Ten Commandments

After stating that Jesus Christ was “one of the greatest men that ever walked the earth,” rocker Sammy Hagar was then asked: “What do you think about the claims of Christ to be the Way, the Truth and the Life – No one comes to the Father but by Me?”

Hagar replied, “I think that’s something man made up – I’m not sure, though I can’t say in my heart that I believe that, but I also can’t say that I know for a fact that it’s wrong. I think it’s just been misinterpreted and taken out of context … I really interpret that as Christ saying, ‘The way I preach life, is you don’t hurt another, you don’t kill …’ you know, the Ten Commandments. Let’s use those for the example. I believe that He’s saying, ‘This is the way to God.’ You don’t have to go through Him, and use Him, like He’s saying, ‘I’m the egotist,’ or ‘I’m the vehicle.’ He’s teaching. ‘If you don’t obey these rules, you will not go to heaven, and not be in touch with God.’”

Hagar continues, “I think too much emphasis on the Man Himself, and if He were walking around here today, He would go, ‘Hey man, don’t be looking at Me. I can’t save your (expletive). Only you can save your (expletive). And He made it pretty easy on us. Those rules are so simple, The Ten Commandments … Anybody in their right mind could live by those rules. I think that’s all Christ was really trying to do.”

The Island of Dr. Moreau is a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells, but in this story the main character does not travel through time or fight aliens as in Well's The Time Machine or The War of the Worlds. Rather, the protagonist finds himself shipwrecked on a mysterious tropical island under the iron control of Dr. Moreau. The brilliant scientist has created monstrous human-animals, giving wolves, pigs, bulls, and other creatures the rudiments of human appearance, personality, and abilities; yet, at heart they are still animals. Moreau keeps them in line through constant repetition of "the Law," a long series of commands chanted daily:

Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?'

Does the Law work? Can it curb animal instinct? Yes and no. It restrains them during the day, but at night the animal nature rises. The narrator observes that "the Law … battled in their minds with the deep seated, ever-rebellious cravings of their animal natures. This Law they were ever repeating, I found, and ever breaking."

Possible Preaching Angles: Wells was not a theologian, but he could have been commenting on Romans 7, "We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual … . When I want to do good, evil is right there with me … . . I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against" God's law.

Years ago, a series of studies set out to determine how a fence and a boundary affected the behavior of children in the playground. The researchers constructed a playground with no fences. During the experiment, the children stayed in the center—almost in fear—and never ventured out beyond the playground structure. Then the researchers put up a fence. Immediately, the children's behavior changed. Instead of fearfully staying in the center of the playground, they wandered with freedom all the way to the fence, exploring and enjoying the entire space.

The researchers concluded: "The overwhelming conclusion was that with a given limitation, children felt safer to explore a playground … With a boundary, in this case the fence, the children felt at ease to explore the space." In other words, fences brought freedom. It was the absence of fences that created fear and apprehension.

In his TED Talk, "The Paradox of Choice," secular psychologist Barry Schwartz claims that many of us live by this unspoken but "official dogma": maximize your happiness by maximizing your individual freedom. And according to Schwartz, "The way to maximize freedom is to maximize choice."

Schwartz points to his local supermarket as an example—a place that offers 175 different kinds of salad dressings. Even our personal identity has become a matter of choice. "We don't inherit an identity," he says. "We get to invent it. And we get to re-invent ourselves as often as we like. And that means that every day, when you wake up in the morning, you have to decide what kind of person you want to be."

Schwartz ended his talk by pointing to a picture of two fish in a fishbowl as he said:

The truth of the matter is that if you shatter the fishbowl so that everything is possible, you don't have freedom. You have paralysis. If you shatter this fishbowl so that everything is possible, you decrease satisfaction … Everybody needs a fishbowl … The absence of some metaphorical fishbowl is a recipe for misery, and, I suspect, disaster.

Possible Preaching Angles: This would also work well as an object lesson illustration with a real fish in a fishbowl.

An article on CNN reported on two atheists who wanted to rewrite the Ten Commandments. The article begins with this question: "What if, instead of climbing Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God, Moses had turned to the Israelites and asked: Hey, what do you guys think we should do?" That was the idea behind the "10 'Non-Commandments' Contest," in which atheists were asked to offer modern alternatives to the famous Decalogue. The contest even offered $10,000 for the best ideas.

