I was surprised, as you might also be, to find out there are different versions of “The Ten Commandments” in the Bible. The current popularized version is just the cherry-picked revision of the supposedly most reasonable laws. This excludes - keeping the feast of unleavened bread, offering the first born ox or sheep to God, observing the festival of weeks, thrice a year all men shall appear before God, do not use leaven when sacrificing to God, and do not boil a baby goat in its mother’s milk. I think it’s worth mentioning the revisions of commandments as it diminishes the credibility of the rest, but I mostly want to focus on the fallibility of the popularized 10 commandments.
The first 3 are all about not offending God personally because he is a jealous and narcissistic God. An omnipotent and omniscient god of all godliness who has everything he could ever want in the kingdom of heaven gets his feeling hurt when you say his name with a hint of sarcasm. Like OMG! what a sensitive deity, right? It’s also worth mentioning the fact that we are not provided a verifiable way of knowing exactly which of the thousands of gods is the right god to worship. Some argue that being an Atheist and having ‘no other gods before me’ is better than worshiping the wrong god.
The 4th is about keeping the sabbath day holy. However, it is debated whether the holy day is Saturday or Sunday and what exactly it means to ‘keep it holy’. I strongly agree with Christopher Hitchens who says “It is usually wise when promulgating eternal laws to be clear about what you mean”. How can we be held accountable to expectation not clearly defined?
The commandment to ‘honor thy father and thy mother’ sets forth no conditional terms for the treatment of the child. There is nothing said about parents who are physically abusive drug addicted immoral psychopaths. You damn sure better honor them. What about ‘honor thy son and thy daughter’?
6 through 9 are pretty obvious. Don’t kill, commit adultery, steal, or lie. In fact, these commandments are so obvious and seemingly intrinsic to all Christian and non-christian alike I almost wonder why they need to be mentioned. Cultures or small tribes who have never even heard of the Bible know that it’s bad to murder. To assert that the Israelites were clueless to basic morals until Moses brought forth the correct revision of the commandments is an insult to human decency. If people can be moral without the Bible, why study it? In fact, people are often more-moral than the teachings of the Bible.
The last commandment, number 10, goes one step beyond dictating appropriate actions and condemns thought crimes. Because God knows our personal thoughts, we are striped of the freedom of individual thinking. It’s not enough to be a good person, we must think as a good person. The punishment of thought crimes is a form of totalitarianism. Nothing is private or hidden and it encroaches on our inborn or ‘god-given’ desires. You don’t even have to act on your thoughts to be sufficiently convicted for hell.
I guess there wasn’t enough room on the tablets to include commandments condemning slavery, rape, pedophilia, discrimination, misogyny, polluting, tyranny, torture, war, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, deforestation, animal cruelty, molestation, bullying, addictive substances, and so on, but for the love of God don’t say his precious name in vain!
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