Dear Democrats, for the love of America, give them the Ten Commandments in the classroom! Then spend the time, effort and legal resources you would have spent on that fight to fight against the illegal seizure of our government, institutions, and, foremost, law abiding residents and civilians! I know, I know. Republicans’ insistence on displaying their religious texts in every classroom is one more power grab to assert their ideology and exercise dominance over others. No one is denying the obvious here. But since those religious texts are in the same Bible I read and have studied for my entire adult life, I’m asking you to hear me out on this one for a quick minute.

Not “If” But “Which” Religion Are You?

First of all, I don’t mind being called religious. I don’t mind when Bill Maher or Ricky Gervais make fun of and think they are superior to “Religious People,” or think that Religion is the cause of all war and conflict and every bad thing in the universe.

I don’t take it personally.

This is because I know something they are not yet aware of.

And you may not be aware of it either.

I know that Ricky is Religious.

Bill is too.

And whoever you are readin’ this,

I’m lookin’ at you too!

After near sixty years worth of human interaction on this big marble, one thing that has become unequivocally clear to me is that everyone is religious!

Everyone believes something about the three most basic dimensions of being alive. Either consciously or unconsciously, everyone is operating from some answer to these three questions:

– What is the essential nature and source of my being? (To what or whom do I owe my life?)

– What am I here for? (to what end do I put my effort and resources?) and

– How best can I coexist with all these other beings and things?

Everyone is operating on certain assumptions about these fundamental questions, and the various answers we come up with will create the processing algorithm which metabolizes all the input of our lived experiences and spits out patterns of behavior and ways of being in the world. Those with similar answers to these questions have, over the centuries, unionized and, for better or for worse, used this leverage sometimes for the good of the world and sometimes for selfish gain. But do not be fooled! Those that only have the social capital of one are no less ruled by their processing algorithm, and the world is not necessarily safer because of its singularity and lack of traditional pedigree. In fact, I find that it is the very lack of reflection and transparency about one’s algorithm, the actual answers to these three questions, that makes navigating coexistence such a tricky game of hopscotch. And, as I have learned the hard way, using words like Baptist, Lutheran, Atheist, Buddhist, etc, as shortcuts, doesn’t offer much help either.

That brings us back to the Ten Commandments. Since that third question is all about navigating relationships, ie a moral code (news flash: everybody’s got one), the real question ought to be, “Which commandments have been guiding the classrooms all this time?” In my teacher training, we learned to facilitate the class in a conversation around values and to agree on principles and behavioral expectations for the shared space of our classroom where everyone could feel safe, seen, and valued. These results were then shared in a letter to the parents inviting their input. If that is happening all around the country, fantastic! But it would be misleading to not also share that it was my own moral compass that steered and guided those conversations, influenced the outcomes, and encouraged and enforced adherence to our agreements.

So if I was a teacher in America today, and I was being forced to hang the Big Ten in my classroom, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it. But I wouldn’t just hang them up. I would facilitate a deep discussion on this first ever Declaration of Independence, and see if we might be able to imagine what kind of world this particular algorithm would produce. The result of that discussion might sound something like this:

Background, Context, Purpose: Don’t Leave Home Without ’em!

After getting them to do their own research and group work to understand when, where, and for whom these commandments were written, we would establish together that they were written for a large population of people who had escaped generations of slavery under the rule of a king who claimed to be god’s (Ra) representative on earth. We would discover they had been made to believe their sole purpose on this earth was to increase the security, wealth, and status of his empire, that they had been forced to work without ceasing to satisfy the ambitions of a driven overlord. We would discover that, as a means of coercive control, they had been separated from the source of their true identity and dignity, from both the means and the fruit of their own labor, from each other through divide and conquer tactics, and even, eventually, from their own offspring.

We would learn that the rules they lived by all those centuries, which they were terrified to break, were something along the lines of: Don’t dare question those who claim ownership, authority, and ultimate power over you! Don’t dare make demands, ask for what you need, or express (or even have) your own longings! Don’t dare slack off the pace of production, but rather you must work ever harder to out perform not only others but even yourself! Don’t EVER rise above your station! Don’t dare make a mistake! Don’t even think of conspiring with your fellow slaves to thwart our control! And most importantly, don’t ever speak up for yourself, talk about what harmed you, or bring any negative attention to the system!

