The Ten Commandments: Part Two
Reading: The Ten Commandments – a positive rendition
The source and power of life is ever present –around us, amongst us and within us.
Make the fullness of life the most important aspect of your life and of the life of those around you.
Keep promises made.
Take time away from work to rest and recharge.
Honour those who have been as a loving parent to you.
Do everything you can to nurture life.
Respect commitments made to others.
Treat with respect that which belongs to others.
Speak the truth with love.
Celebrate the good fortune of others.
Dialogue: The Reverend Val Chongva and Sarah Colwell held the following conversation on March 11, 2018, as a follow-up to the dialogue held on March 4. The material is based on John Spong’s latest book entitled Unbelievable: Why Neither Ancient Creeds Nor the Reformation Can Produce a Living Faith Today (2018).
Sarah
Alright, Val. What’s going on? Last week we read the ten commandments from the New King James version of the bible. You then told us there were 3 versions of the ten commandments in the bible – which don’t agree with one another. And then today we read this version of the 10 commandments. Where did this last set come from? And why are we even considering them?
Val
Where did the set of commandments that we just read come from? Actually, they came from a sermon I preached in 2002, 16 years ago. At that time, I most likely “borrowed” the idea from someone else. But this week they were revised to reflect our current theology. And why are we considering them? Well, as I mentioned last week, the ten commandments emerged out of the common life of the people over a long period of time, and they were adapted to new circumstances as the lives of the people changed and developed. No code can or will endure forever. So today, I thought I would present a set of the ten commandments that were more reflective of the circumstances today. And I like positive statements, so here they are – dos instead of don’ts.
Sarah
Now I am really confused. Last week you talked about the questionable relevance of the ten commandments. And then this week you present us with another, up-to-date version of them. Are they relevant, or aren’t they?
Val
When I talked about the questionable relevance of the ten commandments, I didn’t mean that they had nothing to say to us. As Spong notes in his book, Unbelievable, we don’t dismiss the great codes of the past, but we also do not endow them with the status of ultimate and unchanging laws.
Sarah
Can you expand on that?
Val
Sure – the ten commandments contain some good statements, some general guidelines, but they can’t be taken literally – they can’t be seen as the absolute only rule to follow. They can’t be the ‘be all and end all’ on which we base our decisions as to what is good and what is evil. There are other factors that need to be considered. That is one of the advantages of putting the ten commandments into the positive form which we just read. For example, what does it mean to do everything we can to nurture life? It isn’t as simple as saying “Thou shalt not kill.” The answer isn’t that clear cut. What is it that nurtures the life of another person? What is it that nurtures all life that exists on this planet we call earth?
Sarah
But Val, it is so much easier to have a basic set of rules to follow. For example, ‘don’t lie.’ That’s simple, straightforward, a rule we should all follow.
Val
If you remember from last week, we talked about the problems that following any rule to the letter can cause. For those who weren’t here last week, you may wish to read chapter 29 in Spong’s book. As Spong also notes, contemporary moral standards must be hammered out in the juxtaposition between life-affirming moral principles and external situations.
Sarah
Now that’s a mouth full. What does he mean by that?
Val
What is meant is that we need to take into account the situation in which an action occurs. As Spong notes, an identical action might be regarded as good in one context, and as insensitive, inappropriate and wrong in another. For example, something considered good in one generation may be looked upon as evil in another. Knowledge changes what is acceptable and what isn’t.
Sarah
Things changing over the years is understandable. Slavery was practiced for many years before it was determined to be evil. But what about today? Can things be both bad and good at the same time?
Val
Sure. Have you ever told your kids not to use drugs, not to get involved with drugs?
Sarah
Of course. Drug use is a major societal problem and can really mess up people. Drug use can be deadly and, as we know, many have died using drugs.
Val
So you’d say that using drugs is wrong?
Sarah
Of course! Drugs sold on the street are to be avoided at all costs.
Val
But Sarah, I used and still use drugs.
Sarah
But those are different kinds of drugs.
Val
Not necessarily. As you know, I recently was diagnosed with cancer. There were times when my pain got really bad, and the medication I received, the medication I took, was the same medication, the same drug, that “drug users” want to get their hands on, medication that on the street is a sought-after drug. So, in one context, those drugs are considered good – they ease pain and facilitate healing, but in other situations, those same drugs are considered evil, and even life-destroying.
Sarah
So, you are saying that good and evil are not fixed categories – that there is no one rule, or one set of rules, that we can follow, that covers every possibility. First we have to determine whether the moral principle is life-affirming. And then we have to consider the specific situation. That really makes things so much more difficult. If everything is relative, then it forces us to make decisions.
