At retirement I had said that I learned that the world had changed and wrote a book about it. But before that book, I wrote another book, Definitions, which addressed the problem of teaching high school students about the origin of life. In this book, I defined some of the words used in this matter and one of them was “atheist,” which when I looked at it found it to be used for more than those who had no religion or did not believe in God. The other defined use was really the anti-theists who were against any kind of symbol of the Hebrew or Christian religion. Some of these are the satanists or devil worshipers. To wish all religious symbols to be removed from the public view means they represent something to those wishing their removal.
II. Do not bow down to idols. You might say this says that you should not expect animals and man-made things and beliefs in them to be substituted for the object of your worship. Again, if you are Jewish, Christian or Muslim, this commandment asks that idols not be substituted for the God of Abraham, but if you are not of these persuasions the law is still valuable. Using inanimate objects or animals as the object of your greatest affection is not the way to aid in civilizing the world. We see people who worship the trees in the forest and would rather they burned to the ground than be trimmed, thinned or cut for use by man. Others worship animals and place them above human beings when making decisions about their habitat and use. To think that an animal is worth more than a starving person is a problem for me and their use to clothe and shoe people is much nobler than letting them be food for other animals. We see the worship of many things that interfere with the normal progress of society and prevent people from living up to their true potential. Idols as objects of worship have never helped any society, and this commandment asks us to abstain from this. One of the largest idols in our society is the worship of abortion as a right rather than a medical procedure. This idol has caused many in our country to forsake any other reason as the test of a candidate for political office or a judgeship. This kind of idol worship is prohibited by the second commandment, and many do not wish to be reminded of it. Sadder yet, many who wish to not look at this commandment are themselves Christians.
III. Do not misuse the name of God. Do not swear or be disrespectful to your religion or others’ is what this law is saying to us. My mother told me that when I swore or called someone a name that I had run out of vocabulary and brain power. Beyond the religious connotation of this law is the fact that we as a society could be better off if we used good language to express ourselves, and the respect we showed to others may be returned. While one person is not of a religious persuasion, they offend others when they disrespect their respective religious beliefs. Does not that make this law valuable to a society when it is followed and the name of the object of one’s worship is not misused? How can this law be offensive to anyone other than those who wish to be offensive to any that are religious? Being reminded that you are running out of vocabulary and brain power could be offensive to those a little short of both. One of the little things that I have often thought about is that when someone uses God’s name in vain they are, in fact, recognizing God as being alive and well. If you do not have any religious beliefs, there is no use of using God’s name because the name should not exist in your vocabulary. How can anyone be offended by something that they believe does not exist?
IV. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. After a person has worked for six days he is to take the seventh off for rest and relaxation. Part of this commandment asks that God be remembered and worshiped. While non-believers have a problem with worshiping any deity, the idea of rest after a week’s work is a good one. The idea of taking time to rejuvenate our muscles, brain and spirit has been proven necessary and this commandment asks us to do just that. The renewal of our bodies through rest is known to each of us and the idea of renewal of our spirits is required before tackling another week’s endeavor. Worship is that function that does the spirit renewal and is performed differently by each of us. Worship may take the form of many things other than a religious form, but letting our minds wander to something other than work is as necessary as resting our backs. The direction of this commandment is for renewal of man and not for the renewal of God. We many times think that the laws of religion are just obstacles to overcome rather than intended to help us with our daily lives, and the mix of what is for God and what is for us is confused. This commandment is one of those that many think means that we stop working for God when I believe that God asks us to stop working for ourselves and our health. What is wrong with this idea that we renew ourselves weekly and return to work with gusto and energy? One of the interesting things that has happened during the last century is that man has decided to expand this commandment to work for five days and use two days for renewal. Apparently God’s law was not sufficient for us, and we had to change it for our benefit. Having two days from the workplace is quite common in the Western nations with attempts to lessen this to four days on and three days off. It is hard to understand why a law that is three-thousand years-old and asks us to take one day off a week from work for rest is offensive. Maybe some of us are ashamed of what we use this time off for, and the method of rejuvenating our spirits is not always something we are proud of. This commandment is not asking us to start a state religion; rather, it is reminding us to take care of our bodies as we use them to make our way in the world.
V. Honor your parents. This commandment tells us that our parents are special and we have the responsibility of letting them know that we understand this. If you think about the world a few years ago, parents had nothing but children to care for them as they aged. Many cultures had the family unit including the parents and grandparents in the same living quarters with the most elderly being the most honored. Things have changed, and in the Western part of the world, parents and grandparents have become very independent and take care of themselves until illness prevents this from being their way of life. The key to family values is the respect for one another within the family unit with the different generations taking part. As respect usually requires that it be earned, the honoring of parents also included the responsibility of parents earning that respect from their children.
This commandment is about family values and the responsibility of each generation to learn where they came from. This lesson better prepares them to meet and compete with the rest of the world for their continued existence. How this can offend anyone is without merit and seeing it written on the courthouse or other government building should remind us of the need for family values if we are to continue rearing responsible people to populate our world.
VI. Thou shalt not kill. Some modern interpretations change kill to murder, but either way the end result is the loss of life. The public in large has no objection to this law other than it reminds some of religion. If we really look at murder and killing relative to the number of people who do not die naturally, we find a large component of killing that goes unnoticed by most of us each day.
I heard on television that about four children die each day because of abuse or neglect. Each year we kill over forty thousand people on our highways, and an equal number are killed in the commission of crimes. Eighty thousand people—including moms and dads, children, aunts and uncles and babies—are brutally killed to allow us to use our cell phones, speed, run traffic lights or rob the local convenience store. This killing has been happening for many years and we do nothing about it. We certainly need more than the written law on public buildings that some are opposed to. As crime continues we reduce the police force to make money available for new businesses and sports stadiums. In many towns and cities across the country, the police forces have been reduced or eliminated because of budgetary deficiencies with other services maintained as needed. Killing due to not obeying traffic laws or not patrolling the streets is an abomination, and when I wrote a letter to the editor about this I was chastised by two people because I had compared dead in a traffic accident to dead in war. One woman wrote that dying in the Iraq war was heroic, but who cares about traffic-accident deaths. She had proved my point. Three young women had been killed in two traffic accidents in my area within a week, and I thought it was a tragedy worth doing something about. The number killed locally in traffic accidents or crime is never tallied for the reader. It is taken for granted that we expect traffic accidents to happen and, as we label them accidental, that somehow makes it all right to kill. We do not slow down the next day or stop on red before turning right but continue with the same rote behavior that will cause more accidents.
Killing in war is accepted as usual practice and, though the antiwar demonstrations try to point this out, most of the demonstrations are to prevent some from having to serve and spoil their good times. War has killed many, but if you compare the results of the Korean and Vietnam Wars with the Iraq War, it becomes noticeable that we have done a good job in reducing the killing during the conquest. To blame war as the evil killer by those who are part of the everyday killing of innocents on the road or to reduce the police presence that may prevent the drive-by shooting is hypocritical in the very least. I marvel at the politicians who bloviate about the war and loss of life and do nothing to quell the killing in their own backyards. The crime in most of our major cities has killed more people than the Iraq War in the same amount of time, but there is no focus on this. Crime is expected so let it happen, and not answering your cell phone at eighty miles an hour is out of the question. It takes us two years to kill as many on the roads as were killed in the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined. Add the crime figures to this, and we have the equivalent of these two wars every year.
This commandment is the easiest for most to accept but the hardest to live by. I hope and pray that it may stay on every public surface available and remind us constantly that killing should not be part of civilization. In the meantime, we will continue to drive with temerity.
(30)