Remarkl
3 min readFeb 12, 2022

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Nah. I'm not a believer, so the commandments, as commandments, don't much matter to me. But I recognize that many people are believers in the God of the Commandments, and for them, they are pretty good.

Remember, these are not "rules to live by," like "Never insult someone who'll be alone with your food." These are commandments from God. These are a list of sins for which payment will be due. These are things you must not do if you. Therefore, one needs to know that they are binding. For that to be true, the commandments must (1) come from God. Not only must they come from God, they must (2) come from the chief god, lest they be countermanded by some other god. And the chief god must be an internal conception, without a real shape that people can argue over or be represented by an image that might itself become too "real" a presence. So (3) no idols or pictures, please. Who 'dat on the Sistine Ceiling? Is Jesus White?

God is the law giver. Counterfeiting God's will calls all of God's commandments into question. You must not (4) say that God wants something that God has not said He wants. Otherwise, God's authority may be compromised and the whole house of cards may come tumbling down.

Work is hard, and even in the old days, bosses might demand that workers toil every day of their lives. Game theory suggests that a mandatory day off is the only way to assure that competitors can relent from competition one day a week. The commandment to (5) "Remember the sabbath day (and keep it holy)" thus does as much to "reduce human suffering" than the more direct injunctions against robbing, etc. Mr. Sojo says it's a "good idea" to take time off from work, but he doesn't say how we can do that without losing ground economically. The Fifth Commandment does. (Freeing up a day to go to church also helps maintain the message of the first few Commandments.)

The matter of God's authority can't be settled by God's own ipse dixit. Mr. Sojo rightly says that tradition is essential to perpetuation of the Commandments. And who passes on tradtion? Your Parents. (6) LISTEN to them, and take them seriously.

The thought crime at the end is really interesting. The Seven Deadly Sins are mostly thought crimes. The thought is father to the deed, so (10) Don't even think about it.

As scripture, I don't know that adding other crimes would really make sense. At some point, the issue facing the founders of the U.S. arises: What becomes of the things not enumerated? Some libertarians opposed the Bill of Rights because they thought it implied the government could do anything the Amendments didn't say it couldn't do. The modern SCOTUS --pre-Trump, anyway - saved the day, for now, by reading "liberty" to mean anything the government can't show a good reason to ban. But if we try to make the Ten Commandments a list of things you shouldn't do, the wrong inferences may be drawn.

Like the U.S. Constitution, which echoes the structure of the Ten Commandments in first announcing that "We, the People" are the ordaining authority, the Commandment should be understood as "organic" law, a term of art in jurisprudence for the laws about how a polity is run. Murder, theft, and perjury are threats to civilization itself. They are not really organic law, but they can be seen as protective of the peace rather than protective of individuals. Those prescriptions are, then, "higher" in the food chain than rules about how we treat each other in respect of each other's "rights."

At the very least, I think one must understand the Commandments in the context of society-building among a literally god-fearing populace. Reading them as a simple moral code misses their point.

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Remarkl
Remarkl

Written by Remarkl

Self-description is not privileged.

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