Pessimistic Politics: The Ten Commandments and Us

Hot on the heels of my last piece about religion comes another foray of Bible belief busting. I’m sure by now you’re all wondering if the Pope and Jack Chick took turns urinating in my holy water, but I assure you that I’m simply riding off of the momentum of twenty years of religious questions. Get those sick thoughts out of your head, you perverted heathen.

If I’ve learned anything while pouring over Chick’s inflammatory tract lists, it’s that I’m an evil sinner heathen who’s going to Hell because I haven’t accepted Jesus Christ as my lord and savior. Far be if for me to take another weary jab at Chick (after so many openings, it’s tiring), but the guy’s message and reasoning seem to be on two different flights altogether. Instead of ripping into him again, though, I’m going to take this opportunity to question the principles of the Ten Commandments, the sacred tablets that he holds so dear to his heart, even though they're basically worthless. Not that they don’t have validity as law, but rather if you consider it, they’re just common sense.

Before we begin, I’ll put in my mandatory assurance that I’m not trying to prove any religion wrong or right. This article is just speculation on an interesting topic that just happens to be grounded in religion. I know most of us here are grown-up and don’t need to have this message shoved down their throat, but you’d be surprised. Actually, if you’ve experienced a Chickian or some other psycho Christian, you wouldn’t be.

Historically, the Ten Commandments are regarded as the laws of God that must be followed in order to lead a righteous life that will allow or assist entrance into Heaven. The problem is, these laws cover some pretty common human tendencies, so much so that even thinking the wrong way inadvertably puts you on the fast track to Hell. And all it takes is one violation and you’re toast.

The creation of the Ten Commandments seems to be pretty pointless on God’s part, simply for the fact that he knew that no one was going to stick to them. To remedy this, he gave his son’s life to spare the doomed masses, but only if they accepted him as their savior. Basically, you don’t need to follow the laws, because if you break one, you break them all. What you need is some Jesus, and once you’ve gotten to that point, the Ten Commandments are just a suggestion.

Another problem with the Ten Commandments is that they don’t cover everything. I’m looking at the issue of homosexuality for this one. The Bible claims that homosexuality is bad, but it’s not listed in the laws, so you'd think it's not necessarily illegal in God’s court. The wrinkle here is that if a gay couple consummates their relationship without marriage, you’re committing adultery, which IS evil. And since gay marriage is not legal (at least not throughout the States), they’re screwed (not like that, perv). You can expect the argument to shift in the favor of same-sex marriages should gay marriage ever be legalized. I mean, if two guys are married and having sex, then it’s clearly not in violation of the Top Ten. Of course, since everyone will sin at some point, it doesn’t really matter anyway.

The point is, are the Ten Commandments really God’s laws, or are they less divine and more practical, laws that society needs to maintain order? I’m sure a lot of Christians are sitting back right now, smugly thinking about how well society, in general, obeys it's laws (which it doesn't), but times are changing, and some really controversial practices that they don’t approve of are really coming out into the open and are accepted in some cases. The country of "good"Christian values is slowly changing into an independent nation that it was originally designed to be, a nation where everyone has a choice on what they want to believe, even if those beliefs contradict the Laws of God.

Now here’s an interesting twist on the whole argument. Apparently, Moses got pretty cheesed off because the Israelites he just saved from the Egyptians in the name of God were now worshipping a golden calf idol (which is pretty easy to do if you aren’t careful). In a fit of rage, he shattered the original tablets (Exodus 20). God nodded in exasperation and said he would make copies of the originals, but since he didn’t keep a backup, he had to do them from memory.

I suppose God doesn’t have a good memory. The second set of tablets were completely different from the first (Exodus 34), so there are actually TWO “Ten Commandments,” meaning that there really isn’t a true “Ten Commandments.” But that’s no fun, so I’ll be using the popular version for the majority of this article. Don’t worry, though, we’ll take a look at the second set, just for kicks.

