The Relevance of the Ten Commandments

Can man govern himself?  Government, and all law and order, must be based upon a standard.  If that standard is set by man, then man can also change the standard.  If man governs himself, then the golden rule applies: He that hath the gold maketh the rules.  Throughout history, when man is left to set his own rules, he invariably changes them to suit his fancy.  It is no different today within our own nation and our elected officials:   They make laws to govern the masses that do not apply to them.  It’s a ‘good law’ as long as they don’t need to live by it.  We can see in this a principle in actions: The one that writes the rules will always think he is above the rules.  The answer to the question, can man govern himself, is a resounding “NO”!

The only way to have a cohesive society is to derive a fundamental sense of what right and wrong is.  Granted, this assumes that society accepts the premise that there is in fact right and wrong, and one clear sign of a society in decline is when they reject this truth.  This is called moral relativism: The ends justify the means and there is no absolute right and wrong.  Because man will always exempt himself from standards, standards cannot come from man.  God knew that, and God gave us, in the Ten Commandments, the fundamental basis for a successful society.  These Ten Commandments are as relative today as they were when God spoke them in the ears of the Israelites some 3000 years ago.  The Ten Commandments do not need to change because the fundamental nature of man does not change; Man still has the same problems he had 3000 years ago.  Without God, there is no absolute right and wrong, and without right and wrong, there can be no social compact.

A skeptical individual might argue that most of these are universal laws, like ‘thou shalt not kill’ – everyone knows it’s wrong to kill, so why does anyone need to bring God into it?  Indeed we do all know this, unless we have seared our conscience (as some have).  Consider this passage from the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Romans:

Romans 2:14-15  For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:  (15)  Which shew (show) the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)

According to the same bible the Ten Commandments are recorded in, God wrote this fundamental law in our hearts.  We know ‘right from wrong’ because God gave us the ability to know it.  This universal understanding crosses cultures, centuries, and continents, and no other beliefs are this universally held.  This fact alone must tell you that man did not dream this up on his own.      

We can take this conversation one step further: without right and wrong there can be no Law; without Laws there can be no Liberty.  Liberty only exists within a framework of morality, and that morality must be derived from something beyond man.  In a society of moral relativism, you will move toward Anarchy until someone masses enough power to have a Dictatorship, then you have Totalitarianism.  The most egregious examples of this are Hitler, Stalin, Mau, and Kim Jung Il.  The list does not stop there, and religious dictatorships are by no means excluded: The blood feud between Catholicism and Islam rages to this day.  We concluded that Liberty can only be maintained when people uphold moral virtue, and these fundamental virtues are found in the Ten Commandments.  If our entire society obeyed just the last six commandments, that could be the extent of our entire legal code.  Under our form of government, with personal liberty a fundamental right.  I can do anything except for four basic things:

I can't have your stuff

I can't have your wife (and kids)

I can't have your life (kill you)

And I cannot lie to get your stuff, your wife, your kids, or your life.  

Sound familiar?  It's the 6th through 9th commandments.  It is the very basis of our legal system.  In our society, I am allowed to do just about anything I want, except these four things.  But - the more exceptions we make to these four things, the more laws we need.  

I am often amazed that the perception most people have it that God has so many laws and restrictions that you can't even have any 'fun'.  I would start by challenging the definition of fun, but that aside, in reality, God has far less 'rules' than man does, and God's laws are simple, straightforward, and consistent.  If you think man is any of these, I would challenge you to read the IRS tax code.  I'll take War and Peace instead.    

It is my belief that the Word of God is the very source of our civil Liberty.  The further we drift from it as a society, the worse our society will become, until we border on the brink of anarchy, and I regret to say I believe we are there.  Then a dictator will seize power.  It happens every time. 

America is only the second nation in recorded history to have its foundation laid upon the Word of God.  Our legal system, organization of republican government, division of powers, age of representatives, original immigration policy, economic structure, and many other elements of our Government were clearly derived from scripture, a point I will attempt to make as I work through these lessons.

I’d like to end this introduction on a positive note: Without the Ten Commandments in the founding of our nation, America never would have been, so we can thank God our Founding Fathers understood them; without the Ten Commandments in the future of our nation, America will cease to be.  So much for the positive note.