The Ten Commandments – Part One

 

As we continue to explore the philosophical basis for western civilization, it is key to understand that the underpinnings of what we consider morality today is rooted in the Ten Commandments of the Hebrew Torah.  Whether one considers them to be divinely inspired or not, they have been pillars of our civilization for centuries, and it is worth considering the philosophy they contain.  The Ten Commandments are the most very basic precepts for living a civilized human life.  

 

Before getting into the commandments themselves I would ask you to follow JRR Tolkien’s formula when thinking about such things.  He would have asked you not to ask if they are true, but rather to ask what they mean.  His point was that, once you understand what they mean, their truth becomes self-evident.  

 

We tend to think of the Commandments as limiting us because, in our fallen nature, every law is a limitation on our desires.  They are, in fact, quite the opposite.  We can think of them in terms of the following analogy; you cannot go to Toledo, Ohio.  That means you can go anywhere else in the world.  Of course, humans being humans, our first desire upon hearing that injunction would be to want to travel to Toledo.  That in itself is an indication of why we have the commandments. 

 

We can divide the commandments into two separate groups.  The first three commandments, and the ones we will discuss today, deal with how we should relate to God, and the last seven, which will be the subject for next week, deal with how we should relate to other humans.  While it is true that Deuteronomy and Numbers both spend a fair amount of time digging into those last seven commandments, it is pretty clear that the original ten can stand on their own as a simple philosophical guide to living a civilized life.  They are “natural” law, in that a reasonable person can see how they would lead to a better life simply by using their powers of reason.  

 

The first critical philosophy that comes from the Ten Commandments we can understand before we even begin to read them.  For the commandments to make sense, it is critical that man has the free will to disobey them.  This understanding has been the bedrock of our concept of justice in mankind since the tablets came down the mountain until the postmodern world came about, and we will explore that deviation later.  

 

The second key philosophy is that God, in the commandments, takes the place of “ought”.  We ought not to steal, but we do not steal because God commands it.  It is the existence of God that orients us towards good.  If we eliminate God, then what we “ought” to do is relative and man becomes biological rather than divine.  At that point, all virtue is relative, and the absolute ceases to exist.    

 

On to the commandments themselves.

 

The first is: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.  You shall have no other gods before me.   This is more than just a declarative statement about who God is, this is a description of who the Israelites are.  And, for us in western civilization, it is a description of who we are today.  

 

Before God freed the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt, the Egyptians controlled their every move.  They forced the Jews to worship their pagan gods and, in one sense, eliminated any obligation for the Jews to worship the Hebrew God.  A slave has no free choice, they exist and act at the mercy of their masters. In that existence there is no real morality, slavery is merely survival.  But if God has freed us from slavery, then our actions are no longer guided by a human master.  By rescuing us, God has given us free will and also created the obligation that we live under His laws.  

 

In this understanding we should see the modern materialistic world as the land of slavery out from which the Lord our God has brought us.  The slave is materialistic out of necessity, his survival depends on it and he cannot be judged for living in that manner.  We are materialistic by choice, and again, it is our freedom that creates the obligation for us to follow His laws.  

 

The second: You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.  You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. – One way to look at this would be in the negative, like a jealous husband saying his wife can never even look at another man.  But in the context of the God we know from the rest of the Old Testament, that would be a misreading. Since there is only one God, and that God is the one who is speaking, we cannot substitute other gods or even some alternative thing, even if we believe that thing is ‘good’, for Him.  This has significant philosophical implications in that concepts like the “will of the people”, or “utilitarianism”, or “capitalism”, or “democracy”, are not substitutes for His laws.  There is precisely one God.  

 

You can see how this ties back to the First Commandment.  To worship anything other than Him, including those things that we may think are good, is to put something between us and God.  When God finally names himself as “I am” the rest becomes details.  The pursuit of any of the other polytheistic gods (like wealth, or fame, or health, or even some of the ‘good’ ones mentioned earlier) is to impose some other master between the individual that He just freed, and Himself.  It is to voluntary go back into the very bondage that God “brought us out of” if you will.  

 

When thinking of the worship of images, it is often helpful to think of Judeo-Christian philosophy both in its time and as timeless.  In Genesis, Moses had been up on the Mount Sanai, there had been fire and brimstone raining down from on high and the people are scared.  They created a golden calf and worshiped it.  God was clearly not happy with this.  For us today the lesson is that it is not enough to resist false gods, we must also be careful about those things that we create and admire.  Money is the obvious example.  We put images of people that we admire on it and we do, in fact, worship it.  But that is too simple really.  Even laws that we create for good are not Good in themselves. It is helpful to remember how the law of Moses became a series of legalisms that were just the image of good but not Good itself. Interestingly, Plato gets very close to this concept when discussing the essence of ‘chairness’ even though Plato did not have the benefit of the wisdom of the Hebrews, and likely would not have believed it if he did.[1]  Our law, even when intentioned for good, is not an entity, it is not “I am”, it is a means. It was, and is, easy to get smug following the letter of the law, “look at me, I’m virtuous”.  But we know from the New Testament that it is possible to follow the letter of the law precisely and to miss the meaning of the law in its entirety.  

 

The Third: You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. – What does it mean to misuse or to take the name of the Lord in vain?  Naming was critically important to the Hebrews.  God renames Abraham, and many others.  In the New Testament, “I will name you Peter”, and later Saul becomes Paul.  Your name is you.  The concept of besmirching the family name comes from this.  In this case God names Himself.  His name is “I Am”.  Read that again.  It is the very opposite of nothingness, it is being.  It is, to use the philosophy of the Stoics here, a first principle.  The one thing we must get our minds around is “being”.  Our first inkling of it comes from the cave painting, the knowledge that we exist.[2]  In that sense it is clear that the consequence of besmirching “I am” is suicide, because the opposite of “I am” is I am not, or nothingness.  The only way we can know God is through His Name.  Hebrew has lots of names for God depending on the need.  We do not get to change them.  

 

That’s it.  These three commandments are all that the Creator of the universe, of the world, of everything in the seas and on the land, of us, asks of how we regard Him.  There is no annual sacrifice of a virgin, there is no “I am” ceremony with a parade and bunting.  We are told to recognize that God is.  We are not to worship anything other than Him. We should respect His family name.  That’s it.  

 

It does not seem like a big ask does it?  

 

And yet…

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[1] https://americanfreenewsnetwork.org/articlepage.asp?lngAuthorID=90&lngArticleID=517  a discussion on the existence of the essence of a chair without the physical reality of a chair. 

[2] https://americanfreenewsnetwork.org/articlepage.asp?lngAuthorID=90&lngArticleID=161 on the first indications of man’s awareness of self and of that which is beyond self.  

3 thoughts on “The Ten Commandments – Part One”

  1. “there is no “I am” ceremony with a parade and bunting”
    How very different from this “Pride Month” activities.
    Those that promote them promote licentiousness above morality – while cloaking themselves in false virtue.

    God is. His logos is the foundation for all. We are nothing without it. We are lost if we do not follow it.

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