Dennis Prager: What Are Judeo-Christian Values?
The term “Judeo-Christian values” This is often used.
It is something I use every day.
The same reason I do this is why the late great British prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did it:
“The truths of the Judaic-Christian tradition,” She said: “are infinitely precious, not only, as I believe, because they are true, but also because they provide the moral impulse which alone can lead to that peace, in the true meaning of the word, for which we all long… There is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to something greater than themselves.”
Mrs. Thatcher believed in Christianity. I am a Jew. Although we share many religious beliefs, our theologies are different. We share the same core values. In societal terms, moral values are much more important than theologies.
This is why traditional religious Protestants, Catholics and Mormons are aligned on nearly every important social issue.
These are just 10 examples of these values.
No. 1. There is only one God. That God is the God introduced to the world by the Hebrew Bible — the source of one universal morality.
No. No. There is no moral truth without God, only opinions.
No. 3. Because there are moral truths for all people, good and bad are one in the same.
No. 4: God — not man, not government, not popular opinion, not a democratic vote — is the source of our rights. All men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” Declares the American Declaration of Independence.
No. 5: The human person is “created in the image of God.” Each human life is valuable. Because we are all made in God’s likeness and God doesn’t have any race, race has no meaning.
No. 6: The world is built upon a divine system, which refers to divinely ordered distinctions. These divine distinctions include God and man, God and woman, man and women, good and bad, God and nature, God and God, the holy and the profane.
No. 7: Man does not have to be good. Christians refer to “original sin” In referring to man’s sinful nature, Jews refer to God Himself in Genesis “The will of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21). These beliefs are not the same, but they do differ from the Enlightenment belief of man being fundamentally good. They both come to the same conclusion. We need God-based rules that keep us away from our natural tendency to do wrong.
No. 8: We must not follow our heart. Both Christians and religious Jews know how dangerous it is for us to follow our emotions. Judeo-Christian values that are rejected by the majority of people are less likely to accept and promote this advice. “Follow your heart.”
No. 9: God gave us the Ten Commandments — the core of Judeo-Christian values. To apply only one of the Ten Commandments in our secularly morally confused age, you must “Honor your father and mother” even if they voted for someone you loathe — meaning, at the least, remain in contact with them and do not dare deprive them of the right to be in contact with their grandchildren.
No. No. 10: Humans have free will. Because all human behavior is determined by biology and the environment, in the secular world there is no free will. Only a religious worldview, because it posits the existence of a divine soul — something independent of biology and environment — allows for free will.
The term has another important aspect. “Judeo-Christian.” They are mutually dependent. There is no New Testament without the Old Testament. Virtually every Christian moral principle derives from the Hebrew Bible — not only the 10 Judeo-Christian values enumerated here, but such basic moral principles as “Love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18), “All your heart should be for the Lord, your God” (Deuteronomy 6:5), and “”Love the stranger” (Deuteronomy 10, 19).
Judaism also needs Christians. Christianity is the one who brought the Torah and the rest from the Hebrew Bible to the whole world. Maimonides, the greatest Jewish thinker and teacher after Moses, recognized this.
Thus, people often speak of “Judeo-Christian” Values are not something people speak of “Judeo-Muslim” values. David Novak, a noted Jewish scholar, writes: “Maimonides rules that Jews may teach the Torah to Christians but not to Muslims because Christians believe Hebrew Scripture in toto to be the revealed word of God, whereas Muslims believe that primary text to be the Quran; for them, Hebrew Scripture is a flawed revelation. Thus, Jews and Christians share a common revelation in a way that Jews share with no other religious community.”
The United States of America is the ultimate expression of Judeo-Christian values. America’s Founding Fathers were Christians who were culturally and doctrinally rooted in Hebrew Scripture. America was not founded to replace Israel. “Second Israel.” It was until recent times.
Dennis Prager, a nationally syndicated radio talk show host and columnist, is an internationally syndicated radio host. His commentary on Deuteronomy (3rd volume) of “The Rational Bible,” In October, he published a five-volume commentary about the first five books. He is co-founder of Prager University. Contact him at dennisprager.com.
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