The Big Ten
As a self admitted Bible nerd, I have to confess that sometimes I develop pet peeves that are ridiculous and I know it. For instance, I dislike “the ten commandments”. Before you start calling out blasphemy, allow me to clarify a few things upfront. I dislike what I feel is an overemphasis of those commandments as well as the poor exegetical practices and lack of historical knowledge that surrounds them.
Forget about those big words for a moment and think about when you first heard about the ten commandments and what you know about them. If I were to guess, I would say that you first heard about them in children’s church or a VBS. You probably even got a piece of candy or a trinket if you memorized them. Even though it’s almost 70 years old at this point, you probably also have seen, or at least know of, the movie The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston. You know they are important, you shouldn’t break them (note to self- figure out if we “break” commandments because Moses “broke” the tablets the commandments they were written on), and there has been a socio-political fight about removing them from courthouses. That should about cover it, yes?
I’m not going to say that everything you thought you knew is wrong. It’s all technically correct, just incomplete. First, “The Ten Commandments” is a misnomer. Yes, there are ten commandments found in Exodus 20:1-22 and your Bible probably even has a little title above this section that calls it “The Ten Commandments”. But there is a very critical piece of information that made that last sentence even possible yet also leads to the misnomer. Exodus was not written in chapter and verse form with section headings. In fact, none of the books of the Bible had chapter and verse until well after 1400 AD. They were written as one solid document. This means two very important things. First, the section headings and chapter/verse divisions aren’t part of the original Holy Spirit inspiration and shouldn’t be treated as such (and a side note is the footnotes and commentary at the bottom of your study Bible pages aren’t part of that either). The second thing is that means we should be looking at what comes before and after a particular passage and look at all that through the lens of the entire book. This means that what we call the ten commandments actually is never called the ten commandments in the Bible. It’s actually just the first ten when the Israelites reached Mount Sinai. There are dozens of commandments and laws that are given after these first ten.
Most of these additional laws and commands we no longer follow (my favorite is “Whoever curses father or mother shall be put to death”). Yet somehow we have elevated these ten to a higher level than all the rest. It hurts to learn that a lot of this is due to a fantastic publicity campaign by the director of the famous movie. Cecil Demille started the movement to have statues of the ten commandments placed in courtrooms and schools. The stated reason was “if making would heed those Ten, it would be a better world in which to live”, but the real reason was it was all promotion for his upcoming movie. It did change how America viewed, or revered, the commandments.
So why do I dislike the ten commandments? Well it’s not really the commandments that I dislike, but rather how people use them as a definitive guide. It’s something that wasn’t intended by God, Jesus didn’t even refer to all ten of them, and they are over-emphasized thanks to a movie marketing. We have almost taken the ten commandments and placed them as a symbol of the core of our beliefs (coming dangerously close to breaking #2 in itself). Should we learn about them? Absolutely! Should we follow them? Absolutely! But we shouldn’t get so wrapped up in the legalism of them that we neglect the true meaning behind them which Jesus so eloquently summarized by saying:
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Jesus took the 613 commandments from the Old Testament and broke it down to 24 English words. It’s not about legalism, it’s about love. If we fail to love God and love our neighbor, it doesn’t matter if we technically obey the ten, we’ve still failed.