The contest drew more than 2,800 submissions from 18 countries and 27 U.S. states. The proposed "non-commandments" ranged from the quizzical ("Don't follow your nature") to the quixotic ("Thriving in space is the ultimate goal"). A team of 13 judges selected 10 of the more sober and serious submissions, and announced the winners.

The article summarized the list this way:

There's nary a "thou shalt" among them—nothing specifically about murder, stealing, or adultery, although there is a version of the Golden Rule, which presumably would cover those crimes. If they lack faith in the divine, the atheist "non-commandments" display a robust faith in humankind, as if Silicon Valley had replaced Sinai.

Here are the winning "Ten Non-Commandments":

1. Be open-minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence.
2. Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true.
3. The scientific method is the most reliable way of understanding the natural world.
4. Every person has the right to control of their body.
5. God is not necessary to be a good person or to live a full and meaningful life.
6. Be mindful of the consequences of all your actions and recognize that you must take responsibility for them.
7. Treat others as you would want them to treat you, and can reasonably expect them to want to be treated. Think about their perspective.
8. We have the responsibility to consider others, including future generations.
9. There is no one right way to live.
10. Leave the world a better place than you found it.

Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland has written about an encounter with a student at the University of Vermont. Moreland was speaking in a dorm when a student told him, "Whatever is true for you is true for you and whatever is true for me is true for me. If something works for you because you believe it, that's great. But no one should force his or her views on other people since everything is relative." As Moreland left, he unplugged the student's stereo and started out the door with it.

The student protested: "Hey, what are you doing? … You can't do that." Moreland replied, "You're not going to force on me the belief that it is wrong to steal your stereo, are you?" He then went on to point out to the student that, when it's convenient, people say they don't care about sexual morality or cheating on exams. But they become moral absolutists in a hurry when someone steals their things or violates their rights. That is, they are selective moral relativists.

Interestingly, a few weeks later this student became a follower of Christ because he recognized the connection between God and human dignity and rights—that God made us in his image. I like to tell churches that this could be a great new evangelistic method called, "Stealing Stereos for Jesus."

In November 2014, the Food and Drug Administration released its rule for calorie counts on chain restaurants. The final rule is pretty tough: it even requires movie theaters, pizza chains, and grocery stores to include calorie counts on their products. The premise of calorie counts on food items is obvious: If a person sees that the hamburger has 800 calories and the chicken only has 500, maybe that person will choose the chicken.

Most Americans like this idea. Nearly 75 percent of Americans support menu labeling. After New York required labels in 2008, 84 percent of residents said they found the labels helpful, and 93 percent of people in a public health clinic sample saw menu labeling as important. A majority of Americans also said they would choose lower-calorie food items if they had more information at their disposal.

Unfortunately, there's one big problem with food labeling: it doesn't seem to change what we eat. Researchers reviewed 31 studies published between January 2007 and July 2013 that explored how calorie labeling influenced consumer choices at cafes and restaurants. One of the researchers concluded the results of this review: "The best designed studies show that calorie labels do not have the desired effect in reducing total calories ordered at the population level."

On May 7, 1915, the R.M.S Lusitania, a British ocean liner, was struck by a torpedo from a German submarine. The ship sank in a matter of minutes, killing 1198 of the 1959 passengers aboard. In her book, Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy, author Diana Preston recorded the observations of one passenger, bookseller, Charles Lauriat:

As the ship was sinking and as Lauriat looked around to see who needed life jackets, he noticed that among the crowds now pouring on deck nearly everyone who passed by him that was wearing a life jacket had it on incorrectly." In his panic, one man had thrust one arm through an armhole and his head through the other. Others rushed past wearing them upside down. No one had read the "neat little signs" around the ship telling people how to put them on. Lauriat tried to help, but some thought he was trying to take their life jackets from them and fled in terror.

Preston continues: "Dead and drowning people were 'dotting the sea like seagulls.' Many bodies were floating upside down because people had put their life jackets on the wrong way up … so that their heads were pushed under the water."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Help from God; Dependence; Trust; Surrender—In the same way, how often do we flee in terror in the presence of the God who is trying to save our lives? (2) Commandments; Bible; Obedience—How often do we ignore the "signs" in God's Word and live with our life jackets on the wrong way up?

Bill Klem was the father of baseball umpires: colorful, judicious, and dignified. He was beyond passionate about America's favorite pastime, declaring, "To me, baseball is not a game, but a religion." The first umpire to use arm signals while working behind home plate, Bill umped for 37 years, including 18 World Series. He became known as "the Old Arbitrator," a deferential nod to his keen eye for calling balls and strikes.

