Patriotic - Religion

 The Eleventh Commandment

God gave ten perfectly good commandments to help men function together in peace, and to reverence God and holy things to the degree that they in all things could prepare to enter back into the presence of Him.

But man has become geniuses in breaking, or near-breaking, the commandments, and justifying their actions, succeeding in maintaining their pious expressions. I think an eleventh commandment is needed, as an appendage to all the other commandments individually:

Nor Anything Like Unto It! Let's look at some examples:

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image". Yet, millions wear crosses and crucifixes, miniatures of saints which they pray to, churches are adorned with statues of Jesus that believers bow down to. Thus, the subject of their adoration is not the creator, but that which is created by man.

The believer would say that those statues only represent the real Jesus, and help them focus, but that was not what God asked us to do! With the eleventh commandment it would be harder to rationalize:" Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or anything like unto it!"

"Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain - or anything like unto it!" That would clean the air of a lot of profanities and the euphemisms of the Lord's name (at least there would be no way to rationalize it anymore).

Imagine how the eleventh commandment would effect the way we would live the law of the Sabbath day, and how we would honor our father and mother.

Thou shalt not commit adultery – nor anything like unto it! Would that have changed anything in the statements of a former president, and would the young of America get a revised view of sex?

Thou shalt not steal – nor anything like unto it! Would the moral of the eleventh commandment have caused the management of ENRON and other big and small cheating companies to think and act differently?

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour – nor anything like unto it! Would the spirit of this eleventh commandment make journalists report differently than they do today? Would it affect the gossip? Would love increase in our neighborhoods?

I have saved the dynamite for last. Thou shalt not kill – nor anything like unto it! Would doctors perform abortions on non-rape and non-incest victims? Perhaps it wouldn't even be necessary since people were not committing adultery – nor anything like unto it!

So, why didn't God put that in the commandments to begin with? He did! It's there, and has been there all along. The commandments is a colander used to fish out everyone who is to be sensitive to the commandments of God. Those who are not sensitive to following the commandments of the Lord, will slither strait through the colanders cracks and holes, while the rest will be fished out and be saved.