The Oddly Less Taboo, More Serious Sin

When I teach about David and Bathsheba next week, I'm going to water down the whole adultery thing. I'll say that David wanted to be married to Bathsheba, and, if I can make it sound innocuous, I might even say that David and Bathsheba "acted like they were married," but that'll be the extent of it. However, I will be much more direct and straightforward about David having Uriah, Bathsheba's husband, killed.

It's a bit odd to think that, despite being a more serious sin, murder is easier to talk about than adultery. This is certainly true when talking to children, but I think that it's also true in general, and I wonder why. I would guess that it has something to do with our culture. Committing adultery is somehow more taboo than committing murder.

Now, I'm not entirely sure whether this holds true in the wider American culture our only in our culture as members of the church. In American culture, sleeping around seems almost common, but cheating on one's significant other is still a serious breach of the social contract. Meanwhile, murder is certainly more frowned upon than promiscuity or even cheating. I have not had enough conversations with nonmembers to be confident which sin is harder or easier for them to talk about, but I know which sin is harder for me to talk about, and it's not the more serious one.

But even given that the reason one sin is easier to discuss than another has to do with culture, it's hard to say what that says about that culture. Is it that adultery is so taboo that even murder is easier to talk about or is it that murder has become such a casual topic that it, like many other topics, is easier to discuss than adultery? It could be some combination of the two possibilities. They could both be right. There could also (or instead) be other factors that makes one of the topics easier to discuss than the other.

However you slice it, the fact remains that I find it easier to say that David killed somebody than to say that David slept with somebody else's wife. That could be either good or bad. It could be true of society in general, or it could be just me, or anywhere in between. I don't know why murder is an easier topic than adultery. I'm just kind of glad that it is. Otherwise, this lesson would be even harder to teach.