Dogma, morality and sin

I READ Rev David Robertson’s heartfelt response to the previous week’s piece on the mandatory teaching of LGBTI issues in schools (Battle breaks out in Scottish ‘Section 28’ war, Comment special, July 10).

He gives the Free Church’s position in four points, the second of which tells us that “although the Bible is primarily a book about what God has done for us through His son Jesus Christ, not a book of ‘morals’, it does nonetheless give us guidance”.

Christianity has a privileged place in our educational system and therein lies the problem. Christianity centres around scapegoating – meaning the dogma that it is morally acceptable to punish innocent persons for the sins of the guilty.

In other words, that guilt can be transferred from the person who committed a sin to those who had no involvement in that sin. This dogma has its source in God’s third commandment (Exodus 20:5) and occurs throughout the Bible, beginning with God’s stigmatising of all mankind with “original sin” because of the actions of His first morally naive creations, Adam and Eve, and proceeds through Noah’s flood, the murder of the first born of Egypt, and the horrific Old Testament genocides. It continues in the New Testament with King Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents, and culminates with the crucifixion of Christ.

Could any rational, moral person consent to be saved from the penalty of his own misdeeds by the sufferings and death of a completely innocent person?

If the concept of a father who plots to have his own innocent son put to death by crucifixion is presented to children as beautiful and as worthy of society’s admiration, what types of human behaviour can be presented to them as reprehensible?