The goal of this piece is to go over the popular version of the Ten Commandments, one by one, and extract meaning and ulterior purpose from each of them, showing how they could be simply given codes of social structures and whether or not each commandment is essential for society as a whole. Long story short: the reason that man made these up to keep society from coming unglued. Some of these laws work in America, and some don’t. You’d be surprised at how some of the noble-sounding ones just don’t work.

Commandment I: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me.

This one could have been set aside to make the entire thing sound holier. We know that God is insecure and needs to know that we have his full attention, and the idea of worshipping something else is an abomination. Basically, if you don’t worship God, you’re violating his laws and will be punished.

But there could be more meaning to this one than meets the eye. As Chick himself points out, people supposedly tend to replace God with things that are not deities or idols of worship, but possessions like TVs (Chick’s own example), careers, hobbies, relationships, and basically anything that takes their eyes off God is considered worshipping some other “god” and therefore makes them guilty.

We know for a fact that being too obsessed over something does no good for society and can lead to the eventual destruction of the individual. The otaku of Japan, for example, are so dedicated to their obsessions that they literally seal themselves in their apartments and hardly ever come out. These types are shunned as wrenches in the cogs of society.

Maybe this commandment is another way of saying that focusing too much on something other than the greater good can ruin society?

Well, violating this law certainly gets us Americans by. In the Land of Opportunity, we commoners worship godly beings know as celebrities. These being take on human form and by all means seem human, yet we worship them from afar, praying that they will bless us with their gifts of acting, music, writing, or spectacular run-ins with the law. Wait, not that last one, because we are shocked and appalled when these gods exhibit human flaws, like leading police on a forty-six mile high-speed chase down a crowded freeway, resulting in a horrible, near-fatal wreck that later reveals that the celebrity was in possession of some potent drugs and a suspiciously-skittish underage sheep. Just like us!

Just like Adam wanted to be a god but instead was kicked out of Eden and made to toil for hundreds of years, so does everyone else wish to achieve this glory, or a least be famous for a little while. We have shows on hand like American Idol that give everyday losers the chance to become world-famous singers. Really, the only reason that the commoners watch these shows is the prospect of seeing one of their own stumble and hit the stage face-first, because we all know that mere commoners can’t become gods!

Somewhere out there, there is a secret world where celebrities come from. When they leave, they’re given fake backgrounds to make it seem like they came from the same block as the rest of us, but don’t be tricked. Celebrities aren’t born, they’re hatched.

So the first commandment and American culture are clearly at odds with each other. We love our celebrities and follow them around as if they were really something else. Not that I’m saying that I wouldn’t enjoy having sniveling servants to willingly do my bidding, but it’s something to think about and compare to how we perceive other human beings who are widely known. And after you’re done doing that, you can fetch me a lemonade.

Commandment II: You shall not make for yourself a graven image. You shall not bow down to them or serve them.

Okay, God’s already repeating himself. This basically states that you can’t worship objects. There’s a lot of debate over the Catholics’ use of the Virgin Mary as a graven image, but that’s another article altogether. More or less, God was just padding out the roster on this one, but in any case, it’s the same deal as the first.

Commandment III: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

Another “respect God or you’ll be punished” law, but Jack Chick seems to claim that ANY curse words, containing God’s name or not, violates this law (we can’t tell, because he cleverly censors them. Some of the most offensive literature in America, and he’s worried about decimating someone’s virgin ears).

Every language has its “bad words,” words that aren’t supposed to be socially acceptable to mutter. Yet we do it anyway, because, hey, they’re words, and words not aimed at anyone (at least not always). What’s the problem? This one isn’t that important to society, but you can see how it could be interpreted as a law of politeness. Of course, like most adult things, we try to shield our children from profanity, but we're really just fooling ourselves.

Commandment IV: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Basically, go to church. At least that’s what it could have meant when the church was still holding hands with American culture without much variation. Nowadays, Sunday is considered a day of rest, which is the religious meaning behind it, since God took a rest on the seventh day after creating everything. Unfortunately, if this law were taken seriously, the entire economy would stop and we would fall into financial ruin. As it is, a lot of people work on Sunday. I’d venture to say that most people do some kind of work on Sunday; it’s essential to keep society going.

