We're missing it, here.
They were never ‘Commandments.’ Sure, that’s what they read like in our language. “Thou shalt not murder.” But the Ten Commandments, in their original Hebrew language, are introduced with this gentle little phrase: “Then God spoke all these words...” (Exodus 20:1 CSB). I like how the Christian Standard Bible puts it, because it’s dead-on accurate to the phrase itself in its original language.
‘Haddebarim’: All these words. Rabbinical literature seems to suggest that the ten words of the Most High God were more like vows than they were like commands. These are the ten agreements of God. If you’re going to be my people, if I’m going to lead you out of bondage to your slaveholders in Egypt and establish you as the first of my Name, we’re going to have to have some kind of agreement as to what constitutes the people of I AM.
So, in order to understand them better, let’s put the Ten Agreements into modern language, and treat them like new age self-help style wisdom. Let’s let them speak our language, like our famous, ‘book of Toltec wisdom,’ The Four Agreements. Let’s also re-contextualize them in light of Jesus’ own words on moral virtue, while we’re at it.
Then God spoke all these words:
There is only One.
Things are just things.
Be impeccable with your word (I like that one). As God swears by nothing higher than himself, so you ought to swear by nothing more than your own honor: Let your ‘Yes’ be yes, and your ‘No’ be no.
Remember to rest.
Respect your elders.
Harbor no hatred for another. Remember, there is only one.
Be faithful in your relationships.
Take nothing that isn’t given.
Speak the truth and do not gossip.
Be content with what you have.
Are any of those agreements disagreeable in modern, polite society? Not a single one! But God spoke these words to a people called out from under the oppressive thumb of Pharoah. He had to teach them how to rest, for example, as they were accustomed to being worked until they dropped dead, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. These men and women had no concept of weekend. And God forbid, now that they were the masters and this was their new nation, the Israelite people become as heavy-handed as Pharoah was in his treatment of them.
God spoke these words to a people who had little conception of moral virtue. Our society is completely different, transformed by centuries of guidance from our philosophers and scholars and religious figures concerning morality and ethics. And in light of Christ’s fulfillment of the law of Moses, when he summed up all the law and the prophets so eloquently in his call to simply ‘love thy neighbor,’ dare I say it: We have no need for these, the Ten Words of God.
Some will shudder at that thought and decry me as a blasphemer. This is the same crowd that continues to raise resolutions in houses of congress or parliament for us to put the Ten Commandments back into the courtroom. And prayer back in schools, while we’re at it! To these men and women, the Ten Agreements weren’t merely for all Israel but were a timeless list of commands for all peoples, everywhere, concerning perfect moral behavior.
I find it odd that the Ten Commandments are the only laws of Moses which get this treatment. These same men and women now freely and happily eat bacon, for example.
The apostle Paul comments on the law of Moses in ways which have helped us conceptualize them for our modern day, as he and his fellow believers were conceptualizing and contextualizing them for their day. One of the things that he says is so interesting to me, in his letter to the Romans--first chapter. He says that all men know the truth. It’s written on our hearts. He goes on to say--and I strongly encourage you to read Romans 1 and 2 in full context--that if anyone acts in accordance with his or her good conscience, as God’s law is written on our hearts, it will be as if he or she had kept the law all along.
“They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. Their consciences confirm this” (Romans 2:15 CSB). That statement is astounding. And if I were to make that statement today, I’d be thrown out of any evangelical church in America. Imagine if I stood up to preach and I said:
“Brothers and sisters, I want you to know that everyone knows what is right and what is good. Every person that you meet on the street has an idea of what is morally acceptable and true. We’re all decent people, and, as many of us are found acting in accordance with what we know to be right and true, we simply will not be judged.”
Get the pitchforks and torches.
But that’s precisely what the apostle Paul was saying. He even clarifies that he’s talking about us, Gentiles, pagans, and not his own people, the Judeans.
Granted, Paul says that many have suppressed the truth, which they know to be true, in their hearts in wickedness. And yes, he says that all have fallen short of God’s moral standard, which is perfection. But his conclusion in the second chapter is offered to encourage us, as he says, when our hearts will at times condemn us and at times vindicate us. That’s the nature of the human heart.
