Commandments
I’m not that big on commandments. Don’t get me wrong, don’t kill, cheat, lie, are good guidelines, and I’ll give you honor your mother and father in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases. But call me humanistic; I just can’t get behind the idea of not doing things because you’ll be punished as opposed to not doing them because they are wrong.
I have greater respect for the man who does right when no one is looking, than the man who does right only because God is.
That being said, I like Jesus’s take on the commandments. While not repudiating the Big Ten completely, he challenged us to a greater one, a harder one. One that to my view may be a more noble one. “Love one another.”
Man, is he kidding? He expected us to live up to that one? That one is hard! That means loving the jackass who cut you off in traffic. That means loving the guy who didn’t tip. That means loving the stranger who you never met, and will never meet again. That’s hard!
But all in all, it’s a good one. One that I fully support, even if I fail to live up to it on a regular basis. I have a minor quibble of course. It’s often translated as “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” This presumes that one loves oneself, something that anecdotal experience suggests isn’t a given. Also it opens the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Now, Jesus addressed this and, as typical, did it in a parable which has been misinterpreted and misapplied for millennia. The answer I like to think he meant to give was, “Everyone.”
I heard a variation of this commandment once years ago that stuck with me. “Be excellent to one another.” What does it mean to love? Here one is asked to act. Who should we treat this way? “One another,” everyone, yourself included.
Now, that’s what I call a commandment.
I have greater respect for the man who does right when no one is looking, than the man who does right only because God is.
That being said, I like Jesus’s take on the commandments. While not repudiating the Big Ten completely, he challenged us to a greater one, a harder one. One that to my view may be a more noble one. “Love one another.”
Man, is he kidding? He expected us to live up to that one? That one is hard! That means loving the jackass who cut you off in traffic. That means loving the guy who didn’t tip. That means loving the stranger who you never met, and will never meet again. That’s hard!
But all in all, it’s a good one. One that I fully support, even if I fail to live up to it on a regular basis. I have a minor quibble of course. It’s often translated as “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” This presumes that one loves oneself, something that anecdotal experience suggests isn’t a given. Also it opens the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Now, Jesus addressed this and, as typical, did it in a parable which has been misinterpreted and misapplied for millennia. The answer I like to think he meant to give was, “Everyone.”
I heard a variation of this commandment once years ago that stuck with me. “Be excellent to one another.” What does it mean to love? Here one is asked to act. Who should we treat this way? “One another,” everyone, yourself included.
Now, that’s what I call a commandment.
posted by Robert Rodger at 9:16 PM
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