Robert:
Kurt Vonnegut, speaking to the graduating class of Agnes Scott College, in Decatur, Georgia, May of 1999.
"I
am so smart I know what is wrong with the world. Everybody asks during
and after our wars, and the continuing terrorist attacks all over the
globe, “What’s gone wrong?” What has gone wrong is that too many people,
including high school kids and heads of state, are obeying the Code of
Hammurabi, a King of Babylonia who lived nearly four thousand years ago.
And you can find his code echoed in the Old Testament, too. Are you
ready for this?
“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
A
categorical imperative for all who live in obedience to the Code of
Hammurabi, which includes heroes of every cowboy show and gangster show
you ever saw, is this: Every injury, real or imagined, shall be avenged.
Somebody’s going to be really sorry.
I
am a Humanist, or Freethinker, as were my parents and grandparents and
great grandparents – and so not a Christian. By being a Humanist, I am
honoring my mother and father, which the Bible tells us is a good thing
to do. But I say with all my American ancestors, “If what Jesus said was
good, and so much of it was absolutely beautiful, what does it matter
if he was God or not?” If Christ hadn’t delivered the Sermon on the
Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn’t want to be a human
being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake.
Revenge
provokes revenge which provokes revenge which provokes revenge –
forming an unbroken chain of death and destruction linking nations of
today to barbarous tribes of thousands and thousands of years ago.
When
Jesus Christ was nailed to a cross, he said, “Forgive them, Father,
they know not what they do.”
What kind of a man was that? Any real man,
obeying the Code of Hammurabi, would have said, “Kill them, Dad, and all
their friends and relatives, and make their deaths slow and painful.”
Jesus's greatest legacy to us, in my humble opinion, consists of only twelve
words. They are the antidote to the poison of the Code of Hammurabi, a
formula almost as compact as Albert Einstein’s “E = mc2.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those, who trespass against us."
