There is only one solution to the world’s problems, only one prescription for producing a near-heaven on earth.
It is 3,000 years old.
And it is known as the Ten Commandments.
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Properly understood and applied, the Ten Commandments are really all humanity needs to make a beautiful world. While modern men and women, in their hubris, believe that they can and must come up with new ideas in order to make a good world, the truth is there is almost nothing new to say.
If people and countries lived by the Ten Commandments, all the great moral problems would disappear.
Or, to put it another way, all the great evils involve the violation of one or more of the Ten Commandments.
Here is the case in brief for the Ten Commandments (using the Jewish enumeration which slightly differs from the Protestant and Catholic):
1. I am the Lord your God
There are moral atheists, and there are immoral believers, but there is no chance for a good world based on atheism. Ultimately, a godless and religion-less society depends on people’s hearts to determine right from wrong, and that is a very weak foundation. Plenty of people have died in history in the name of God. But far more have been killed, tortured, and deprived of liberty in the name of humanity and progress or some other post-Judeo-Christian value. Religion gave us an Inquisition and gives us suicide terrorists, but the death of God gave us Nazism and Communism which, in one century alone, slaughtered more than 100 million people. All the founders of the United States — yes, all — knew that a free society can survive only if its citizens believe themselves to be morally accountable to God.
2. Do not have other gods.
The worship of false gods leads to evil. When anything but the God of creation and morality is worshiped, moral chaos ensues. No one is godless. Either people worship God or they worship other gods — nature, intelligence, art, education, beauty, the environment, Mother Earth, power, fame, pleasure, the state, the fuhrer, the party, progress, humanity. The list is almost endless. And no matter how noble (false gods are often noble), when they become ends in themselves, they lead to evil.
3. Do not take God’s name in vain.
People have misinterpreted this commandment. They think it prohibits saying something like, “Oh, my God, what a home run!” The Hebrew literally means “do not carry” the name of the Lord in vain. In other words, we are forbidden from doing evil in God’s name. Only when thus understood does the rest of the Commandment make sense — that God will not “cleanse” (i. e, forgive) the person who does this. Thus, the Islamist who slits an innocent’s throat while shouting “Allahu Akbar” is the perfect example of the individual who carries God’s name in vain and who cannot be forgiven. These people not only murder their victims, they murder God’s name. For that reason, they do more evil than the atheist who murders.
4. Keep the Sabbath day and make it holy.
Leaving the world one day a week and elevating it above the others is the greatest vehicle to family harmony and to harmony with friends. One day a week without video games, without parents leaving to go to work or to do their own thing on the computer forces parents and children to spend time together and to actually talk. It even encourages couples to make love. It also weakens the institution of slavery. If even your servants get a day off because God commands it, that means you do not have absolute control over them.
5. Honor your father and mother.
The first thing every totalitarian and authoritarian movement does is try to undermine parental authority. That is why it is dangerous even in a democracy. Take our universities, for example. Woodrow Wilson, the first progressive president, said that “the use of the university is to make young men as unlike their fathers as possible.” And that is exactly what colleges have been doing for over half a century. Instead of searching for truth and beauty, the universities have been alienating American youth from their fathers’ — and the Founding Fathers’ — values.
I think I prefer the Protestant numbering, since "I am the Lord your God" is a statement -- a "word" or declaration -- but not a command.
"No other gods" tells us WHO to worship, but "no graven images" tells us HOW to worship. God spoke but is not seen; we should not worship that which is seen but does not speak. Avoiding idols can help us be humble, as we worship the Creator and not some object we create.
All that said, it's a very good article.
And, about the prohibition of murder, one need only turn from the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 to some detailed punishments commanded for ancient Israel in Exodus 21: many crimes, including murder, were capital offenses, proof enough that the Decalogue doesn't prohibit the taking of human life in all circumstances.
Too often the abuse of religion is mistaken for the religion. The hermaneutics of scriptural interpretation requires understanding the cultural and historical context in which a passage is written, to whom is it addressed and if it is in the context of a parable or syllogism.
A fair amount of nonsense has been generated by a less than exegitical interpretation of the bible. If you are a mainstream Christian God in corporal form is Jesus i.e The word became flesh. Abuse begins when flesh claims it is the word.
