At 05:35 AM 3/1/2010, Stewart Marshall <[email protected]> wrote:
Yes the regulator is divine but people often have the wrong view of the 10
commandments.
I was about to get to that.
They were also prescriptive telling the Israelites how they were to live
with one another and the nations that surround them.
When the Commandments were delivered, there were no nations
surrounding them. The were in the desert for 40 years.
Jews in the desert. Oy!
Taken out of context they simply become a set of rules.
That's right, Stewart. And, since we don't live in a culture that's
wandering in the desert for 40 years, they are, when we apply them here,
entirely and necessarily out of context. People who are terrified of what
other people do in private LOVE to cite this commandment or that in order
to give themselves a vote (God's vote, as they claim to see it) which
allows them to control the private behavior of others.
(Such as the bumper stickers down here, live the 10 commandments.)
Which is entirely and insultingly un-American, since (despite the
clear respective intents and spirits of the free exercise and establishment
clauses) it posits that others should abide by the religious beliefs and
practices of the bumper sticker owner, rather than their own, if any.
Be careful, here. I didn't mention anybody's "rights."
Instead they were a covenant between a people and a king
I don't recall there being any kings in the desert for 40 years,
Stewart. Please refresh my memory.
(they follow the other covenantal models of its time.)
That's right. The Ten Commandments weren't binding unless everybody
got circumcised.
Again.
describing how the people were to interact and live.
Yes. How they were to interact and live so that they didn't wipe each
other out while they were still in the desert for 40 years. Moses wanted to
keep the interpersonal conflicts to a minimum, until the
40-years-in-the-desert portion of The Exodus was complete, so he proscribed
murdering, lying, adultery (and its necessary adjunct, coveting) and theft,
just to name the chart-toppers, and he mandated a measure of domestic
tranquility by requiring children to give their parents their due. He
wanted to keep Judaism alive, so he mandated the Abrahamic understanding of
monotheism, which, as all of you already well know, does not permit idols
(golden, American, or rock and roll) before You-Know-Who.
Well, we aren't in the desert for 40 years anymore, so, except for
the clearly ethical prohibitions (murder, theft, lying), which any
civilized society needs in order for its members to have any confidence in
it, maybe people should be free to decide for themselves how to order their
relationships with God, if they believe in Him/Her/It/Them, and the other
people they share the planet with. Where is there scriptural support for
the notion that the commandments are absolute and eternal? Only people who
think they speak for God, and claim to, or claim that they know Him better
than the rest of us, make such claims. Only people. Limited, biased,
ignorant, stupid, fallible, vain, gullible, egocentric, mortal people. [You
can't see it, but my hand is raised here.]
If you don't believe in God, then, to you, the Ten Commandments
aren't divinely-inspired, in any event, and there exists nothing to prevent
you from scrutinizing each one on its merits, or lack thereof, until the
cows come home. But if you DO believe in God, then you necessarily believe
He gave us (either by Himself, or through Darwinian natural selection)
brains with a great deal of cerebral cortex. Blind, dogmatic, and
unthinking adherence to a set of 3500 year-old rules is an insult to He who
gave us that gift. The very fact of the human brain means, obviously and
inarguably (as I see it, anyway), He WANTED us to think. He WANTED us to
question and probe. Failure to do so does justice neither to one's Maker,
if any, nor to those He made.
Bob
I'm on the case, from outer space!
OK
End
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