I always loved this one just because of how vague it is. What exactly constitutes work? Something that takes effort that you don’t enjoy? What if a dam broke on a Sunday and a child was trapped in a tree, clinging helplessly as the waters pounded it, threatening to break it in half at any moment, and no one helped because they wouldn’t enjoy it and therefore it would be work, on the Sabbath? Great message there.

But a casually-celebrated day of rest is a good thing for society as a whole, a day to recharge the batteries and get ready for another week of drudgery that will repeat time and time again, until you die.

Commandment V: Honor your father and your mother.

This is one that is on the decline lately, with unruly brats becoming a more common sight. It’s another given, because children clearly need to learn the ropes of society if they’re going to continue living in it. And since parents are the ones caring for them, it only makes sense that they deserve some respect.

But this law is dangerous too. Parents are human, and humans are, at their core, morons who shouldn’t be trusted with raising their own kind, but do so for lack of alternatives. There are a lot of parents who are even more moronic than normal, the ones that neglect, abuse, or otherwise put their kids on the road to destruction. Parents are human and they make mistakes, and just because their kids are still growing up, that surely doesn’t mean that everything they say that contradicts the words of adults is wrong. Children are human too.

Kids like to pretend, though. Look at how kids’ meals at restaurants, especially at Wendy’s, McDonalds, and the like hammer home the idea of kids ruling the world. This is an effort on the part of the fast food industry, run by adults, to appeal to the notion of children that they can exclude adults from things for a change. Trust me, kids, you’d find most of what adults like to do that they exclude you from is gross-out city.

So while the children’s entertainment industry loves to go against this law, society as a whole seems to agree that it works pretty well.

Commandment VI: You shall not kill.

This is a pretty obvious one. If there were no laws stating that killing each other was a bad thing, there would be no incentives not to, except conscience, which may not exist if there are no moral codes to defy. While most people would realize that killing one person may result in retaliation from others and decided not go there, there would no doubt be a lot more killing by sociopaths who do it for fun. With no laws against it, no one would do anything about it if they personally weren’t affected.

Society couldn’t exist like this. If someone didn’t like something that was decreed, they could kill off the party responsible without violating a law. Society wouldn’t even get past the experimental phase. Eventually, the population would waver and die out, or at least stay very small.

So killing each other isn’t a great idea, even in this day where we have six billion people sucking up limited resources (like electricity, you thief). Again, I’m sure people wouldn’t start killing everybody if there wasn’t a law in place to prohibit and punish it, but it seems like the most basic of social common sense that freely killing off the population isn’t going to help anyone in the long run.

Commandment VII: You shall not commit adultery.

Another good one that seems more like a natural instinct than a law that needs to be stated. It’s natural for males of many different species to get pushy about other males trying to move in on their females, but it’s the human species that really takes this to the next level. The idea here is that you find one woman, marry her, have sex, make babies, and help ensure that the cycle keeps on flowing. Meanwhile, if another male tries to move in on your female, it’s time to butt heads, sometimes literally.

Cheating on you mate, married or not, causes all kinds of emotional problems. I’d venture to say that it’s one of the worst things you could do to someone you care about, since it destroys the trust and love you were supposed to have shared. Men are pretty bad about this. They are more likely to go off and have an affair without a care in the world, but get really upset if their woman does the same thing, like he’s entitled and she’s not. It should be common sense, but it seems to escape a lot of people.

The trick to this one is that some interpretations of this say that pre-marital sex with even just one person is the same as cheating on a spouse. Why is this? Because you're more likely to dump the one person and move to the next if you aren’t hitched, thus increasing the potential spread of disease? The interpretations don’t say much about what is acceptable in a unwedded relationship either. Do you stay firmly on first base or can you round third, as long as you don’t touch the home plate until you’ve tied the knot? Personally, I think God is just raining on our parade with this part

The reason for this law is, supposedly, God wants to protect us from sexual diseases, but what if you marry a real slut and didn’t know it, and you get a disease on the wedding night anyway? I’m sure God isn’t going to be stepping in on this one.

