture you grew up in. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/32 "2017-09-19T09:02:07Z")
A big problem is a whole lot of what you deem common sense comes from the Bible, if you live in a Western culture. Christianity has left its mark on everything. Yes, it is true that other cultures have come up with some of Western values, but they definitely aren’t exactly the same, are they? If it was really just some sort of common knowledge all humans have, why are our cultures so different? If you want a comparison, it has to be comparing the Bible to religious works unrelated to the Bible, not to what you personally think is common sense. You are swimming in the value culture that is firmly rooted in Christianity. That happens when it becomes “the official religion.” Also, let’s not pretend that common sense comes from any innate factor of humans, either. What is common sense today was not in the past. We had to discover things before they became common sense. Not even “thou shalt not kill” is common sense to early hominids. Using tools isn’t common sense. That’s just a term for our collective wisdom of our species, acquired over time. It’s why it can be so very, very wrong. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/33 "2017-09-19T11:25:48Z")
Wisdom from Solomon about discussions on message boards: \*“Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.” \*   — Proverbs 26:4 ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/34 "2017-09-19T12:50:22Z")
> [@](#): > > Also, let’s not pretend that common sense comes from any innate factor of humans, either. What is common sense today was not in the past. So…to paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, Are we to accept that humans believed murder and theft was fine throughout 250,000+ years of evolution and only considered it verboten when Moses skipped down from the mountains with the lord’s most recent heavyweight bestseller.? I beg leave to doubt it. Those pre-biblical societies must have operated a coherent set of behaviours built on simple,\* “common sense”\* rules that enhance the common good of the tribe. Stealing and murdering are bad things because they are bad for the society, someone acting alone and selfishly does not benefit the tribe and gets cast out…they die…they fail to pass on their genes and those harmful behaviours. Primitive apes have such societal drivers as fair play, mutually beneficial activities, avoidance of incest, cooperation etc. And why? because it _works_, society works best for all members when they stick to those behaviours that we can easily recognise as moral or ethical behaviour, even in a prototypical form. It is surely easy to draw a line from there to a more advanced and codified set of expectations in the higher animals and early hominids, one that would be apparent and obvious to ancient civilisations regardless of whether the bible exists or not. The bible is a product of its time and it shows, good stuff and horrible stuff with no real way of divining the difference other than your inbuilt moral compass that renders the scriptures irrelevant anyway. You claim too much for it. It is one clumsy stab among many at explaining why we behave the way we do, long before evolutionary psychology came along and explained it more elegantly. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/35 "2017-09-19T13:25:44Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > Then you missed much of the teaching. It gets to the root of these issues. It’s not don’t kill, It’s don’t harbor anger and hatred in one’s heart as that is already murder. Murder is just the inevitable result when one becomes a slave to sin. The sin is entertaining anger which establishes a foothold on one’s heart, which eventually becomes a stronghold. The wisdom is it’s not the act itself which is sinful (but what man uses to judge and convict), but the free will decision as to what emotion to entertain as a result of sensory conditions (which is what God uses). ISTR that Buddhism covers the same basic concepts (both on non-violence and on avoiding attachment to anger and negative emotions), and Buddha had 500 years on Jesus. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/36 "2017-09-19T13:36:59Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > ISTR that Buddhism covers the same basic concepts (both on non-violence and on avoiding attachment to anger and negative emotions), and Buddha had 500 years on Jesus. I’m not harshing on the fat guy in the lotus position. Yes these truths ‘Dharma’ are universal truths that we all can discover and become enlightened. The biblical principal that demonstrates this is seek and you shall find. It does not require a bible or religion to find such things, just to seek, which Buddha did. The finding part is God’s promise and responsibility. This has been going on basically forever. And the seeking is part of something intrinsic in us when we start coming to ourselves and trying to figure out why thins are certain ways in our lives. Again yes as you support different words for the same universal principals. