Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:15

15 Thou shalt not steal.

The eighth commandment tells us that we must not take the things that belong to another. Perhaps more than any other, this commandment shows us the transcendental nature of morality. It is something that goes beyond our physical nature, into a realm that can only be called spiritual.

For certainly the idea that we “own” anything is only an illusion, at least from a natural point of view. What makes something belong to us? We might say that we own something and have that claim recognized by society, but nature does not respect that claim at all. Nature isn’t convinced that an item belongs to me just because my toil and labor brought it into being, or because some made-up standard says I “earned” it, or because I made some marks on it that match the initials of my name, or because I found it and touched it first. None of those things fundamentally bind that item to me in the eyes of nature. Nature does not see the item as an unextractable part of my person, nor will it make the item perish when I do, nor will it prevent the item from being given to another, nor will it stop the item from being lost or destroyed at any moment.

And yet, even a toddler knows that something is his. Even a toddler knows when something is stolen from him. We may not be able to explain ownership and theft materialistically, but we know they are real. God, evidently, knows they are real also, and He forbids it directly.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:14

14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Another very brief commandment, this one forbidding married individuals from breaking their marriage covenant and having sexual relations with anyone other than their spouse. Of course, this one commandment does not cover the entire breadth of sexual sin. It does not mention anything about fornication, or bestiality, or incest, or homosexuality. However, just because all these matters are not covered in the ten commandments does not mean that they are not covered elsewhere in the word of God. Here in the mountain Moses received the foundational rules of God’s law, but there were other visits to the mountain, and other details yet to come. Leviticus, for example, has several chapters that cover the other sexual perversions that are expressly forbidden by God.

I think it is fair to say, though, that adultery is the root evil that all other sexual perversions are an extension of, and this explains why it would be forbidden first in the ten commandments. Calling out adultery points to the fact that sexuality is fundamental to the union between a man and a woman in the covenant of marriage, and so it is the perversion of that order that constitutes a sin. Whether we also pervert that order by having sexual relations before we are married, or with people that we cannot be married to, or with animals, it all follows the idea of breaking apart the marriage covenant and taking the things which belongs to it elsewhere. All sexual sin is in the spirit of adultery.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:13

13 Thou shalt not kill.

A very brief and succinct commandment, one that speaks to the sanctity of life, and the immense evil when one takes it from another. Of course, though the words here are simple, there is some nuance that applies to this commandment. For while the Israelites had been ordered not to kill, they were also going to be commanded to go to war with the Canaanites, and thus would kill tens of thousands of their enemies. And they were also commanded to kill animals at the altar as an offering to the Lord. How can these commandments coexist with one another?

The confusion goes away when we consider the original Greek word that has been translated to our English word “kill.” In fact, there are two Greek words that get turned into “kill” or other variations of that word in the English translation.

One of them is שָׁחַט (shachat), which is used elsewhere in Leviticus 14:13 as it describes how the priest will kill the offering that is being made in the temple.

The other one is רָצַח (ratsach), which is used elsewhere in Numbers 35:16 as it describes how a man who kills another with an iron weapon is a murderer.

So there is a word for “to kill,” and another word for “to murder.” And the word used here in the 10 commandments is the second one: רָצַח (ratsach), which is “to murder.” We could consider the English translation of this verse to be more accurate if we rendered it as, “Thou shalt not murder.” And now we see how the Israelites could be commanded to go to war against the Lord’s enemies, and to slay animals in their offerings, because both of those would be examples of “killing,” but not of “murdering.” If the distinction between those two does not matter to some, it does apparently matter to God.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:12

12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

The fifth commandment describes the attitude that children should have towards their parents. One may wonder why there isn’t a commandment pointing the other direction, telling parents how they ought to feel towards their children. Having been both a child and a parent, I would say that the nature of the parent is already to love the child and seek what is best for him. Though the parents may give unwanted advice, they generally only do so with a sincere desire to help. The nature of the child, however, is often one of defiance, with an impulse to disobey for the sole purpose to be contrary. That is the tendency that needs to be reigned in, and so a commandment to spell that out.

