Ten Commandments Upgrade 2.0

Background

As is true with most things, before discussing the Ten Commandments, it's helpful to at least read them.  Only 14% of all Americans could list them (although 25% could list the ingredients of a popular hamburger).  In another poll, 78% could not name 2.   Even some politicians who made the most noise about posting the Ten Commandments prominently were unable to name them, as were 68 of 200 Anglican priests.

The so-called Ten Commandments were the first 10 of 613 commandments or mitvot that all good Jews had to follow.  Since 10 is easier to remember (and follow) than 613, these first 10 have been emphasized from the time of King Josiah to the present.  

There is a long tradition of reducing a complex, legalistic, often contradictory set of rules to a few that can be followed and obeyed.   Centuries before PowerPoint, teachers have recognized the importance of a few, easy-to-remember bullet points.

Rabbi Hillel famously reduced it to one:  don't do unto others as you would not have done unto you (the rest is details).  

Jesus, when asked which of the commandments one had to follow, said five plus a variant of Rabbi Hillel's teaching:

And Jesus said, 

    ‘You shall not murder; 

    You shall not commit adultery; 

    You shall not steal; 

    You shall not bear false witness; 

    Honour your father and mother; 

        also, You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’

    

        —Matthew 19:16-19

The Ten Commandments themselves can be divided into 5 that are specific to a particular religion (Judaism) and 5 that are universal behavioral or civic commandments:  

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

1. You shall have no other gods before me.

2. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male or female slave, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.

5. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.

6. You shall not kill.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

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

Problems with the Ten Commandments

So what is the problem with posting these Ten Commandments written a couple thousand years ago in front of the court houses of a modern, tolerant, democratic, pluralistic society?  

The question almost answers itself.  

First, the historical, ethnic, and religious specificity and exclusivity of the first five of the commandments make them not only inapplicable, but offensive in a secular society with no official state religion and that includes citizens who worship many gods, other gods, or no gods at all.   It would be wrong to assume all citizens are either Jewish or Christian, and although the Koran has a similar set of commandments virtually identical to these Ten, the selection of this particular formulation from the Torah connotes religious preference for one or two Abrahamic traditions over the third, violating the Separation Clause of the Constitution. 

Second, the Second and Third Commandments clearly violate First Amendment free speech protections.  One man's "graven image" is another man's holy icon.  How could such a law be defined, much less enforced?   Not only does this forbid the manufacture of such images, but explicitly forbids their worship, even in the privacy of one's own home.  This would be a clear violation of First Amendment guarantees of religious freedom.   Prohibiting speech, even speech as mildly offensive as the phrase "Oh, God!", flies in the face of our freedom of expression.  

Third, part of the Second Commandment is not a commandment at all, but a threat issued by a "jealous God" not just against those who would worship "graven images" but against their great grandchildren ("to the third and fourth generation") which clearly undermines our Constitutional rights to be held accountable for our behavior only, not that of our great grandparents.  The idea of collective, genetically-endowed punishment is deeply offensive to the rule of law and our Western tradition.  

Fourth, as the Orthodox in Israel have discovered, enforcing a Sabbath is deeply problematic in a modern society.  How can one safely staff emergency rooms, protect crops about to be damaged by hail, or rescue people at sea if all labor must cease on Saturday?  And which Sabbath would be enforced, the one referred to here, or the later Christian variation (Sunday)?  

Fifth, the Commandment to unconditionally honor your father and mother would clearly be inappropriate in the case of rape, incest, or parental neglect or abuse.  Since many of those involved in the court system disproportionately suffered from these things, institutionalizing a blind obedience to genetics over the rule of law or ethics could undermine justice, even if subliminally.  Some parents quite frankly should not be honored and many children unfortunately must be protected from or even separated from abusive or neglectful parents.  

Sixth, we have a long tradition of outlawing behavior, not thoughts or feelings.  Coveting or desiring something maybe undesirable for many reasons, but it is not criminal and a Commandment against it gives the state an implicit right to regulate something it should not and cannot control - the desires of its citizens.  If I steal my neighbor's flat screen television, I have broken the law, but no modern court should be in the business of telling me I cannot look longingly at it.  Also, the listing of my neighbor's "wife" along with his slaves, animals, and other property reflects a misogynistic Biblical view of women as chattel, possessions of her husband, a view completely incompatible with the society in which we live and the family law that views all citizens regardless of gender as equal.      

Finally, the explicit references to slavery, something abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment, show how badly dated and incompatible with the United States Code these Commandments are.   We live in a world in which slavery and religious intolerance, even though both exist in some form, elicit almost universal revulsion.   The Ten Commandments were written in a society that legalized and encouraged both. 

