Concluding my apparently hopeless quest to find some part of the Bible worthy of basing a rational moral system on, I now turn to the last four commandments.

#7 – Thou shalt not commit adultery.

My dictionary defines adultery this way: “Voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a partner other than the lawful spouse.”

If I were drawing up a moral code and was limited to ten rules, I think I’d use the space to forbid rape or child molestation rather than “voluntary sexual intercourse” of any sort, but maybe that’s just me, eh?

And maybe it’s rude to point out that the same God who allegedly gave us this Commandment is the same God who allegedly excused Abraham’s having sex with his wife’s handmaid (Gen. 16:1-2), who killed Onan for refusing to impregnate his dead brother’s wife (Gen. 38:7-10), and who allowed Moses to order his men to take captured enemy virgins for themselves (Num. 31:14-18).

And maybe – just maybe – this strict Commandment against adultery made sense in ancient times when arranged marriages at a young age were common, divorces were difficult if not impossible to obtain, and men needed all the help they could get to keep their wives from succumbing to the desire to have sex at least once in their lives with guys they were actually attracted to and maybe even loved.

I still don’t think posting “Thou shalt not commit adultery” in classrooms and yards is going to stop married people from having sex with people they aren’t married to.

If anything, it’ll probably just stop people from marrying in the first place. Because – when you get right down to it – this Commandment seems to allow unmarried people to have sex with whoever they want, doesn’t it?

Is that the message we really want to send to our grade school students as they sit in their classrooms or walk to school?

Tsk tsk.

#8 – Thou shalt not steal.

I’m not a thief. And, as a general rule of thumb, I don’t like people who are. Even so, I’m not comfortable with an absolute rule against stealing. Was it wrong for the starving peasants at the time of the French Revolution to steal the bread they needed to survive? Was it wrong for Allied spies to steal Nazi secrets during World War II? Is it really appropriate for Americans to post this Commandment on land that was quite possibly stolen from the Indians? Was this Commandment itself stolen from the Code of Hammurabi or from other, earlier commandments from other, earlier gods? Can it really be taken seriously when it comes from a God who repeatedly commanded the Hebrews to steal the land of others when He could have given them an entire, unpopulated galaxy or two of their own had He wanted to?

If we really want to reduce theft (rather than merely demonize thieves), maybe we’d do better posting reminders like “Lock your doors” and “Remember to guard your credit card numbers.”

Just a thought.

#9 – Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

This is often interpreted to mean “No lying!” But if that’s what God meant, why didn’t He say so? It sounds more like “No perjury!” to me – which of course means “No lying when under oath in a court of law.” Which would seem to excuse lying at other times. Is this really what we want our kids to learn every time they go for a walk? Or do we tell them that God really meant “No lying!” – He was just having a bad day when He wrote this Commandment?

And of course even that perjury interpretation isn’t quite right. What it really seems to be saying is “No committing perjury against your neighbor!” The kindest interpretation I can put on this is “No lying to other members of our tribe.” Well, and maybe the Mexicans and the Canadians if you happen to be an American like me. Is that what we want our kids to learn? That it’s ok to lie to foreign businessmen, leaders, tourists, and exchange students unless they happen to be Mexican or Canadian?

Of course not. And I’ve never yet met a Christian who would say that that’s exactly what he or she wants the kiddies to learn. The problem is that to avoid saying that, one has to pretty much twist this Commandment into a simple “No lying!” rule – and that’s just not what the Commandment says. And if we say it’s ok to twist this Commandment in this way, what’s to keep anyone from twisting it in other ways? What’s to keep anyone from twisting anything the Bible says into anything they want?

The fact that the authors of the Bible themselves seem to have lied repeatedly really doesn’t help matters….

#10 – Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

Questions: Is coveting your neighbor’s wife the moral equivalent of coveting his farm animals? Is coveting your neighbor’s manservant - a euphemism for “slave” – worse than your neighbor having a “manservant” in the first place? Is it ok for your wife to covet your neighbor’s husband?? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO THE U.S. ECONOMY IF WE STOPPED COVETING THOSE THINGS WE DIDN’T ALREADY HAVE???

Sorry. It’s just that old Newsreel visions of the Great Depression came roaring back to me.

Ok, so maybe we’d be better off not letting our desire for material possessions control so much of our lives. And maybe coveting our neighbor’s spouse really is more a personal moral failing to be condemned than an instinct that’s evolved because it’s resulted in our genes being perpetuated farther and wider than they otherwise would have been. I mean, I’ve been wrong before – maybe I’m wrong in thinking otherwise here.

I think it remains rather obvious that we could spend our time and energies in a lot worse ways than in pining away for our neighbor’s new ratchet set.

I mean, here we are – at the end of the Commandments – the best and only moral guide we will ever need, according to many people – and there’s no prohibition against torture, there’s no ban on slavery, there’s nothing that says we really shouldn’t trash the planet or cause mass extinctions just to make a buck – but wanting our neighbor’s ox – THAT’S bad??

It’s really no wonder that Christians didn’t think the Ten Commandments all that hot or important before the 13th century.

The wonder is, why in the world do so many think differently now??

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