By: Marek Zabriskie
Recently, in our Men’s Ministry, we have been reading William Diehl’s book The Monday Connection, which explores how to connect our Sunday faith with our Monday challenges. The gap between Sunday and Monday can seem vast.
One participant told our group, “Early on, I had a boss describe the business world as a place where you compete ‘right up to the line’ – as defined by the law. His exact metaphor was “think of yourself as a wide receiver dragging his feet to stay in bounds.”
There seems to be a lot of playing right to the edge of things nowadays in college admissions, business, politics, church scandals, environmental regulation, tax filing, marriage, medicine and the law.
There’s an awful lot of focus on doing what we want and winning at all costs and not enough focus on principled living and doing what’s best for others. This strikes me as contrary to everything that Jesus taught and modeled for us.
Recall how God gave Moses the Ten Commandments on two stone tablets. The first tablet contained the first four commandments that expressed our duty to God – “You shall have no other God beside Me. You shall not make for yourself any graven image. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it Holy.”
The second tablet contained the six commandments that express our duty to each other – “Honor your father and mother. You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet.”
By the time of Jesus, the Israelites ascribed to 613 commandments that God gave to Moses. They believed that they gained their salvation by keeping the commandments found in the first five books of the Old Testament called the “Torah” or “the Law.”
St. Paul, however, said that these commandments do not save us. Rather, they convict us of sin and show us where we are transgressing. They are like spiritual guardrails meant to prevent us from harming ourselves and hurting others.
In his famous words found in Ephesians 2:8, Paul writes, “It is by grace you are saved through faith, and it is not your own doing. It is a gift of God, not of works.”
You and I do not have to follow the Ten Commandments to gain our salvation. Our salvation comes through our baptism, but we are called to keep the Ten Commandments in order to have a right relationship with God and with each other.
A Gallup Poll showed that 85% of Americans believe that the Ten Commandments apply to them, but less than 30% of Americans can name even five of them. In order to keep them, we must know them.
You may recall that the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore, waged and lost a stubborn fight to keep a Ten Commandments monument in his courthouse.
He drove around with a two-and-a-half ton rock engraved with the Ten Commandments on the back of his pickup truck. It took a 57-foot crane to hoist the rock onto his truck.
When we think of the Ten Commandments, we are apt to think of something heavy that weighs us down with obligations like the enormous rock in the judge’s pickup truck. We think of the commandments as shackles placed on us by a finger-pointing God, who shouts, “thou shalt not.”
But God gave the Ten Commandments to the Israelites as a gift after rescuing them from slavery. They were God’s way of saying, “These principles are necessary for leading a good, fulfilling life. They are not weights, but wings. They will help you catch the wind of my Spirit and allow you to soar.”
For most of the history of Anglicanism, the Ten Commandments were read in church at least once every Sunday. The Ten Commandments were prominently displayed in every church.
Today, phrases like God’s “Commandments” sound harsh, hierarchical, and hopelessly old-fashioned. Our society does not easily embrace any rules that bind us.
Yet, nowhere in the Bible are the ten precepts that God gave Moses called “Commandments.” They are merely called the “Ten Words,” from which we get the Greek word “Decalogue.”
The ten teachings are guideposts that frame our lives. God gave them to the Israelites so that they would not fall back into slavery. It was as if God was saying, “I love you so much that I want to show you the way to abundant life.”
The teachings describe how the world works. They are like the Law of Gravity. If we defy it, you we will pay a price. Our job is to trust in God’s principles for successful living and to instill them in our children and grandchildren.
Our Men’s Ministry has recently been gathering by firesides and fire pits at the church Rectory and at a member’s home. A parishioner who is a retired CEO and business legend said, “I really didn’t see any difference between who I was on Sunday morning and who I was on Monday morning. I was the same person.”
That’s our goal in life. Do you abide by Jesus’ ten teachings? Are the Ten Commandments grafted on your heart?