On one such occasion, as he crouched and readied behind the plate, the pitcher threw the ball, the batter didn't swing, and, for just an instant, Bill said nothing. The batter turned and snorted, "Okay, so what was it, a ball or a strike?" To which Bill responded, "Sonny, it ain't nothing 'till I call it."

On November 9, 1938, Nazi forces smashed windows and set fire to 1,400 synagogues all across Germany and Austria and destroyed thousands of Torah scrolls. Many of the acts demolishing the scrolls were deliberately made a public spectacle. In one small town, the scrolls were sent rolling down a street as Hitler Youth on bicycles rode over them. In Berlin, the scrolls were burned in a major public square. As Torah scrolls burned in a synagogue's yard in Düsseldorf, German men, some wearing the robes of the rabbis and cantors, danced around the fire. It became known as the "Night of Broken Glass," or Kristillnacht in German.

The passionate hatred was intense and pervasive. But for the Nazis, it was also purposeful. In his book, A World Without Jews, professor Alon Confino argues that in order for the Nazi imagination to flourish they had to cut themselves off from everything Jewish, including the Hebrew Scriptures. The symbolic, very public act of burning the Old Testament scrolls would liberate Germany from the constraints of Judeo-Christian morals, ethics, and beliefs.

Dr. Confino writes, "[Burning the Hebrew Bible scrolls] … was a project to construct a new German Christianity that would owe nothing to the Jews and to other Christian Europeans. The enslavement of Europeans [to the Nazi's worldview] … depended on the destruction of the Jews first." On February 3, 1944, the Reich Press Office announced "the Jewish question is the key to world history."

Possible Preaching Angles: Bible; Old Testament; Scripture; Ten Commandments—The Nazis actually had the correct strategy for their evil goal. In others words, in order to re-imagine life without Christian roots, they had to start by getting rid of the Old Testament. As Christians, we will also cut ourselves off from our roots if we don't start with the Old Testament.

Tim loved his brand new house. The architect, who had supervised the entire building work, designed it so it was a big, open building. The walls were massive windows and the ceiling had a huge skylight in it so the whole house was full of light. There was also a little flowerbed in the middle of it. And in the middle of the flowerbed was one little plant—a gift from the architect himself. The plant would need hardly any attention because the flowerbed had a fully plumbed-in, automated watering system. And, of course, there was plenty of light in the house. All that was required was a little pruning from time to time to keep it from getting out of control.

But Tim's friends weren't so sure about this low-maintenance approach. They encouraged Tim to water it regularly just to make sure, so he did. The magazines Tim read were full of ads for different types of artificial fertilizer recommended for that kind of plant. So Tim tried these too. And the TV gardening programs said it really wasn't a great idea to prune those plants—they needed to be able to grow naturally. So Tim followed that advice too.

And it made a difference. Within weeks, it was shooting up and the leaves were thickening. Soon it was pushing the bounds for a normal-sized houseplant. Tim didn't notice the out-of-proportion growth until the architect came for a visit. When Tim invited him in for a cup of tea he realized just what had happened. By then the change was dramatic. That little plant had started to take over the entire house. Getting around the root structure in the house involved stepping over some branches, ducking others and generally some pretty impressive acrobatics. The plant had come to dominate everything.

But the change which concerned the architect most of all was the lack of light. The foliage was so dense that barely any of that beautiful light was getting through. If you looked really carefully, you could see a kind of pale tinge around the edge of some of the leaves. But that was now about all you could see of the light. It had become a dark green. This was definitely not the architect's original design.

In the American frontier days, there was a settlement in the West whose citizens were engaged in the lumber business. The town felt they wanted a church. They built a building and called a minister. The preacher moved into the settlement and initially was well received. Then one afternoon he happened to see some of his parishioners dragging some logs, which had been floated down the river from another village upstream, onto the bank. Each log was marked with the owner's stamp on one end. To his great distress, the minister saw his members pulling in the logs and sawing off the end where the telltale stamp appeared.

The following Sunday he preached a strong sermon on the commandment "Thou shall not steal." At the close of the service, his people lined up and offered enthusiastic congratulations: "Wonderful message, Pastor." "Mighty fine preaching." "Keep up the good work."

It wasn't the response he expected, so he went home to prepare his sermon for the following Sunday. He preached on the same text, the same commandment, but gave it a different ending. He said, "Yes, thou shall not steal, but thou shall also not cut off the end of thy neighbor's logs." When he got through, the congregation ran him out of town.

