Man the Outlaw #5: Do Not Murder

Again, as with "Do Not Steal," we would think this is a no-brainer. People who murder go to prison or get executed. Surely we do not have a problem with keeping that commandment, even nonbelievers. Right?

Ahem. We have ALL kinds of problems with that. 

It is a good rule of thumb with sin that the more you look, the more you will see, and the way to stop seeing is to stop looking, pretty much. So we have areas where there has been a sort of public consensus to say, "well that does not count." We will not see that. In some cases these socially accepted blind spots can cover hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Lets start with an easy example. Using drones, using robots, to take out suspected terrorists with hellfire missiles. Nobody is actually on the ground to shoot the terrorist and not to kill the cowering wife and infant in the crib; were troops actually there, we could try to do that (though that is still no guarantee of zero innocent casualties.) We would at least be trying to not kill noncombatants. With drones, we aren't even TRYING to not kill innocents. Someone makes a decision that a terrorist is sleeping in a certain house, and the drone fires a hellfire missile and KILLS EVERYONE in the house.

Kills the terrorist, assuming he is even there.

Kills his wife who wouldn't hurt a fly.

Kills his preteen daughter who aspired to learn to be a makeup artist.

Kills his young son who liked playing ball.

Kills his helpless infant child in the crib.

So clearly, our society is deciding that the murder of the innocent is totally okay in the name of OUR greater good. Contrast that with the commandment in Judaism (oft ignored by the Israeli Defense Forces which after all is a secular organization) that you should be willing to

DIE

rather than wrongfully kill an innocent.

That is one of the two things that you should be willing to die rather than do. The other is deny G-d.

Hmm. That's not a very popular sentiment, is it? We don't like that idea too much. Someone points a gun at your head and says, "kill that dude I tied up over there or I'll kill you," we are going to be tempted to do what he says, especially if we believe that this person has no other reason for wanting us dead. Better them than us, right?

We have ALL kinds of damn reasons for breaking the 6th Commandment. I'm not even talking yet about the thing I think you are sure I am going to talk about. We'll talk about that in a bit.

How about the US-sanctioned killing by drone of Anwar al-Awlaki? He was a terrorist, a bad dude, surely no good American grieves him, right? He was a dick.

Here's the problem. al-Awlaki was an American citizen. He had committed no crime that is punishable by death in the United States. He may have published horrible propaganda for Al Qaeda, but that is not punishable by death in the United States. As far as we know, he never personally killed anyone. He was kind of a nerd. He might have funneled money and resources to terrorists and propagandized for them, but then again that is not a crime punishable by death in the US. Also in the vehicle and also killed was Samir Khan, also an American citizen, a publisher of a pro-terrorist web magazine. He also had not committed any crime punishable by death. Neither of them were given their due process rights. Both were citizens of the US.

If the government can commit an extrajudicial killing on al-Awlaki, it can commit an extrajudicial killing on anyone. It can commit one on us. Obama, much beloved by liberals, did this, as well as signing off on drone killings which took many innocent lives. The government has become its own god, holding life and death in its hands.

THE COMMANDMENT WAS BROKEN.

G-d will not excuse the intentional death of even one innocent. Many innocent children have been killed in drone strikes. G-d rules: not you Obama, not you Trump, not the government, nobody else.

And many such things we excuse and many such murders we excuse because they serve our interests. This is something that so many people have a hard time wrapping their heads around: the fundamental moral decrepitude of human beings. Sin. We don't believe we are sinful and we don't believe in sin. Of course we excuse such things, what is to stop us? But the truth about human beings is an ugly thing. Without G-d's regenerating grace, the human being is a truly ugly thing, a monster. Powerful, lustful, greedy, ruthless, evil. That is not what G-d wants for us. But it may be what we want for ourselves. Human power is a monstrosity above all others.

* * *

Okay, you knew I was going to go there. I actually struggle with presenting this material in an unemotional manner. I should be emotional. People are killing their sons, their daughters, for what?

Convenience? Because kids cost money? Because kids interfere with their fun? Because they can't be bothered with birth control?

In 2015, the last year for which data is available, 638,169 children were intentionally killed by abortion. That's just about even with the number of people who died of heart disease in 2015, but the difference is that people may not have a choice of whether to die of heart disease. Sometimes despite best efforts, that's what people die of. These deaths by abortion were intentional killings. In comparison, the number who died that year of conventionally defined murder were 15,399.

I don't know if I can ever adequately express how truly hateful this is to the Lord G-d of Israel. There are no human words to express it. These least able to defend themselves are killed, often for minor reasons. YOU ARE MURDERING YOUR OWN SONS AND DAUGHTERS. It is a marvel of the age that this actually requires me to spell it out.