We would learn that this group of former slaves would have to spend a long time unlearning these rules before they were ready to govern themselves in a way that they could all flourish both individually and as a whole. They would need a new way of thinking about themselves, their labor, and their relationships. It was during this time that Moses introduced them to the “New Rules for Free People,” otherwise known as the Big Ten.

New Rules For Free People

#1 You shall not have any other Gods before me.

⁃ No one else (man, beast, spirit, lesser god) may insert themselves between you and my infinite, generous, and benevolent self to subjugate and rule over and enslave you. There are no intermediaries to lay claim to and control your identity, your agency, and your attachments.

⁃ This is a declaration of their Freedom and Autonomy within the full expanse of the infinite reality!! This is placing them (us) in the widest possible circle well beyond anything we could possibly conceive of.

#2 You shall not make for yourself an idol (graven image).

⁃ you will also not sell yourself short of the full measure of goodness and glory of my infinite and eternal being. No settling for fixed, rigid, and limiting ideas of who you are and what you could be or what is possible or worthy of your strength, effort, and attention.

⁃ Just like no one else may draw a smaller circle for their existence, they should also not do that to themselves.

⁃ This gives them an Orientation for their own growth which is limitless

#3 You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain.

⁃ you will not invoke God’s name (authority) to bully others for your agenda. No borrowing His name to puff yourself up or add to your authority, conceal your real motives & intentions, intimidate & shame others, nor blame “God” when your plans go sideways.

⁃ This lays the Cost and Responsibility for their choices, actions, and outcomes squarely on their own shoulders. They, alone, are accountable for their lives.

⁃ But also, to know that anyone claiming to be God’s intermediary, is avoiding accountability for their own agenda and is using it as an effective tool for social control. To fall for it, is the quickest route to subservience and enslavement.

#4 Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

⁃ A practice of regeneration and re-creation.

⁃ You are no longer slaves and machines, but creators and stewards, to steward not only your own home, garden, and field, but also your body, mind, and spirit.

⁃ No more hustle! No longer slaves to ambition (that horse which will never tire)… neither other’s nor your own!

⁃ This is about remembering Moderation and Sustainability and knowing where our true security, growth, and connection – our Sustenance – come from.

#5 Honor your father and your Mother that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.

⁃ Honor is about giving weight to something. Understanding its importance and accounting for its significance.

⁃ (Once you are thriving in the land) Do not become complacent or take for granted or despise the life and inheritance (total package) you were handed, no matter how small or comparatively insignificant it may be, but instead

⁃ Appreciate the Source of your life , the obstacles that were already overcome so far to get you to this place (i.e. leaving Egypt and through the wilderness), and

⁃ Redeem it – create something meaningful and beautiful out of whatever it is you have to start with, no matter how meager that may be! Make it count!

⁃ Become worthy of this one precious life they gave you!

(These first five of the commandments make it clear that we are the ones who are ultimately responsible to grow our own tree, and that we owe no one an explanation for our existence, nor do we need to ask anyone’s permission to grow without ceasing in this world of infinite abundance.)

#6 You shall not murder

⁃ Shall not take a person’s life, Separate their body and soul.

⁃ Whether it is the quick killing of the body, or slowly draining the life out of the soul (soul sucking job), or any of the many ways in between.

#7 You shall not commit adultery

⁃ Shall not take, come between, Separate a person from their partner, their collaborator, their most intimate and fruitful relationship, and thereby

⁃ Disrupt the very foundation of the life and future they are building together. We must remember that this is about more than just a “romantic” or even intimate relationship. Families were an entire survival eco system, working together for their shared prosperity. Adultery is a hit at the innermost core of this necessary network, wreaking havoc on every area of the entire system.

#8 You shall not steal

⁃ Shall not Separate a person from the fruit of their labor and creation nor their means of survival and flourishing.

#9 You shall not bear false witness or testify against your neighbor.

⁃ Shall not Separate a person from their community through blaming, shaming, stigmatizing, and dishonoring. A behavior that begins already in kindergarten, and is wielded to great effect by every system of control and empire ever built.

#10 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, wife, male or female servants, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

⁃ In my imaginary classroom, we could spend most of the year talking about just this one commandment. It is amazing to me how it so perfectly brings us full circle to the beginning, and addresses the heart of where all the problems begin.