If you go skydiving at the Southwest Florida Skydiving Club in Punta Gorda, Florida, you can count on two things: (1) an exciting experience and (2) the need to follow some basic rules. For instance, before you participate in a dive, your "Jump Master" will give you the following instructions:

• Don't curl up into the fetal position. (You can slip out of your harness.)
• Arch your back and hold your arms out in front of you. (To keep you from slipping out of your harness and to get you flying in the correct position.)
• Stick your legs out in front when landing. (No explanation necessary.)
• Do everything your jump master tells you to do. (Immediately.)
• No pets allowed on your jump.

These are not negotiable, especially if you want to live. They are absolutes.

Now let's imagine another skydiving experience. When you arrive a smiling instructor begins strapping a parachute to your back while walking you toward a plane idling just outside. Over the plane's engine noise the instructor yells, "We here at the Relativist Skydiving School believe there are many ways to get from the plane to the ground. We respect everyone's desire to skydive and we don't believe in absolute rules. Just listen to your inner voice, respond honestly to your feelings, and have a memorable experience. We'll see you when you get down!"

If that was your experience, would you go skydiving? Most people who go skydiving are glad that there are strict, nonnegotiable rules. You can't be a relativist at skydiving. The rules are there for good reason. When we know why the rules are there it helps us embrace them.

On July 24, 2013, a train carrying 218 people in eight carriages derailed in northwestern Spain, killing 79 people and hospitalizing another 66. Shortly after the wreck, the driver, Francisco Jose Garzon Amo, told officials, "I can't explain it. I still don't understand how I didn't see …. I just don't know." He said the journey was "going fine" until the train hit a curve. At that point Garzon said to himself, "Oh my God, the curve, the curve, the curve. I won't make it."

Despite Garzon's initial confusion and surprise, there is a simple explanation for the crash. Video footage revealed that the train was going as fast as 119 mph before it hit the deadly curve. That's more than twice the speed limit for that section of the track. So it wasn't just the speed that caused the accident. It was the combination of the speed and the location of the track. The train was designed to reach speeds of over 130 mph. But Garzon, who was a 30-year employee of Spain's national rail company, simply ignored the boundaries in which those high speeds were to be used.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) God's Commandments; Obedience—God has laid down the track for us so we don't wreck our lives or the lives of other people. We ignore his speed limits at our own peril. (2) Sex; Sexuality—Our culture needs to hear how the message of speed limits applies to our sexuality. (3) Limits; Balance; Rest—Ignoring our God-given limits for work or success or productivity will only lead to wreckage.

The nominally Jewish writer A. J. Jacobs spent a year working on an unusual experiment: he tried to put into practice everything he read in the Bible. The resulting book was called, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. For example, on Day 62 of his experiment he tried to put into practice the command to stone an adulterer. So he records wandering into Central Park and meeting a mid-70ish man sitting on a park bench. Jacobs told the man, "I'm trying to live by the rules of the Bible. The Ten Commandments, stoning adulterers …" Jacobs records the rest of the conversation:

"You're stoning adulterers?" the man asks.
"Yeah, I'm stoning adulterers."
"I'm an adulterer," the man replies.
"You're currently an adulterer?"
"Yeah, Tonight, tomorrow, yesterday, two weeks from now. You gonna stone me?"
"If I could, yes, that'd be great."
"I'll punch you in the face. I'll send you to the cemetery."

He is serious. This isn't a cutesy grumpy old man. This is an angry old man. This is a man with seven decades of hostility behind him. I fish my pebbles from my back pocket.

"I wouldn't stone you with big stones," I say. "Just these little guys." I open my palm to show him the pebbles. He lunges at me, grabbing one out of my hand, then flinging it at my face. It whizzes by my cheek.

I am stunned for a second. I hadn't expected this grizzled old man to make the first move. But now there is nothing stopping me from retaliating. An eye for an eye. I take one of the remaining pebbles and whip it t his chest. It bounces off.

"I'll punch you right in the kisser," he says.
"Well, you really shouldn't commit adultery."

Possible preaching angles: (1) Interpretation; Old Testament—This story illustrates the need to carefully interpret the Scripture and what they mean for us today. (2) Judging Others; Rebuking others—In a humorous way, this story also shows the futility of trying to change others' lives by judging their behavior.

A few years ago, Google released a database of over 5 million books published between 1500 and 2008. You can now type a search word into the database and discover how often words have been used over the centuries.