Jesus summarized the Ten Commandments this way in Matthew 22:37-40:
Jesus replied: “‘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.”
I think we had this reading recently in church. I recall thinking that it emphasized the nature of the Law as being about relationships - which is what the Ten Commandments are also about - right relationships.
For better or worse, these sorts of things can really only be enforced through the culture, which government is a part of. One cannot try to impose this sort of thing (order, or right relationships) from without.
While I appreciate what you're trying to say Mr. Prager, what your article prescribes is moralism, not the Gospel.
God gave the people of Israel the law to prove to them their lawlessness, as a means of communicating their need of salvation from the condition of sin that came from the rebellion and foolishness of Adam and Eve. Ancient Israel couldn't follow the law any better than we can now. But God provided a way of repentance, sacrifice, worship, and restoration - a temporary one in the temple and a permanent one in the person of Jesus Christ.
You are right when you assert that obedience to the decalogue would be great for the world - it would! We're just powerless to do so apart from a restored and right relationship with God which came through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
What the world needs is the Gospel. When people have new life they can lead a pure life.
"without religion, good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. To get a good person to do evil, now that takes religion."
The Ten Commandments are not the answer. The answer is to protect and defend individual liberty. That is what the founding fathers understood, and they were very adamant that they were creating a secular government, not a Christian one.
Prager is right, that if people lived by these principles we'd have a better world.
With all respect to Prager's Jewish faith, as a Christian I believe that all of the Law has been fulfilled in Christ and replaced by life in His spirit. Romans 6 and 7 shows that even the Ten Commandments were nailed to the cross with Christ, having fulfilled their purpose (to show the futility of trying to gain God's favor through self-effort; it's still eating from the wrong tree in the Garden).
This is a hard sell even to Christians, though, since most miss the point that the New Covenant was implemented at the cross and not at the manger (Hebrews 9 and 10 makes this point clearly).
I especially appreciated your explanation of #3. You could certainly expand on this one as it has been over-simplified and misunderstood.
If I could expand on it I would go further and say it also applies to anyone who claims God’s authority falsely. The kind of thing false prophets were supposed to be killed for doing.
This would mean claiming a thing to be a “sin” without scriptural support is taking the name of the LORD in vain. This would not prevent parents, teachers or institutions from making their own rules but draw a dividing line between their rules to be followed while under their authority and the Law of the LORD to be followed at all times.
I also appreciated your explanation of Do not Murder. The distinction can not be emphasised enough.
Prager is right, that if people lived by these principles we'd have a better world.
However, with all respect for Prager's Jewish faith, as a Christian I believe that all of the Law has been fulfilled in Christ and replaced by life in His spirit. Romans 6 and 7 shows that even the Ten Commandments were nailed to the cross with Christ, having fulfilled their purpose (to show the futility of trying to gain God's favor through self-effort; it's still eating from the wrong tree in the Garden).
This is a hard sell even to Christians, though, since most miss the point that the New Covenant was implemented at the cross and not at the manger (Hebrews 9 and 10 makes this point clearly).
Europeans' presence was limited mainly to the coasts until the 19th century, and indeed penetrated the interior only in the late 19th century.
All plundering before that was African-assisted plundering as local tribes and kingdoms took pay to raid their neighbours. That applies to all activities, especially the slave trade. In other words, Europeans plugged themselves into what was going on normally in order to profit.
Real exploitation of Africa for resources [mining, lumbering, oil, etc] starts only in the late 19th century and is carried on under colonial rule for only about 2-3 generations. And it involves locating and extracting resources using means not available to the indigenous population who did not in all cases even know about the resources.
That doesn't mean no violence and corruption was involved under colonial rule or after, only that it amounts more to decades than to centuries of plunder.
Prager is right, that if people lived by these principles we'd have a better world.
However, with all respect to Prager's Jewish faith, as a Christian I believe that all of the Law has been fulfilled in Christ and replaced by life in His spirit. Romans 6 and 7 shows that even the Ten Commandments were nailed to the cross with Christ, having fulfilled their purpose (to show the futility of trying to gain God's favor through self-effort; it's still eating from the wrong tree in the Garden).
This is a hard sell even to Christians, though, since most miss the point that the New Covenant was implemented at the cross and not at the manger (Hebrews 9 and 10 makes this point clearly).