It is interesting how this commandment links honoring one’s parents and living long upon the land. It seems to suggest that to not honor one’s parents is likely to result in a premature death. Why is that? One explanation could be that it is a divine promise, an assurance from God that He will intervene in the cause of the honorable child to preserve life. Another explanation might be that it is an observation of the natural trends in humanity. Perhaps when a generation as a whole decides to dishonor the generations that came before they are carving their own foundation out from under themselves, and will inevitably fall back to a more barbaric and violent lifestyle, and that will certainly result in their days being shorter upon the land.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:8-11

8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

The fourth commandment is one of only two that begin with something other than “thou shalt not.” Instead, the primary injunction with this commandment is to “remember.” God’s command to remember the sabbath shows that it already is the sabbath day whether we adhere to it or not. The sabbath’s existence is not contingent upon our observation of it, our choice is simply whether we “keep it holy,” or ignore it.

God then goes into greater detail, making clear that “work” is the primary thing that would desecrate the sabbath. That is, in fact, the only thing that he prohibits on that day. With that in mind, we can see how the pharisees building up a hedge around the law, adding rules such as a maximum number of steps that an Israelite could walk in a day, would necessarily prohibit things that the Lord never intended to prohibit. From the words here in Exodus, there would be no crime in traveling a long distance on the sabbath to see a new city, or to walk along a coast, or to visit a distant relation, or for any reason at all, except for travel as part of labor or work.

I personally grew up with many behaviors being prohibited on the sabbath, such as playing games or watching movies. While there can certainly be an argument for having a day disconnected from worldly influences in order to more fully sanctify the day, it would be inappropriate to give as a reason “because God said so in the fourth commandment.” The only time that the fourth commandment would be violated is if our activity caused anyone to work.

And God’s words are very explicit that our responsibility goes beyond keeping just ourselves from work: “neither thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.” Not only are we not to do any labor ourselves, but also we are not to cause anyone else to labor either. Even to the “strangers” who aren’t converted to our beliefs and will be violating the sabbath day anyway, we are not justified in making them additionally work for us.

On the seventh day God rested. This was both rest for Him, and also for the world which He ceased imposing commands upon for that day. Apparently there was something in that experience that the Lord saw was good, that He saw was right, and He decided to extend that season of work and season of rest outward across the whole of humanity. The sabbath day is established in our creation and remains a constant part of us. It is there for us to take refuge in, if we only remember to do so.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:7

7 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

Here we have the third commandment, not to take the name of the Lord in vain. When I was a child, I was told this meant not to use religious profanity. For example, spitting out the name of “Jesus Christ” to express anger or shock. And while I still do believe it is particularly wrong to curse in ways that desecrate the divine, I don’t believe that this is the practice specifically being called out in this verse.

The “taking of the name of the Lord,” calls to mind how Christians “take upon themselves the name of Christ.” Taking the Lord’s name means taking His covenant, calling yourself one of His people, declaring your intention to live as He would have you do.

And that should most definitely not be a commitment made in vain. It is to be a most serious promise. If you are making the commitment to follow Christ lightheartedly, or abandoning him soon thereafter, or trying to twist his words to match your preferences, then you are taking his name in vain. You are saying that you are a follower of the Lord, when you’re really not at all.

Sadly, in our Western civilization where most of us were born under the umbrella of Christianity, I believe that “taking of his name in vain” is one of our most common sins. We take our status as “Christians” for granted, assuming that since we were born with that title it belongs to us no matter what we say, think, or do. Our lighthearted approach to our faith cheapens the name of Christendom to the rest of the world, and makes a mockery of our God. The message from God in today’s verse is, “if you’re going to take my name, mean it!”

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:4-6

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:

5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

Yesterday we spoke about the commandment to not have any false gods, and now the second commandment is not to have any graven images or idols. Obviously, the graven images and idols that Israel would find themselves bowing down to were representations of false gods, so there is a connection between the two, but they aren’t quite the same thing.