⁃ You shall not covet your neighbor’s relationships, resources and power to effect change, nor their means of production, nor anything at all that belongs to someone else. I would get my class to make a long list of things that other’s have that we might want for ourselves, like Titles, Reputation, Good looks, Intelligence, Glam & Bling, Health, Abilities & Talents, Luck, Pedigree, Armies & Weapons, Mobility, exotic vacations, attention & accolades, their validation, admiration, and approval of us…

⁃ Or summarized, their Security, Prosperity, and Stature nor the (ill-gotten) means by which they got them.

Lost in Illogical Translation

I can see how casting only a side glance at this last commandment, one could possibly jump to some wrong conclusions. I was taken aback, however, to hear even someone like Yuval Noah Harari, who is otherwise known to be deep thinking, astute, and articulate, make one of these superficial assumptions about this commandment and, by doing so, flipped the whole meaning of it on its head. In one of the worst cases of not only logical fallacy, but also failure to understand the context, Harari, on Bill Maher’s talkshow no less, makes the claim that because this commandment does not outright forbid slavery and instead only the coveting of slaves, it is actually not just condoning the practice of slavery, but, he claims, “endorses” it! He makes this point in support of his larger argument that the man made American constitution is a better example of a unifying text, since it can be amended and adapt to the times, in contrast to the Big Ten, which cannot, since they are a definitive declaration from an immutable God. Thus a constitution can eventually be amended to outlaw slavery altogether, where as the Bible cannot and never does.

To Harari’s misinterpretation we can add another possible and far more logical one. It is anyone’s right (and I believe duty) to ask of such a Verbot, “whom does this serve?” And it would be a far more reasonable assumption than the one that Harari makes, to see such a command as primarily serving the wealthy and powerful, acting as a kind of spiritual e-fence to protect their power and wealth from those without any, by declaring the latter’s discontent a moral and spiritual failing. I have much more sympathy for this argument than Harari’s, and can see how an isolated reading of the text by a beginner might lead someone here. But for both, these assertions come from taking the text out of its immediate and larger context, for which a beginner can be forgiven. I would have expected more from Harari.

Harari’s glaring leap in logic is so obvious in fact, that when I asked Chat GPT for the name of the logical fallacy (just checking my bases here) of inferring a positive from the absence of a negative, Argument from Silence and Negative Proof Fallacy, Chat GPT used Harari’s claim about slavery as a textbook example of these fallacies without my having even brought up this case! Add to these the False Dichotomy or False Dilemma fallacy (assuming there are only two options, discounting the possibility that something may, in fact, be neutral, irrelevant, unaddressed, or something else entirely), and you may understand why I am seriously considering removing Homo Deus from my “To Read” stack! If you need any further proof that Harari’s assertions are not only unoriginal, but have been refuted for millennia, you only need to ask Chat to give you a list of that long tradition of Rabbinical and Church fathers’ teachings who have already made any argument I could make here.

But the, let’s call it, “Opiate of the People” argument, does actually force us to dig a little deeper. Does the tenth commandment keep people out of slavery, or does it simply keep them from complaining about their own disenfranchisement? To answer this question, as well as Harari’s assertion, we must remember what we started off with, namely, that the Ten Commandments are not an arbitrary laundry list of clean and dirty behavior. It is an answer to the three basic questions we posed at the beginning. It is code for an Algorithm meant to give autonomous human beings a relational pattern to best coexist with other autonomous human beings, an orientation for where and to which end to best invest their resources and labor, and a measure for how to place and assess themselves in the larger scope of things between where they have come from and where they are headed which best accounts for their true nature.

And to understand the essence and thrust of this algorithm, we must remember the context in which it was given.

⁃ These commandments were not given to Israel after entering the Promise land, after their first victories, at the height of the Davidic Kingdom, nor even upon their return from exile. They were given after escaping slavery in Egypt!

⁃ They were given by Moses, who chose to leave the position and wealth he had in Egypt for a counter-cultural narrative, an entirely different algorithm!

⁃ These ten commandments were written for a people who had never known freedom, did not even know what freedom was or looked like or felt like, and indeed, were already confusing it with licentiousness by the time Moses came down the mountain with the tablets. They were written for those who only knew of two kinds of people: those who were slaves and those who had slaves. This commandment is telling these former slaves who had spent their lives dreaming of being the other kind of people, that there is, in fact, a third option, to be the kind of person who does not rely on the stolen labor of others for their own flourishing.

⁃ To say that the commandments “endorse” slavery because it does not explicitly forbid it in name, or that it guards the Haves from the discontent of the Have Nots is to miss the whole point not only of the tenth commandment, but of this entire Decalogue!

