Religious laziness is the constantly demonstrated and ineffective mode of attempting to frame, adjust - and even correct the moral and ethical values in Christian-dominated America and - I suspect - around the globe in all fundamentalist/literalist religions.
Those who pretend to give us our moral instructions do so with their own subjective pretending that scripture was written once and only once - an inerrant and unchanging letter from God - who has said all that needs to be said, leaving us to divine for ourselves the meaning of scriptural words and phrases. The audience for these pretended moral instructions are expected to likewise pretend the same thing about scripture and, in addition, pretend that these contemporary moral lawgivers are somehow more knowledgeable about religion, scripture and "righteousness". They are to be trusted because, when it comes down to it, they can cite verses verbatim and pretend to know the once-for-all-time and unchangeable meaning of those verses.
This is the lazy man's way to influence and authority - and wealth - if a career in pastoring is the aspiration.
This is also the lazy Christian parent's way to influence, authority and spiritual poverty if a career as a wise and successful rearing of children is the aspiration.
The Bible is first and foremost a spiritual document which contains within its pages a wisdom that must be obtained spiritually and never literally. It takes work to use scripture in that way. It takes a recognition that God as the strongest spiritual force in existence is something very much a part of reality in the here and now. It takes a recognition that every human individual not only has a "right" to on-going spiritual communion but a need and opportunity to enhance life on the basis of individual effort.
What has become obvious in American Society is the slide into laziness regarding the learning of the most basic concepts presented by Christ. Whether admitted or not, many Christians - especially parents - have abdicated the need for teaching children to move beyond the black and whiteness of fundamentalist literalness and into teaching a means for perception and response to the actuality of contemporary societal life. As a result, children reach maturity knowing very little of the most significant aspects of God and spirituality but armed with a limited but powerful list of "do's and don'ts" and "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts."
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