'A new
commandment I give you, that you love one another: that as I have loved you, you should also love one another.' Jesus added, 'By this with all men know that you are my disciples' (John 13:34-35).
When I was a young boy being taught about the Ten
Commandments, they all seemed to be either serious mandates like loving God or serious warnings against grave transgressions.
Legislators in Arkansas believe that you can't fathom America without first understanding the Ten
Commandments.
It is true, of course, that the gross idolatry of heathen religious worship found in the second part of the First
Commandment, is not a very dangerous temptation to modern Christians.
It defines the second
commandment as contemporary Catholics and Protestants define their first, "Other Gods/images." Rabbinic Jews hold a unique first
commandment, from Deuteronomy 5:6, which describes the self-identification of God ("I am the Lord your God") as its own command requiring human acknowledgment.
Even though it does not have a direct impact on the welfare of our fellow human beings, this last
commandment has the potential to do so.
As with other parts of the Mosaic imperatives, American law at its most important level not only does not support the
Commandments' directive to avoid the worship of graven images, but affirmatively prohibits the Second
Commandment from becoming a part of our laws.
However, we already have the 11th
commandment, and today is its anniversary.
The first
commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," was juxtaposed with vanity, the deification of one's own ego, as embodied in the works of Sylvie Fleury, Olaf Nicolai, and Tim Noble and Sue Webster.
The First
Commandment, inscribed in an abbreviated form on "Roy's Rock," is "I am the lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
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Commandment II: Be sure that the patient has decision-making capacity.
Working late in the exilic period of the sixth century b.c.e., the master editor added to his source materials this overarching pattern or structure based on the Ten
Commandments. The editor's strategy was to insert key narratives in each book that illustrated the breaking of each
commandment in sequence.
Focus on the bottom line at least as much as on the top line: The first
commandment is the most important and, in many ways, the most perplexing.
19:18, often quoted as "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." The interpreters questioned just what degree of love was implied in this
commandment. Did the assertion mean that one was to love the neighbor in regard to everything one would perform toward oneself?
To begin, the First
Commandment for Jews is traditionally, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.(21) This
Commandment is entirely missing from most Christian texts--perhaps because it seems too insular and perhaps because it is not phrased in the imperative (the original Hebrew text speaks literally of ten "words," not ten commandments(22)).