How do I know that this is hateful to the Lord G-d? Abortion as we now know it did not exist in biblical times, but similar things did exist. 

You shall not give any of your children to

offer them to Molech, and so profane

the name of your God: I am the Lord.

~Leviticus 18:21

And you took your sons and your daughters,

whom you had borne to Me, and these you

sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your

whorings so small a matter that you slaughtered

My children and delivered them up as an

offering by fire to them?

~Ezekiel 16:20-21 (emphasis mine.)

The children you bear do not ultimately belong to you. Your own life is not yours. If you take your life, which is a gift from G-d, for your own corrupt use, you will lose life.

They sacrificed their sons and their daughters

to the demons; they poured out innocent

blood, the blood of their sons and daughters,

whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,

and the land was polluted with blood.

~Psalm 106:37-38

For you created my inmost being;

    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful,

    I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you

    when I was made in the secret place,

    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body;

    all the days ordained for me were written in your book

    before one of them came to be.

~Psalm 139: 13-16

Behold, children are a heritage

from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.

~Psalm 127:3

Then he took his oldest son who was to reign in his

place and offered him for a burnt offering on the

wall. And there came great wrath against Israel. And

they withdrew from him and returned to their own land.

~2 Kings 3:27

I could go on and on. I don't as much blame the purely godless, they don't know better. As Jonah 4 says about the citizens of Nineveh, they do not know their right hand from their left. They are like ignorant children playing in their own filth. They haven't learned better.

But you liberal Christians who approve of this, G-d will shut His ears to your prayers. Your rituals will fall on silence. You are offending G-d, and you are constantly finding new ways to offend G-d. He will not listen to your prayers, if you approve this.

YOU ARE MURDERING YOUR OWN CHILDREN AND APPROVING THE SAME. You are shameless, without conscience, heartless, ruthless, violent. Do you imagine that G-d will approve of you when you murder the helpless and facilitate others doing so??? He will NOT. How is it possible that I need to explain this to anyone?? How far have we fallen from G-d's grace and wisdom that I actually have to explain this shit?

THIS IS A COMMANDMENT FROM THE MOST HIGH G-D, GIVEN TO US IN THE TORAH. DO NOT MURDER, ANY INNOCENT AT ALL WHATSOEVER. NO INNOCENT CHILDREN, NO INNOCENT ADULTS, NO INNOCENT UNBORN, NO INNOCENT ANYONE. OBEY IT.

* * *

I would be remiss to end on such a bitter note. What we may see as rules designed to spoil our fun, are actually meant to lift us out of the bitter dregs of our unregenerate nature. G-d gave us a nature that is capable of all things, good and bad, because He respects our right to choose. He wants us to learn, not be brainwashed. However, although many roads lead to sin, truly only one road leads to goodness. That is why we often choose the easier roads and lose the path to the good road.

G-d wants good things for us, truly. He wants us to live as His very own, His children. In the mud of our sin, it may be very hard for us to see this vision: indeed I cannot see all of it. Some things G-d keeps in reserve. What I can see though, is glorious.

I will proclaim the Lord’s decree: He said to me,

“You are my son,  today I have become your Father.
~Psalm 2:7

They will neither harm nor destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.

~Isaiah 11:9

Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.

~Daniel 12:3

The Children will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. All of the trouble, tears and degradation of this Earth and our lives in it will be wiped from existence. There will be an eternal Sabbath, an eternal glory. No human mind can imagine the wonders that your Father has in store for His own. Keep the faith. Stay uncontaminated. Pray and read the Tanakh every day. Tell who will listen. It will be so worth it, both here on Earth, and in the Kingdom of the Righteous.

Man the Outlaw #4: Do Not Commit Adultery

Whoa. Now we're into it.

The average human today is so far from the biblical ideal of what a human being should be, that it might be hard to understand why this is even a rule. You want everyone to be happy happy, right? You don't want people to stay in unhappy marriages, right? Why is this a rule?

In order to understand WHY this is a Commandment from G-d, which it entirely is, you first have to understand something. You have to understand that our society's idea of what a human being is supposed to be, and G-d's idea of what a human being is supposed to be, are entirely different. They are profoundly different, like day and night.

When G-d first engages with the Israelites, He does so though a covenant. This is not like a legal contract in our society, although people back then made those sorts of covenants too. This is like one person saying to another, "I have your back no matter what. I will defend you from harm. I will die to keep you safe." It is a very serious thing, and taken very seriously. Not to be entered into lightly. Nevertheless, the Israelites broke their covenant with G-d within 2 months of making it. Honestly they probably broke it the minute Moses had his back turned. That's how people are, and honestly our society's idea of a human being is much more comfortable to that nature.

