THE TEN COMMANDMENTS EXPLAINED

The main thing in the Law, the heart of the Law, is, of course, the well-known Ten Commandments.

The first commandment forbids the worship of what is not divine or putting anything in front of God – if anybody breaks any of the other commandments of the Law they are breaking this one by putting their own will in front of God’s so the Christian practice of quoting this law as valid and then denying the rest of the Law of Moses is not on because the commandment simply means that God is to be worshipped and served and nobody else and how is God to be served? By observance of the Law obviously. Worship is no good without actions to back it up.

This commandment for Catholics is simply, “I am the Lord thy God and you shall not have strange gods or idols before me.”

Protestants take the next bit, “You shall not bow down and worship anything in the Heavens or anywhere and you shall not make graven images” as the second commandment. They argue it proves that Catholics worshipping the communion wafer as God and honouring relics of the saints and statues of the saints and Jesus as idolatry.

Catholics disagree and have the following as the second commandment. The second says that we must not take God’s name in vain, meaning we are not to swear by God that what we know to be false is true or to speak of God without respect. It is the Catholic list we are looking at now.

The third says that the Sabbath day (Saturday) must be kept holy.

The fourth says we must honour our parents. Parents stand in the place of priests who stand in the place of God. This is why no command is given to look after their children. Nurturing the children isn’t as important as the children obeying and being brainwashed by the parents in religion.

The fifth says that we must not kill. The Law commands killing people and animals so this means murder rather than killing. Not all killing is murder.

The sixth then says we must not commit adultery – it should have said fornication which would outlaw adultery by implication better than adultery would outlaw fornication by implication and this error shows that the story of the Ten Commandments being written by the finger of God on tablets of stone is a yarn and only that.

The seventh bans stealing. The eighth disallows telling lies about others.

The ninth says we must not wish we could have the spouses of others and begrudge them to their partners.

The tenth says that we must not covet our neighbour’s goods. Covet means wanting something that another has and hoping he will lose it so that you can have it.

Protestants argue that the ninth and the tenth commandments are the one for they ban coveting what belongs to another. They are right. There is no need for making one commandment of the ban on coveting the wife or husband of another and another of the person’s goods. Coveting is coveting.

Since the Catholic ninth and tenth commandments are really one it follows that the Protestants are right to divide the Catholic first commandment into two to keep the number ten.

The Protestants say that the real first commandment is what I have given and that the second is the command banning the making of images to worship God with.

The Protestants have Ten Commandments and they are certainly right. The Catholics must have suppressed the second commandment because they indulge in idolatry. If God made a separate command to ban graven images there can be no doubt he was keeping things simple and that Catholic attempts to circumvent the command are contrived.