The Ten Commandments or Jesus’ Beatitudes

 

If we insist on placing the ten commandments in courtrooms and schools, we are missing the truth that we should be placing Jesus’ beatitudes. We need our character adjusted

as a people rather than legal enforcement. Laws regulate behavior (to a degree) 

but cannot produce morality. Following Jesus changes the heart.

We need mercy for the poor, for those victimized by a system

that has not let them rise from their lack and their fear.

We need to stop our system of privatized prisons that profit on locking people up. The USA locks up more citizens than any other nation. 

We need to halt the endless accumulation of wealth by a few. Debt forgiveness is a scriptural practice and is found in the Lord’s (instructive) prayer given to his disciples.

We need to repent but cannot because we are lost to the myth of the USA being

chosen by God to be great. 

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    The ten commandments were written in stone by God[i], yet Moses broke the tablets of stone. Jesus wrote in the sand and forgave a woman guilty of breaking the law leaving us with nothing written by the finger of God.

    Five of the ten commandments are already known by us through the moral conscience (part of the image of God in us) that already knows murder is wrong.

   You shall not murder we already know in our conscience. Murder is an act that changes one’s identity. You lose your name to the act and become known as a murderer.

   You shall not commit adultery as a law ensures sexual restraint and the familial identity of a person. To take another’s spouse is to divide the marital vow. This reality is sown in our conscience in our heart.

    You shall not steal. Even a hungry thief after a morsel of bread knows stealing is wrong and the legal ramifications can cause him harm regardless of the lack of humanity that failed to see the hungry soul provided for. This is so because the law is a guide dependent upon a healthy society or it fails.

     To bear false witness is to technically to deny the truth of a person’s actions and ruin their life; we all know this.

      You shall not covet (see endnote 1) is a brief list on the danger of desire in relation to another. We are to be our self and not desire to be who we are not. It was desire that led the first couple to refuse the voice of God and seek what was prohibited.  

   Honoring mother and father is subjective yet we find ourselves driven by a need to care for them as they age. Also, it is instructive for us in the sense that recognizing one’s own formation has been touched by our parents. If a person never knew their parents such a command seems irrelevant. Yet, the fact that they did not know their parents affects them. To honor those who you never knew is good for your mental health. Our origins, our genetic relationship to those who came before us is part of our psyche. We honor our father and mother because our relational reality is healed through acts of love, that express understanding and forgiveness.

   The first commandment is a monotheistic infusion into a world of multiple gods where the cosmos is deified. Yahweh alone delivered the people from the land of Egypt with signs that countered the existence of Egypts gods.

     The second commandment; Yahweh is with the people and Israel is not to acknowledge any other god for Yahweh is present everywhere all the cosmos above in and below the earth are known to him. Yahweh is one as is written in the Deuteronomic list of chapter six where the ‘shema’ clarifies that the deity is one, not many.

   The third commandment: To use God’s name contrary to who God is, is to misrepresent Yahweh. Yahweh wants to be known.

    The fourth commandment: The word remember is always near the word covenant in the Hebrew OT. We are no longer bound to the old covenant for we have the new covenant sealed with the blood of Jesus Christ the Lord. The new covenant appears in Jeremiah 31:31-34. It is notable that the word ‘make’ a new covenant is not make but ‘cut’ in the Hebrew text. The new covenant is cut in the body of Christ whose blood annuls any sacrificial practice. Although observing a day off each week is a healthy practice, it is no longer a commandment requiring adherence. It is the eucharist lived out daily in remembrance of Jesus’ life, teaching, and death that we are to ‘remember’.

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     God is not interested in the ten commandments being placed in a courthouse or in a school. It is the beatitudes of Jesus’ sermon on the mount that should be our concern, and these require more than a nation state can accomplish. A nation state can enforce laws, but it cannot change the heart of a human being. If we want to touch the hearts of a society, we need to practice the beatitudes in our daily living, in our courts, in our laws, in our schools, in our churches and always in our homes.

    The evangelical push for the ten commandments to be displayed in court houses and schools is an erring indicator of a branch of religious practice that has abandoned the great intellectual tradition of Christianity throughout the ages. Evangelicalism has reduced the good news to a formulaic system that doesn’t have the mental capacity to question its beliefs, practices, or political corruption.

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   The beatitudes[ii] bring blessing to a people, they identify that our position in the world as people, as an ecclesia, to let our blessedness fill the earth with understanding. Entering the Kingdom of heaven in the present as a citizen is to live as an alien in relation to the present age of governments. Our allegiance is to Christ Jesus the Lord, our only King (president). Jesus the lowly servant who, ate with sinners to offer mercy. He wept over the condition of a city knowing of a heavenly city. Those who inherit the earth, in meekness walk humbly with God, not in displays of wealth, or power, or arrogance. Those who hunger to live rightly before God find themselves filled with the grace and Spirit to always say yes to God. We need mercy in our economics, in our justice system, in our health care, in our relationship to our citizens and nations of other religious faith. We need enough mercy to find God in scripture and in the world.

End Notes

[i] I am using the traditional Jewish numbering of the 10 commandments.

1.     “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.

2.     “You shall not recognize the gods of others in My presence. You shall not make yourself a carved image nor any likeness of that which is in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the water beneath the earth. You shall not prostrate yourself to them nor worship them, for I am the Lord, your God.

3.     “You shall not take the Name of the Lord, your God, in vain, for The Lord will not absolve anyone who takes His Name in vain.

4.     “Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it. Six days shall you work and accomplish all your work; but the seventh day is Sabbath to the Lord, your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son, your daughter, your servant, your animal, and the stranger within your gates—for in six days The Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day. Therefore, The Lord blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified it.

5.     “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days will be lengthened upon the land that the Lord, your God, gives you.

6.     “You shall not murder.

7.     “You shall not commit adultery.

8.     “You shall not steal.

9.     “You shall not bear false witness against your fellow.

10.   “You shall not covet your fellow’s house: you shall not covet your fellow’s wife, or his man servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, nor anything that belongs to your fellow.”

[ii] The Beatitudes

Matthew 11

1 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 And he began to speak and taught them, saying:

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

5 “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely[b] on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.