That is not G-d's ideal of a human being though. That divine conception of what a human being should be like, is honorable. The word of such a man can be relied on, in so far as it is humanly within his power to fulfill.  He keeps his covenant.

Secondly, the reason why such a man makes the covenant to begin with, whether it is the marriage covenant or a covenant with G-d, is love. As I have repeated throughout this series, we are not talking about an emotion, or not merely one anyway. If all you have to bind you to a prospective spouse is emotion, don't marry them because you are building your house on a foundation of weakness. True love is a deep awareness of communion, based in G-d. I spoke of this in reference to the command to love your neighbor: the awareness is that really, you ARE your neighbor. You and your neighbor, assuming you are united in the love of G-d, are equal. They are your brother or sister, or actually, given how siblings are these days, they are more than that. The holy understanding of a man in community is that no one is privileged nor can they treat themselves or other people as privileged. All are alike children of G-d. Emotion can facilitate or break down this equality, this union under G-d, but the actuality is the thing we should be aware of. Not what we feel about it. If we have the right awareness, feeling will follow. Feeling must follow knowledge or it is feeling astray.

The man of G-d loves G-d with all his emotions, but also he knows the reality, that his communion with G-d is his life and falling from that would be death. Maybe his body wouldn't die straight away, but his life would fail. The light and energy and life that pours down upon him from heaven would cease.

So love is not merely what you feel. It's what you know, what you understand. It is in fact more that than a feeling.

The holiest prayer in Judaism, the Shema, can be understood three different ways and all are true:

Hear O Israel, the Lord your G-d, the Lord Alone.
(This means, there is no other deity. Do not bow down to idols.)

Hear O Israel, the Lord your G-d, the Lord is Unity.
(The Lord brings all together in communion and harmony in Him.)

Hear O Israel, the Lord your G-d, the Lord is One.
(There is one G-d and He is singular and unique. Sorry Christians, there is no Trinity, nor was the man Jesus ever G-d. Jesus indeed broke many of the commandments of G-d and encouraged others to do the same. Jesus and the prophet Jeremiah cannot both be right about the importance of the Sabbath for instance: Jeremiah is expressing the biblically correct view.)

The second one, "the Lord is Unity," means that the Lord brings all under Him into right relation and harmony under His Law. His law is meant to set you free, not enslave you; it is meant for your good not your harm. When we are subject to our own disordered desires and passions, we are not free, we are bound.

The TL:DR version of what I am saying is this: the divine conception of what a human should be is honorable and loyal (keeps his covenants, does not betray,) loving in the sense of understanding the true basis of love, and of course united in the love of G-d without which all human thoughts, feelings desires and actions go astray.

How does adultery fit in? Well first of all you are breaking your marriage covenant. There was someone to whom you promised your whole self, your whole loyalty, and you broke your promise. You were not honorable.

Secondly, assuming you don't tell your spouse you are banging someone else, you are not truthful.

Now people have all sorts of open relationships these days, which are an abomination, but it is possible that such is the case in which your marriage is not a marriage at all but a convenient mutual cohabitation. So you could say you didn't break your promise because you didn't make one. Such sexual immorality is still loathsome to G-d and is still adultery and such people are covetous of multiple other bodies which is a violation of the 10th Commandment.

Such a person has not love, in the divine sense. They may well have the emotion of love, but not the true thing, because the true thing is based on an awareness not a feeling.

Now, I have told you what G-d's idea of what a human should be is. Let me tell you about what our society's idea of a human being is.

A human being, according to society, is a being seeking pleasures and experiences. They may seek other things like knowledge or wealth, but ultimately it is to this end. Everyone has a written or unwritten "bucket list" (so much evil in such an innocuous seeming phrase) of experiences that they want to fill out before they can't and are old or dead. Someone who had been a childhood friend expressed it this way: they want to slide into the grave with a margarita in their hand screaming, "what a ride!" This is the godless conception of what a human being is. That person regrettably is no longer my friend since I took exception to what she said. She didn't like that.

It might seem strange to think that people who seek so much pleasure often have so little happiness. I have used this example in a previous post: there was a man, famous on television, who had EVERYTHING. He was rich. He ate the best food on the planet, orgies of taste were at his beck and call. He was adored. He traveled the world. He was in an open relationship with a sexy woman, but he could have had thousands.

He killed himself. Now the vox populi would say, he had a disease. Well there's an awful lot of it going around, isn't there? Wonder why?

There was another man. Let me tell you about him. It's not a story to be proud of, but it is one to be glad of.

