Misunderstood Harshness: Exodus 22:20

There is a perceived but imaginary distinction between Old Testament and New Testament morality in the minds of many.  The Old Testament is usually seen as a gratuitously brutal, oppressive set of commands (as if the normal appeals to subjective conscience and social norms are valid to begin with), whereas the New Testament's vague commands about loving others, which merely continue the commands of the same kind in the Old Testament, are often seen as calling for tolerance.  In light of this, verses like Exodus 22:20, which says to put anyone who sacrifices to a deity other than Yahweh to death, are regularly greeted with condemnation or misrepresentation by readers.

It only takes a few moments to show that the common reactions to this verse are very disproportionate to its content, not that subjective dislike or cultural context validates or invalidates Exodus 22:20 as a moral demand.  Mosaic Law does not say to execute people for endorsing atheistic philosophy, for confessing agnosticism, for entertaining the idea that some non-Christian religion is true, or for admitting that it is logically possible that the uncaused cause is not the Biblical Yahweh at all.  Sacrificing to another deity is the only offense Exodus 22:20 refers to, whereas Leviticus 20:2-5 specifically condemns sacrificing children to Molech as a capital crime.  What does and does not follow from this needs to be properly understood.

Christian theonomy is therefore not a threat to the lives of atheists, Muslims, or members of other religions that do not prescribe sacrifices to other deities (or prescribe any other capital offense) in that they would not be hunted down by anyone who does not go beyond what the Bible itself calls for.  Never once does the Bible command anyone to purge the entire world of those who are affiliated with all religions outside of allegiance to Yahweh.  In order to deserve capital punishment by Biblical standards, one must carry out very specific actions.

Indeed, it is only certain actions or kinds of speech that merit any sort of criminal penalties at all according to Biblical justice.  A person's worldview might be self-refuting, wholly unprovable, assumed to be true, or thoroughly evil, but no one is to be put to death or otherwise prosecuted or punished for false or unproven/unsupportable beliefs or for ideological stupidity.  Worshipping other deities in the relative privacy of one's mind is thus not automatically a Biblical crime, even if it is sinful.

Worship of another deity or the practice of another religion is exempted from legal punishment as long as it does not involve sacrifice to that respective deity--especially human sacrifice--or explicit blasphemy against Yahweh (Leviticus 24:16), rape (Deuteronomy 22:25-27), sorcery (Exodus 22:18), abduction (Exodus 21:16), and so on.  Without these outward actions, it is actually unjust, or sinful, for someone carrying out Mosaic Law to in any way impose legal penalties on non-Christians.  This important clarification is almost universally left out of discussion on matters of Biblical laws both inside and outside of the church.