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There’s an issue with the Ten Commandments. It’s a giant one, too, and we’ve all needed to take care of it: You possibly can follow the Ten Commandments and still be a fairly terrible person.
Sure, coveting is bad. Stealing, adultery, murder—the worst. But I spend most of my life not doing any of those things and at best I get a C in being a superb person. The very fact I don’t swear or take the Lord’s name in vain doesn’t mean I didn’t shout at that lady within the Buick who became my path within the crosswalk last weekend. I’ll avoid lying, but boy can I gossip. (Between us, you is not going to imagine what this guy in my office did last week.) And who needs coveting my neighbor’s goods once I can just buy and eat every kind of products of my very own? Sorry, the environment!
There’s an issue with the Ten Commandments: You possibly can follow them and still be a fairly terrible person.
A lot of us were taught as kids to make use of the Ten Commandments as kind of a confessional checklist. I even have definitely heard confessions from adults that went that way, too. “This month I had three lies, 4 impure thoughts, dishonored my parents twice, and didn’t go to Mass last week.”
However the Ten Commandments weren’t designed to be the SparkNotes for sin. No, they were principally the stipulations within the God-Israel prenup: God gave them to Moses on the time he was making his covenant with the Israelites, and the purpose of them was, break any of those rules and “We’re so over.” That’s why so most of the commandments start with “Thou shall not.” God wasn’t attempting to be a downer or a control freak. He was laying out the boundaries of this relationship.
A variety of people imagine the true commandment to follow is Jesus’ words in Matthew: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And there may be loads to recommend that. It frames our life in energetic, positive terms. As life strategies go, “thou shalt not” is just about the worst. Being a superb Christian or a superb (and blissful) person will not be primarily about what you retain yourself from doing, but what you do. It’s about our deeds.
Also, while there are numerous alternative ways of fascinated about Jesus, dig down and just about all of his selections come back to like. Again and again he tries to take care of others, especially sinners.
It’s price taking a second to take into consideration that: Jesus spent his time helping individuals who have done bad things, and other people whom society had rejected as unclean, immoral or not even fully human. It sounds great until you begin putting it in concrete terms, like Sister Helen Prejean working with death row inmates and speaking against their execution despite the actual fact they’d murdered people; or Father Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick insisting on the humanity and blessedness of L.G.B.T. people when many within the church wouldn’t. Then it may possibly get pretty difficult.
It sounds greater than somewhat narcissistic to say that the measure of your love for others ought to be yourself.
Truthfully, love thy neighbor is even a test when I feel of it by way of my actual neighbors, just like the family to my right who refuse to repair their fence or those to my left who leave their dog Cujo barking outside all night. Not only do I not love them, I need someone to steal that dog.
But Jesus’ commandment also has some flaws. It sounds greater than somewhat narcissistic to say that the measure of your love for others ought to be yourself. Also, it assumes that all of us have lots of love for ourselves, when the truth is lots of us have spent our lives being told that we aren’t as worthy of affection as others or that there’s something incorrect with us. Jesus’ command may even be used to strengthen that terrible message. Tell me you’ve never heard a homily on this concept where the purpose is “Have a look at how much you spoil yourself.”
Also, “love” is such a fuzzy word. We use it to mean so many things, and sometimes only a general feeling of fine will or affection. I like the White Sox. I like my automotive. I like my writing classes. It’s all good.
However the actual point of Jesus’ commandment is to really do things, to take care of people in the best way that Jesus did—to be friends to those that we don’t already know or who aren’t easy to be with; to be open to those whose life selections challenge our own or whose company might make us look bad; to treat as human even those that may not have offered the identical to others or themselves.
It was God’s lovingkindness that truly made him God to the Israelites.
Within the Old Testament, after we see the word “love” or “mercy,” often the unique Hebrew is “hesed.” But in incontrovertible fact that word is healthier translated as “lovingkindness,” and relatively than an emotion it describes activity. Hesed is practiced, not felt.
It’s also an act of extravagance; it’s about going beyond what is anticipated of you by social or cultural standards relatively than simply meeting them. If the social convention is to provide a homeless man a dollar, hesed is about taking him to dinner, making a degree of talking to him once you see him or helping him discover a place to live. It’s the word that describes the act of rescue, of forgiveness, of a friendship that offers past when it hurts.
When he gives Moses the Ten Commandments, God uses hesed to explain himself. “Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and faithfulness; who keeps lovingkindness for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.’” (Ex 34:6-7)
And the truth is it was God’s lovingkindness that truly made him God to the Israelites. Throughout the Ancient Near East, divinity was not only accepted because someone pronounced it. It needed to be proven through deeds. Just as we prove we’re good friends by our willingness to be there after we are needed, God is accepted as God precisely because he rescues the Israelites.
Far be it from me to suggest that the Ten Commandments that the Lord God gave to Moses could use improvement. (Also, as David Letterman proved so a few years ago, people love a Top Ten list.)
But when we’re going to proceed to look to them as a kind of moral checklist, could we please add one: “Practice lovingkindness toward every part and everybody you meet.”