So we can do what is good without even feeling like it.
I want you to search Romans 1 and 2 and tell me I’m misinterpreting that passage. I dare you to dive into the word of God in good faith, trusting that God is good, and see for yourself that God will not condemn us!
The awesome weight of scriptural evidence points to the contrary: There is no condemnation. Paul said it. John said it, too, over and over, and quoting Jesus on the matter. He said:
“...he didn’t come to condemn the world,”
“the Father judges no one...”
“...neither do I [Jesus] condemn you...”
“If any hears these words of mine [Jesus] and does not keep them, I do not judge them...”
“If your conscience condemns you, take heart! God is greater than your conscience.”
The scriptures point us to a loving and merciful Father, who knows that, in our modern day, we all know exactly what’s expected of us. We all know what is right. If you want evidence of hell-fire and damnation, you’re going to have to look elsewhere; it’s not in the bible. Sure, Jesus says that wicked men will be punished. But Jesus never says how or when or to what extent. There’s no mention--none at all--of eternal, conscious torment in hell. Read for yourself. You’ll see! And Jesus never includes regular, good ol’ folks like us in his pronouncement of punishment for human evils. He’s talking about the wicked--the Hitlers of the world--the psychopaths whose consciences are seared and who don’t even begin to know what is right or honorable and good.
That’s not you. So lighten up. Give yourself a break.
The Christians who taught you shame and condemnation were teaching you from their own fantasies, informed by classics like Dante’s Inferno and Paradise Lost, more than any bible verse they’ve ever read. They’re repeating sermons they’ve heard like Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” an American classic we all had to read in high school, in A.P. lit. They’re indulging a puritanical dream of vengeance that puts them, the righteous remnant, at God’s own right hand as he spills over his cup of wrath on all mankind. That’s a level of pride which verges on the satanic; it’s one that Jesus himself combatted in his own disciples--Zebedee’s sons, James and John--who had their mom ask for them to have the privilege of sitting at Jesus’ right and left hand in the life to come.
I guess it’d fall on deaf ears for me to beg these people to read their bibles, the very book they claim as they make statements which are directly controverted within its pages. Stop wielding this book as a weapon, and start treating it as exactly what it is: The bible is a great old book of wonderful wisdom and human insight, featuring delicious characters, fanciful stories, and sweet little words of encouragement along our way.
Moreover, the bible isn’t written for us. It’s only been preserved for us. To try and shoe-horn it into our context today requires olympic-level interpretive gymnastics which render the bible weakened and self-contradictory. Put short, the bible has very little to say about our day, and everything to say about its own, primary audience’s time. Any attempt to force the bible to speak into our modern contexts ultimately undermines what the bible had to say about its own contexts, and cancels out whatever applicability it might have had to us as its secondary audience. I’ll say it another way: It’s not all about you.
The God of the bible is good. We can debate select passages where he doesn’t look so good to us, in light of our day. But if the book is to be believed, the very first thing he says about his own nature is that he, “is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin” (Exodus 34:6-7 CSB). Of course, it goes on to say that he will, by no means, spare the wicked, but the former statement (that God is compassionate and gracious) is borne out on every single page.
And good grief! Haven’t we gotten so wrapped up in that latter statement, that he won’t spare the wicked, that we’ve let the first one fall away? Don’t get so caught up in your desire to see the Judgment Day that you forget that God is a slow-boiling pot, lest you find yourself taken under and drowned when his wrath against the arrogant spills over. If there even is a Judgment Day, which is up for interpretation, I assure you, your own deeds will not escape it.
I’m speaking to fundamentalist Christians here, but progressives are by no means off-the-hook: When the wrongly accused are wrongly punished, our ‘cancel-culture’ is shown to be nothing more than a secularized witch hunt, an Inquisition, and we are no greater than the puritanical Christians who preached their vengeful, angry God. Don’t neglect grace. And do your research; don’t neglect the presumption of innocence. Don’t arbitrate these matters in the media. Don’t hold onto your wrath forever--please, provide paths of reconciliation for those who have committed wrongs against you!
Paul said it: We know better. We can do better.