A Badly Needed Upgrade

Societies evolve.  Degradation of women and the ownership and sale of other human beings, as well as capital punishment for eating shellfish or talking back to your parents have gone the way of witch hunts and alchemy.  If we absolutely must reduce morality to ten easily remembered and universally accepted (however imperfectly followed) points, why not upgrade those parts of the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments that clearly were historical artifacts of the men who wrote them?  

Many alternatives exist, including those cited by Richard Dawkins.  None is perfect and need not be.  That's not the point.  The idea is to find a few cross-culturally robust, metaphysically independent ethical norms. 

We need not even start from scratch, since a few of Version 1.0 of the Big Ten are quite good.   In fact, the best of all religions - including Judaism and Christianity - can be boiled down to a few simple rules:

 - Treat others as you would be treated yourself.  Treat all human beings with dignity and respect.  Period.  If you own animals, treat them humanely and with the respect they deserve as our close relatives.  All other commandments follow this one.

  - Don't kill.  Don't cause pain to other sentient creatures unless you absolutely have to.  Don't rape, don't commit war crimes.  Avoid not just violent behavior but violent speech and metaphors.  

   - Don't steal.  If it's not yours, don't take it.  Don't own other people - parents do not own their children and husbands do not own their wives.  Slavery is the ultimate theft of another person's labor, freedom, and dignity.  

   - Don't lie.  Especially to children.  Don't say things you know not to be true.  Separate what you feel or want to be true from what you have actually experienced or witnessed.  Separate facts from speculations, reporting from editorializing.

  - Embrace doubt and honest questioning.  Question your assumptions, gather data, then form and modify your world view.  Never accept something on authority alone.  Trust but verify.   Be prepared to modify your world view if the weight of evidence says you should; there is no shame in changing your mind.  Approach spiritual questions with as much openness and honesty as you would approach other questions for which there are no concrete answers and over which intelligent people disagree.  Doubt and humility are  the beginning of wisdom, not its enemy.  Never let faith be a substitute for doing your homework.  

  - If you must cite religious texts, at least quote them accurately.  Don't misquote Jesus.  If you're going to thump the Bible, first read it.  

  - Tolerate criticism; never threaten or silence dissenters.  Understand that the Bible is a collection of orally transmitted documents translated multiple times and liberally edited by scribes and local authorities.  It's OK to pay some attention to the man behind the curtain.  Stop threatening those who disagree with you with torture or hellfire, whether directly or outsourced to a projected deity.

  - Let kids be kids.*  Don't impose your own beliefs on them, especially if those beliefs are potentially traumatic.  Even if you believe in hell, it will still be there when your child turns 18 - why the rush to terrify them at age 8?  Let children decide as adults what metaphysical beliefs if any they wish to adopt.  There is no such thing as a Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Hindu child.  If you expose children to one particular religious education or tradition, allow them to witness and experience the rich diversity of other beliefs and traditions also.  Never misrepresent your particular world view as having a monopoly on truth or risk losing all credibility when they find out that it doesn't.  Be humbled by the fact that no religious tradition comes close to claiming a majority of the world's citizens as its adherents, so whatever we believe, we are outnumbered!   

 - Do the simple good that is in front of you.   If you can't feed 100 children, feed one.  There is enough work to be done here and now to alleviate poverty, combat global warming, and simply raise our kids to be good human beings without tearing ourselves up over whether god exists, is one or many, is male or female, cares about us or doesn't think about us one way or the other, or has really big feet.  If god exists, he's probably not as petty and easily offended as we are. 

 - Seek happiness.  Suffering is inevitable, but misery is optional.  We often confuse pleasure and happiness, but whether we believe in one god or many or none at all, we can all seek and find happiness here and now, and help others to find happiness also.  Indeed, this may be our only real duty and is entirely consistent with the others.  

* This is the only "commandment" that is probably NOT shared by most world religious traditions, most of which start with the assumption of having a monopoly on truth and recognizing the need to indoctrinate children early to pass on this "truth" to the next generation.   I would argue, as does Dawkins, that if a truth is so self-evident and robust, it will be as true at age 21 as at age 4.  

That's it.  I'm sure there are others you can think of, and perhaps there are some here that will not meet with universal agreement, but I imagine most people, regardless of the specifics of one's geography or faith tradition (and the two are highly correlated), already try to live by several if not all of these.  

The main point is that we share remarkable moral and ethical principles that are not that difficult to codify.  We don't insist on making 1982 personal computers run 2011 software; why on earth should we force a society that has liberated women and emancipated slaves to twist itself into following without modification the moral injunctions of an agrarian culture and the religion it created?   Anyone who engages in the biblical "abominations" of eating shellfish, working on Saturday, or wearing clothes of a cotton-polyester blend (mixed fibers, forbidden in Leviticus) already upgraded whether they realize it not.  Why not take the upgrade one step further and make it explicit?