Well, at least the faithfulness part is a good rule to have.

Commandment VIII: You shall not steal.

Another common sense rule. If you had people stealing everything, no one would have anything, not for long at least, because it would get stolen by someone else. And if you weren’t going to get anywhere in life, why would you work all that hard? It’s like what the communists of the USSR found out the hard way: people like their stuff. A lot.

That’s not to say that the reason we shouldn’t steal just because others might want to keep their knick-knacks. Imagine if someone came in and stole all of your money, food, medication, clothing, porn, ect. Image the horror! It’s a lot like the murdering thing; it’s common sense that if you don’t want it to happen to you, don’t do it to anyone else.

Commandment IX: .You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Another fine one. Basically, don’t lie. Unfortunately, America is built on the rickety foundation of lying, which the contractors built with a padded budget. Politicians lie, bosses lie, parents lie, children lie, teachers lie. Hell, logically, all but one religious following is lying, and we can’t even be too sure about that single truthful one.

Almost all of us lie about something; it’s a way to get by. This law does have a lot of validity on the important matters in life, like business deals, court cases, relationships, and the like. There are some things in life that shouldn’t be lied about, or they’ll cause all kinds of trouble. Another common sense law, but this one may be out of the grasp of far too many.

Commandment X: You shall not covet.

And for our final commandment, we end with one that American society has thrown by the wayside a long time ago and never looked back on. Literally, it means that you shouldn’t desire, which is the stupidest thing in the world. I haven’t eaten in four days and I desire food. Oops! That’s evil!

What it really means is that you shouldn’t envy something that your neighbor has. This is rubbish. The world is built on desire. Commercial advertisers promote and praise it. Have you ever looked at a car commercial and said “I gotta get me some of that?” Well, you’ve just violated a law and you’re going to Hell.

It sounds noble, but this law is idiotic. It’s like God looked over the list and decided that there was a remote chance that some crazy nut might actually obey the first nine commandments, so he put this one in there to trip that one guy up. “I want to go to heaven, just like God! Oh, wait, no!”

It was truly obsolete the moment it was written.

So Moses has the stone tablets and is coming down the mountain when he sees his people violating the laws left and right, so he gets upset and smashes them. That seems like a stupid way of wanting people to obey the rules, smashing them up and all. I think that Moses, who seemed like a smart guy, probably looked at the tablets on the way down while shaking his head in embarrassment. “Come on!” he said, “This is it? This is the best you can do?”

So he tossed them aside and they shattered, and Moses immediately knew he was in trouble. On cue, God parted some conveniently-placed clouds and shouted at him for tossing away the rule book. “Come on, Lord!” Moses replied, gesturing at the rubble, “This stuff is common sense! Anyone can follow this!”

God knew better, but wanted to teach Moses a lesson. “All right, fine!” he yelled, “Try obeying these, you senile old geezer! And just wait until you see what you’ll be walking through for the next forty years! You can kiss the land of candy bars and ponies goodbye!”

Moses knew he made a mistake.

God hit a rock with a lightening bolt and a new set of Ten Commandments was created. The problem was, God wanted to punish Moses, so not only were they different from the original set, they were written in a different dialect than any found on Earth. So Moses looked over the tablets nervously, sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and muttered to himself: “Eh, why not?"

Here is a rundown of the NEW Ten Commandments (with half the carbohydrates and therefore less substance), which will be partnered with my commentary afterwards. I’m just going to be mocking these, so don’t expect any clever analysis on how these are common sense for societies, because they aren’t. And just in case you’re trying to question me, yes, these are really part of the Bible. I checked my New Revised Standard Version Bible (which is taken from the King James version, Jack) to make sure, and this story is indeed consistent. So back off from the “Site Staff/Contact Info" page for a moment and listen up.