The false gods were only conceptual. They were a name and an idea, but no one saw the gods or had them in their home. The idols were the physical representation of the gods. The idol was the actual statuette that you might have in your home, that you would see and hold and bow down to. In the first two commandments God is telling the Israelites both to not worship the false idea, and to not worship the false symbol.

Today, wealth might be considered a false god, as it is merely a concept, whereas fast cars and fancy clothes are the idols that are physical representations of that wealth. We both lust for wealth as a concept, and we love to be seen with expensive accoutrements, resulting in both false god worship and idolatry.

There are all manner of other worldly, physical things that we idolize as well: phones, watches, jewelry, computers, collectibles, homes, trophies, and certifications. These all become idols when we pursue them over and beyond our pursuit of God. And why are they false idols? Because each of these physical things is based on a worship of a conceptual false god such as status, vanity, entertainment, or fun. Those all become false gods when we depend on them for our happiness rather than God.

God wants us to worship Him both in concept, adopting His principles and priorities as our own, and in practice, dedicating our physical time and effort to securing the things that He has chosen for us. If we do these things in our mind, our heart, and our behavior, then we are keeping the first two commandments.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:3

3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

I mentioned yesterday that the divide between commandments one and two can be easily missed. Today we will look at just the first commandment, and tomorrow the second, and we will seek to understand the difference between them.

The first commandment is actually very brief, captured entirely in a single verse. In my Western civilization, which was founded upon Judeo-Christian theology, the idea of other gods is strange and bizarre. From my youth I have understood there to only be one God, and so devotion to any others sounds totally illogical.

For the Israelites fresh out of the land of Egypt, though, it was a different matter. They had been surrounded by the likes of Horus and Ra, and they were on their way to Canaan where they would encounter the likes of Baal and Ashtaroth. The people would be tempted, and too-often fully seduced, by these false gods. They would abandon the God who had created, called, and redeemed them.

Today we might not so clearly personify our false gods, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have them. If we think a false god as the supreme authority in our life, the thing whose demands trump all other contradictory voices, then I would say today we have false gods of The Self, Science, and Ideology. The Self when we abandon all principles and virtues simply because we want to satisfy our own selfish interests. Science when we treat it as an opinionated entity that has dethroned God. Ideology when we are more dedicated to the rules of our chosen group than to fundamental truth.

It’s not as if there isn’t value in the self, or in science, or in some ideologies, but to have anything that is our supreme authority, our god that we defer to, even above the Lord who created the heavens and the earth, is an exercise of evil.

We also worship a false god when we worship a misconstrued idea of who God is. When we see God as the punishing oppressor who has unrealistic expectations for our spiritual growth, that is not really God. When we see Him as the over-indulgent, permissive grandfather who doesn’t care whatever we do, that is not really God. In both of these cases, and any other gross misrepresentation of the Lord, we are worshipping a false god.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:1-2

1 And God spake all these words, saying,

2 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

We now come to one of the most famous passages in all of the Bible: the laying down of the ten commandments. Interestingly, God does not Himself refer to these as “the Ten Commandments.” That title is not spoken out loud by either God or Moses, but was written out by a scribe in Exodus 34:28. As such, in the following verses we will see that the commandments are not explicitly numbered, they don’t all receive equal explanation, and the point where the first commandment ends and the second begins can sometimes be confusing to detect. Regardless, I will proceed through them one at a time, giving each a discussion on their meaning, significance, and application.

Before that, though, we have this introduction from the Lord. He prefaces these core commandments with the declaration that “I am the Lord thy God.” These aren’t the words of Moses, they aren’t the opinions of any man, they are the mandate of the divine.

God continues with His introduction, reminding the Israelites that He is the one that “brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” They were prisoners and He freed them when no one else could. He hadn’t come only to free them from the Egyptians, though, but also from their own vices and frailties. These commandments would be a continuation of His freeing, ensuring that the weak and the naive would not be left to the mercy of the murderer, the thief, or the false accuser.