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/37 "2017-09-19T13:50:13Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > **kanicbird** , The bible does not expressly state those moral lessons in the way you relate them. It is left to you to apply a degree of interpretation and yours is by no means the only way of reading them. Now either the bible is a book that gives a specific single message (clearly it isn’t) or it allows multiple interpretations (of which yours is only one of millions). If the latter then I see no greater value than any other writing on philosophy or morals. Aesop’s fables or the writings of the ancient Chinese, Greek, Romans et al. > > So you may extract meaning from it but I suggest it is reflection on you as much as anything intrinsic to the book. I understand what you say, however I believe it does teach universal truths which will be in agreement with each other, such as stated in the previous posting, in agreement with Buddhism, which as they pointed out, what I learned in the Bible is also supported by Buddhist teachings. The Bible itself is not all in all, it is a textbook that God uses with some, but it says everything, including every scripture, every book, every movie is also created by God. In that everything turns to scripture and is useful for the purposes the Bible states, but yes in it’s proper context. This is also a Buddhist teaching, ‘everything is scripture’. As for why the Bible seems unclear , the reason as I have seen is it’s describing things that have many more dimensions then our ‘3D world’. It uses the Karate Kid’s Wax On Wax off method to teach us what we need to learn in a way we don’t at first understand. Example: How do you explain 9 dimensional reality to beings living in 3D. You really can’t at first as we have no reference point to comprehend that which we have never experienced. New ways of thinking and new neural pathways need to develop and interlink till we can see the bigger picture, enlightenment is Buddhism. So yes the Bible will seem not clear, as what it’s trying to do is build new processes which don’t naturally possess. As for other Scriptures, yes they all are and in agreement with the universal principals. Just to add, then why lift up Lord Jesus so much in Christianity if it’s universal? As we lift Him up we lift ourselves up, as we are Jesus. It is the reason we pray in the name of Jesus as the Father views us as Jesus, we get the spirit of Jesus, and the gifts that Jesus demonstrated. It is to lift US up to the place we belong. In Christianity that lifting us up to the level of the divine comes primarily through grace (four fold grace in Buddhism), basically realizing we are worthy. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/38 "2017-09-19T14:03:14Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Common sense? > > Jesus is referencing the law in Deuteronomy that says you should have your son executed by the town if he is not obedient to his parents, and chastising the Pharisees for circumventing this law. > > Not talked about much in church, those lines. These verses were the subject of my minister’s sermon a few weeks ago. 😃 We’ve been working our way through Matthew. You’re totally misunderstanding them. Let’s have them in modern English. > [@](#): > > [Matthew 15:1-9](https://net.bible.org/#!bible/Matthew+15:1-9) > Then Pharisees and experts in the law came from Jerusalem to Jesus and said, “Why do your disciples disobey the tradition of the elders? For they don’t wash their hands when they eat.” He answered them, “And why do you disobey the commandment of God because of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Whoever insults his father or mother must be put to death.’ But you say, ‘If someone tells his father or mother, “Whatever help you would have received from me is given to God,” he does not need to honor his father.’ You have nullified the word of God on account of your tradition. Hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied correctly about you when he said, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me, and they worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’” Jesus is scolding the Pharisees, not for not killing their children, but for putting their traditions above God’s law. And also for criticizing others of not following the law. This is a common refrain of Jesus: religious leaders emphasizing nitpickerly adherence to the law, while ignoring the spirit of the law. ---
**Author:** ![Strinka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/strinka/32/512_2.png) [@Strinka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strinka)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/39 "2017-09-19T14:09:59Z")
There are a lot of things that are hard to figure out on your own, but seem obvious after someone tells you the answer. I’ve always found Newtonian physics to be pretty intuitive, but it took the work of many geniuses centuries to actually figure it out. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the moral lessons in the bible are like that. I know that I didn’t figure out morality all on my own. My parents and others have taught me. Which is not to say that everything in the bible is good. It contains plenty of nonsense too. But maybe the stuff that seems so obvious to us now, wasn’t so obvious back then. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2017, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633/40 "2017-09-19T15:04:51Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > As for other Scriptures, yes they all are and in agreement with the universal principals. Uh, like support and/or no condemnation of slavery? Incidentally I have to say that IMHO there is a very dedicated effort to interpret “slave” as “servant” in current bible translations nowadays. Leaving aside the whitewash effort, IMHO it shows that even old time religions do recognize that some “wisdom” of the past days is no longer operative. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doesnt-most-wondrous-biblical-wisdom-seem-like-common-sense/796633.md?page=3)