Based on this data, The New York Times columnist David Brooks offers what he calls the "story of the last half-century." The first part of this story is the rise of individualism. In the past 50 years, "individualistic words and phrases increasingly overshadowed communal words and phrases." For instance, the following individualistic words have been used more frequently: "self," "personalized," "I come first," "I can do it myself." In contrast, the following communal words have been used less frequently: "community," "share," "band together," "common good."

The second part to the story Brooks sees is the decline in moral virtue. Certain words were especially hard hit, including words associated with courage or gratitude. But all of the following words have dropped in usage: "modesty," "humbleness," "discipline," "honesty," "patience," "faith," "wisdom," and even "evil."

Brooks offers his interpretation for these trends:

So the story I'd like to tell is this: Over the past half-century, society has become more individualistic. As it has become more individualistic, it has also become less morally aware, because social and moral fabrics are inextricably linked. [The first two trends] have led to certain forms of social breakdown, which government has tried to address, sometimes successfully and often impotently.

In 2005 a retired merchant seaman named Waldemer Semenov donated a compass to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. The ordinary and small compass (a mere four and half inches in diameter), doesn't look impressive, but this device has a fascinating story behind it.

During World War II, Semenov was serving as a junior engineer on the American merchant ship SS Alcoa Guide. On April 16, 1942, the ship was sailing from New Jersey to the Caribbean when a German submarine surfaced and opened fire with its deck cannons. Semenov recalls, "We didn't have any guns, and there were no escorts. [The Germans] were using us as target practice." The SS Alcoa Guide caught fire and started to sink 300 miles off the coast of North Carolina.

Semenov snatched three loaves of bread ("I knew we might be in the water for a while," he said) as he and the rest of the crew scrambled to lower two lifeboats and a raft into the water. Fortunately, the lifeboats were equipped with a compass. Semenov and his fellow crew members used the compass to sail west by northwest toward the shipping lanes. After three days, a patrol plane, searching for sailors from any of the three ships that had been sunk that week, spotted Semenov's lifeboat. The next day the USS Broome rescued the men on the lifeboats. In contrast, it took three weeks to find the raft, which was drifting aimlessly with only one survivor. In all, thanks to that compass, Semenov and 26 other crew members from the SS Alcoa Guide survived.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) God's Word, The Bible—In a survival scenario like this, having a compass can save your life. It is a trustworthy device to tell you what direction to go. The same is true for our spiritual lives. (2) Goals, Vision—They're like a compass that leads us to our next destination.

The Christian philosopher William Lane Craig argues that if God does not exist, there is no basis for objective right and wrong. All things are permitted. But Craig writes that "no atheist, no agnostic, can live consistently with such a view of life."

For example, Craig notes that although the atheist Richard Dawkins solemnly claims, "There is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference …. We are machines for propagating DNA," he constantly makes moral pronouncements. Dawkins characterizes "Darwinian mistakes" like pity for someone unable to pay us back or sexual attraction to an infertile member of the opposite sex as "blessed, precious mistakes" and calls compassion and generosity "noble emotions." He denounces the doctrine of original sin as "morally obnoxious." He vigorously condemns such actions as the harassment and abuse of homosexuals, religious indoctrination of children, the Incan practice of human sacrifice, and prizing cultural diversity in the case of the Amish over the interests of their children. He even goes so far as to offer his own amended Ten Commandments for guiding moral behavior, all the while marvelously oblivious to the contradiction with his ethical subjectivism.

So although an atheist might say that certain acts are wrong—really wrong—if there is no God, he cannot honestly distinguish between right and wrong. So the atheist makes a leap of faith and affirms values anyway. And when he does so, he reveals the inadequacy of a world without God.

An article from The Atlantic observed that over the past 100 years we have often turned yesterday's luxury products into today's necessities.

• In 1900, less than 10 percent of families owned a stove, or had access to electricity or phones
• In 1915, less than ten percent of families owned a car
• In 1930, less than ten percent of families owned a refrigerator or clothes washer
• In 1945, less than ten percent of families owned a clothes dryer or air-conditioning In 1960, less than ten percent of families owned a dishwasher or color TV
• In 1975, less than ten percent of families owned a microwave
• In 1990, less than ten percent of families had a cell phone or access to the internet

The article concluded by noting, "Today, at least 90 percent of the country has a stove, electricity, car, fridge, clothes washer, air-conditioning, color TV, microwave, and cell phone. They make our lives better. They might even make us happier. But they are [never] enough."