In short, the Israelites had been freed for a purpose, and it was so that they could submit themselves to their true and benevolent Master, whose commandments these were.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Rights and Materialism: Part Three

Thus Far)

Over the past two postsI have discussed God as a basis for our fundamental human rights, and also the natural biology of our species for a basis as well. I have explained that I believe in both foundations, but unlike a materialist/humanist, I am convinced that having the natural biology of our species as the only foundation for our rights is insufficient. In my last post I explained why, showing how from the materialist/humanist view, rights would only be an illusion invented by the species that benefits from them. We would say that humans should have a right to life, simply because if they don’t they would cease to exist, so murder is a self-destroying principle.

So long as our rights are tied only to the biology of our race, it is possible to create logical exceptions to them. I gave two examples:

  1. We could say that we are not the same race as other humans, and we only need to observe the rights of our own race, and not of others.
  2. We could say that even if the rights should be enforced by society at large, if we violate them and conceal it from society, there is no other authority that we must answer to.

Today we will consider how having our rights also based in God resolves these issues.

A New Equation)

In my previous post I gave an equation that showed the cyclical, self-contained logic of rights when based upon the natural biology of our species. I said that if we call humanity “X,” and the basic human rights “Y,” then we can say:

Y is essential for X
So X must secure Y

Now let us consider how that equation changes if we assume that God has given us our rights. We will represent God in our equation as “Z.”

Z states that Y is essential for X
So Z must secure Y for X

The rights (Y) are tethered to man (X) by God (Z). It may not seem like much of a difference, but this small alteration has massive ramifications. Introducing Z now makes X and Y reside in Z, not in each other. We no longer have a circular, isolated interdependency. The relationship between X and Y no longer collapses once we are outside of their context. Y is no longer a relative need of X, which nothing outside of X is obligated to fulfill.

Through this God-centric view, human rights are now just as universal and unchanging as mathematical truths. Just as how the Pythagorean Theorem will always be a true mathematical expression, the statement that “life and liberty are necessities for all people” will always be a true, moral principle. Even if there were no people around to observe it, the Pythagorean Theorem would still be a universal maxim between the sides of right-triangles, maintained in God, independent of man. In just the same way, even if humanity were to go extinct, it would still be a maxim in God that life and liberty are good for people and nothing would change that.

The Answer to the Problems)

Now, even if a group of people declared themselves to be a different race they would still have to answer to God if they violated the rights of other races. If individuals violated the rights of one another, and concealed it from the larger species, they would still have to answer to God. They would have to answer to God because it is He, not merely “other people,” who demand these rights for all. He demands them, and He enacts His will to see that they are secured.

And from the Christian perspective, that is exactly what has transpired throughout history. Yes, there have been long periods of various rights being violated by entire nations and individual souls, but over the years the idea of basic human rights has emerged, and in more developed countries has been applied to all, and of it has been done under the justification that “it is God’s will.”

Conclusion)

There is nothing wrong in observing the ways that our biological nature compels us to seek what is best for one another, to enshrine rules of conduct between all people, to sacrifice our own interests for the greater good. Recognizing these logical, natural realities can certainly be further evidence to help convince all people to live in moral, ethical ways.

The problem is when we try to weaponize the existence of this biological nature against the divine basis for our rights. There are those that use a new moral perspective to beat away at the very foundation that all our moral principles rest upon! How strange, when it was the perspective that God was the author of our morals that led us to implement the freedoms and rights that we have in the first place. Trying to remove that perspective is a regression, one likely to take us back to the darkest epochs humanity has ever seen, with the vast majority of the population living under all manner of oppression and suffering.

If we destroy the one, best moral grounding we have ever had, and give the next generations a flawed moral grounding instead, they will carry it to conclusions that we would never dare. And when they do, who will the sufferers take their appeal to then? The God that we abandoned?