⁃ All ten commandments are solely and entirely about keeping them out of slavery…both being enslaved and enslaving others!

It all ends (and begins again) with the tenth commandment

It is not enough to say that coveting (desiring, setting your heart on, lusting after) is what leads to these other behaviors listed in the previous commands and, being the root of the thing, is therefore problematic. Many people covet who do not kill nor steal. It is actually much worse than that.

In the very act of desiring and craving what belongs to and is within someone else’s influence, we abandon and leave defenseless ALL that is within our influence! We are literally investing our attention, imagination, emotional and cognitive energies into what our neighbor has already grown, (or stolen, extrapolated, or extorted), rather than investing those essential resources into the growth and flourishing of all that is already under our agency. We are in a real sense emotionally and cognitively squatting in someone else’s life rather than fully inhabiting our own life. This not only makes us an intruder where we are not wanted, but it also means we are absent from the one and only place we need to be, and where we are sorely needed to nurture, protect, and elevate what does belong within our province. Coveting what our neighbor is or has or does is at its core self-abandonment and betrayal.

With our own lives unguarded in this way, we ourselves become vulnerable to marauders. Those predators that would vandal what we have left unattended, plant weeds where we have failed to plant a useful crop, and auction off to the highest bidders what we have deemed not worthy enough for our investment. And piece by piece, we lose the sovereignty over our lives, since the fastest way to give someone control over your life is to want what they have.

Becoming and Unbecoming a Singularity

But even more profound and disturbing is the trajectory and ultimate objective of this insatiable appetite. The command does not forbid the Israelites from desiring and wanting good things: a place of one’s own, collaborative and intimate relationships, to enjoy the fruits of one’s labor, or even to create and possess beautiful things. Indeed, it has been God’s promise up to this point to give them all of this in the promise land. What it says is to not covet these things that belong to someone else! In other words, to allow the kind of good things which we want for ourselves to also belong to others, to allow for some to remain outside of our province and control. This command counters an internal FOMO, an urge to possess every good thing we encounter, to consume it, ascribe it to ourselves, control it, and make it work to our favor and advantage, and if we can’t, to diminish and destroy it. We would carry on like this until we were singularly in possession and control of all there is that is desirable, having become devouring entities that can allow no good thing to exist outside of our own dominion. (Eve, David w/Bathsheba)

This is the exact opposite of the very nature of the God described in the first two chapters of Genesis, who, while already existing as a singularity of all that is good, created autonomous beings with a will of their own they were free to excersize outside the bounds of divine control! Coveting is the very antithesis of the divine drive to share the abundance of existence with others whom it chooses to know intimately and collaboratively as autonomous beings rather than control coercively as subservients.

Coveting is an outside in movement, where genuine growth and development is an inside out job. The one becomes an all engulfing vortex, a soul sucking, life suffocating, bottomless black hole which drags down and enslaves resources, people, communities, and whole societies into feeding its monolithic structure. Genuine sovereignty, on the other hand, seeds, waters, prunes, and releases what it has grown from within itself, networking with other willing sovereignties to create a thriving and diverse ecosystem.

These second five commandments let us know that our growth may not come at the expense of someone else’s existence. Beginning at the inner most ring of a person’s being (soul/body) and working its way out to intimate partner/co-founder of family line, then to the fruit of their creativity & intentions & labor, to finally their place in the wider community, these address in order how a person is rooted and grows in the world and their inalienable right to also make the most of whatever they were given.

Conclusion

The Israelites still bore the scars on their bodies, in their minds, and in their souls of that first insatiable and brutal algorithm, the commandments of slavery. Now that they had escaped it, they were being asked to place their faith in an entirely new algorithm. A reordering of relationships which challenged them to become personally sovereign without becoming controlling overlords, to embrace their freedom as well as the responsibility that came with it, to transform and multiply what they were given instead of subtracting and extracting from others, and to have a sober understanding of who they are by appreciating both where they had come from and just how far the road stretched out ahead of them before they would ever cross the finish line of moral purity.

Slavery has no place in this algorithm.

Seeing that these Rules for a Free People are antithetical to the whole direction the Republican Party is taking our country, it is hard for me to see the upside for them in having the Big Ten in every classroom. But if that is what they want, I think we should give it to them. I think every child in America ought to discover for themselves just how shamelessly these charlatans are playing by an entirely different set of rules than the ones revealed to keep us all free.