Val
Exactly. There are many things to consider, though as Spong notes, the ultimate law of the universe is still the law of love through which the fullness of life becomes possible. The inescapable question thus becomes: How will love be practiced in the circumstances of our very modern world?
Sarah
Well, I am not sure that helps me a lot. What does one mean by love? I have seen all kinds of nasty things done in the name of “love.” I want something firm, something definite to rely on, to turn to for an answer.
Val
It seems that the first thing we need to do is examine what we mean when we talk about love – and what love in action looks like. If we are seeking something that is firm and definite – then we are looking for something we will most likely never find. There are no definites, and any rules or guidelines that seem to make sense today may not make any sense tomorrow. When the circumstances of life change, the rules created to guide us through life must also change.
Sarah
Isn’t there anything to guide us when we need to make a decision?
Val
Well, there are some questions that we can ask ourselves as we try to determine if something is good or evil. 1) Does the action expand life? Does it enable the person to live life to the fullest, whatever that might look like. Another question we can ask is Does the action increase love? Spong frequently uses the term ‘to love wastefully’. By that he means the kind of love that never stops to calculate whether the object of its love is worthy to be its recipient. Another question: Does the action enhance being? Does it enable the person to be all that they can be?
Sarah
So what you are saying is that there are no easy answers?
Val
That’s right. There are no easy answers. We could have long discussions on a whole host of topics.
Sarah
Maybe in the future that might happen. But before we end this discussion today, I would like to return once more to Spong’s book and his overall theme, the whole notion that we need to re-examine the beliefs that have been part of us for so many years. It sounds as if he covers a lot of topics and issues.
Val
He sure does, and I’ve only touched on a small portion of them. The book is well worth the read, and as I mentioned earlier, it is a very readable book. After today, this copy will be in the library if anyone would like to sign it out. I am sorry that this is his last book, though Spong himself admits that he has thus far written 5 last books. But this time, he seems to mean it, not because he will be 87 years old in June, but because of his stroke.
Sarah
Besides the ten commandments, were there any other topics that you found particularly interesting?
Val
As we noted a few weeks ago, Spong’s book focuses on his 12 Thesis – the same 12 theses that would be familiar to people who had read his newsletters. Spong notes that he posted in this book a call for a new reformation, framing that call in the form of 12 theses. He also says that he will state them as sharply and as provocatively as he can. Those statements reflect an earlier comment he makes in his book – that he would rather die in controversy than die in boredom.
Sarah
He certainly has stirred up a lot of controversy throughout his life, and he has never shied away from letting his views be known. If we have read his 12 theses as part of his newsletter, is it still worthwhile reading his book?
Val
Even though Spong talks about the 12 theses that we’ve heard about before, he does so in a new way and adds new information. That alone makes the reading very interesting. But there was one chapter at the beginning of his book that I found most helpful. It was called “Differentiating the Experience from the Explanation.”
Sarah
Tell us more.
Val
Think of it this way. The things that we experience today may be the same as what people experienced 2000 years ago. But the explanation of that event has changed in many ways. Take sun rise and sun set. The Egyptians explained this natural phenomenon by suggesting that their God, Ra, rode his chariot across the sky each morning surveying the earth. Other ancient people explained the sun’s rotation as a heavenly body circling the earth, making the earth the centre of the universe.
Then the explanation became that the planet earth is turning on its axis as it makes its annual elliptical orbit around the sun. The experience being described – sun rise, sun set – is identical, but each explanation reflects the time in which the explainer lived and the level of knowledge that the explainer possessed.
Sarah
I guess we could say the same thing about illness. For example, in the first century an epileptic seizure would have been explained as “demon possession.” That same experience today is known to be because of the electrical chemistry of a brain cell.
Val
Another example is the first century view of the world around us. They explained what they saw as three tiered: heaven above, earth, and hell below.
Sarah
And what a different explanation we have today! The bible is full of first century experiences – and the explanations are also based on first century knowledge. They couldn’t be based on anything else.
Val
The same thing happened to the creeds which were developed in the 4th century. That is the problem we encounter today – Christianity recorded its first century explanations of the Jesus experience in scripture and its 4th century explanations in creedal statements. But we are no longer in the 1st or the 4th century. We need to separate the 1st century experience from the 1st century explanation. We need to examine the 1st century story and bring in a 21st century explanation. That is what Spong does in his 12 theses. And that is what we attempt to do here every Sunday.