NEW Commandment I: Thou shalt worship no other god (For the Lord is a jealous god).

Same as the old one, expect God lets us know that he will not have you cheating on him with another god. You’d think if God was perfect, he couldn’t let a little thing like idol worship cheese him off, but he’s God and he can do whatever he wants. He created you, and as long as you live in his universe, you will obey his rules, young man.

NEW Commandment II: Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.

Again, the same, so God is still padding it out. Oddly, the literal meaning of this phrase means that you shouldn’t make any melting gods, so if you don’t plan on carving a god out of ice and sitting him out on the porch on a hot summer day, you might be in the clear on every other type of graven image.

NEW Commandment III: The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep in the month when the ear is on the corn.

Okay, now we get into the weird stuff. Basically, you’re supposed to eat flat bread when the corn still has ears, but this time seems like it would vary. It sounds more like a moronic down-on-the-farm anecdote than the Law of the Lord.

NEW Commandment IV: All the first-born are mine.

This one is just ominous. It’s also timely, considering the only reason the pharaoh consented to the release of the Israelites was that God killed off his first born along with most of the kids in Egypt. What about the sequential children? You don’t want them? So the first can be a complete screw up, worshipping ice gods and not eating his unleavened bread when the ear is on the corn, and you’ll still take him, but screw the rest? God is a jealous God with plenty of issues.

NEW Commandment V: Six days shalt thou work, but on the seventh thou shalt rest.

It’s a little out of order, but at least you’re back on track. Plus, God is more specific this time around. The problem is, no one knows for sure if Saturday or Sunday is the seventh day of the week, so they take both off, just to be on the safe side.

NEW Commandment VI: Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, even of the first fruits of the wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end.

Spoke too soon. Look’s like God’s playing his tricks again. Just mark your calendars for whatever days these are, do what you think it says, and good luck. Personally, I think this is another trip-up law.

NEW Commandment VII: Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread.

Huh? Just when exactly did God bleed? Jesus was a few centuries away before this was supposed to be written. And who would offer unleavened bread to a bunch of blood anyway? What would it do with it, soak into it? That funny God.

NEW Commandment VIII: The fat of my feast shall not remain all night until the morning.

What I think this is trying to say is that if you eat at God’s feast, he’ll burn the fat off overnight, so you won’t look like a hairless camel walking backwards on two feet in the morning. Either that, or you’re not supposed to eat so much that you’re content the next day. Or maybe God harvests the fat of celebrators in some sick and evil God plan. Or maybe he’s tripping us up again.

NEW Commandment IX: The first of the first fruits of thy ground thou shalt bring unto the house of the Lord thy God.

At least this makes sense. When your harvest for the first time, bring it to the church to thank the Lord for it. God will be grateful and eat your offerings with great joy, or at least that’s what the clergy will tell you. This could also mean that you should give an offering to the church, but either way, you bring goods into the church and you never see them again.

NEW Commandment X: Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk.

Okay, this sounds like God is saying that you shouldn’t deny babies their mother’s milk, but “seethe” can mean “churn” or “boil,” so, it sounds like you’re not supposed to boil kids in their mother’s milk? Or maybe you’re not supposed to boil a mother’s milk, because it might be too hot and burn the baby’s mouth? Or maybe men shouldn’t drink women’s milk if it belongs to her kid… okay, this isn’t getting us anywhere. Let’s just admit that God wanted to be really cute on this last joke commandment and move on.

So, do God’s laws work for humanity, or are they just an elaborate excuse to justify kicking us into Hell (the answer: yes, if you believe the new set)? Are they even God’s laws? Are they just common sense that someone scribbled out with a few godly laws thrown in for good measure? Are these laws necessary, at least, for the survival of human society?

Beats me, but I’ll tell you this much, I won’t be seething my kid in its mother’s milk. It sounds like a legal nightmare.

I have to give credit for the information used for this article to Positive Atheism and their piece “Which Ten Commandments?”. So if there are any glaring errors, it’s all their fault.