Growing up, in his early adulthood, he wasn't starving or dying of disease. He was fortunate in that respect; he was moderately comfortable, though not because of his own efforts. He failed at everything he laid his hand to. He was constantly short of money, though fortunately he was at least thrifty with what he had. He drank, he did drugs. He watched porn, the disgusting abuse of young bodies for sexual perversion. It is a hateful thing. His young life was a prison sentence, marking time. He understood this. This alone will I mark to his credit: he knew.

Ultimately, in desperation, he understood. His life and the lives of everyone in the whole world were futile, without one thing. One thing he did not believe in. One thing without which, everything was for naught and all the suffering and tears of this whole big world were for nothing. ONE thing, upon which the soul and fate of the whole of existence hung.

And that thing that he at first did not believe in, opened a whole new world for him. By the grace, mercy and love of the Lord YHWH alone to a miserable wretch, he began to understand. He is still in the process of understanding. Something opened to him that his young self would not have believed. Knowledge. Vigor. Strength. Joy. He was more than merely happy, he had joy. Thank you Lord. Thank you for everything. 

So yeah, that was me. Someone who should have been miserable, and was. Now, I am blessed, though no credit goes to myself. All praise to Lord G-d alone.

Alright, well I have strayed from my main point significantly. Adultery is covetous and dishonorable, and against G-d's Commandment, don't do it.

In the Tanakh, G-d often portrays Israel's disobedience and double-heartedness in terms of adultery. It is not that those who fear G-d are married to Him, it's actually more than that.

This is Ezekiel 16, speaking of G-d's people Israel:

 "On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.

Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, “Live!” I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew and developed and entered puberty. Your breasts had formed and your hair had grown, yet you were stark naked.

Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your naked body. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.

I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put sandals of fine leather on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. I adorned you with jewelry: I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck, and I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. So you were adorned with gold and silver; your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your food was honey, olive oil and the finest flour. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen. And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord.

But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute."

~Ezekiel 16:4-15

I highly recommend that you read the entire passage, it is quite illuminating. So yeah, you can figure that the Lord G-d does not look tolerantly upon adultery of any form, marital or spiritual. 

Man the Outlaw #3: Do Not Steal

You would think this would be an easy one, right? I mean, no one is in favor of getting their stuff stolen, so one might think.

First off, lets look at why this is a Commandment. In ancient cultures around the world and even up to relatively modern times in some cultures, stealing from adversaries was totally okay and even stealing from your own people was okay sometimes. Stealing a horse was a rite of passage for some if not most Plains tribes in North America. Similarly in ancient Sparta in order for a young warrior in training to become a full fledged man in their society, they had to steal food. From their own people. They also had to kill a slave, which in some sense or other was property of their own people.

When you steal from someone, you may be taking something that they need to live on, so in some situations theft can be akin to murder. Lets suppose some situation where that is not true: Joe has a knick-knack that is totally useless but it is still his, and Billy-Bob steals it. What injury is done?

Well first one assumes that in order for Billy-Bob to steal it, he would first have to covet it enough to brave Joe's wrath. That is a violation of the 10th Commandment from the get-go, before the deed is even done.

He has also insulted the dignity of his brother, one who is made in the image of G-d. While this is not technically one of the Ten Commandments, it is a commandment nevertheless: love your neighbor as yourself. This is not a commandment to an emotion. This is a commandment to a realization: that your neighbor is equal with you before the sight of G-d. Therefore you do not treat him in a way that you would consider unjust if it were done to you. Disrespecting the image of G-d is a form of disrespecting G-d.  So that is two other Commandments right there that are broken when someone steals. If you consider that often theft also includes lying or the willingness to do so, that would be three.

It is rightly said that loving G-d and love (respect) of neighbor is the heart of all the Commandments. You can infer all the Commandments from these two, although since most people don't understand all the implications of these two commandments it is good to spell them out.

* * *

Now, you would think that nobody disagrees with this idea of not stealing, or that at least they wouldn't admit it if they did. This is actually not true. On the most basic level, it's hard to run a government without money. And it is hard to get people to give the government money out of the kindness of their hearts, especially without wanting something significant in return. So they are compelled to give it: it is stolen. The fact that it is a government that is doing the stealing makes no difference in the sight of G-d.

Until the Civil War though, this money was provided by tariffs. There were tariffs on imports, on whiskey, and for awhile on glass windows, strangely enough. The import tariff could be considered a kind of border crossing fee and so would be entirely legitimate. No one presumably is forced to cross a border or to convey goods across one. Governments have the right to patrol borders and exact tariffs on trade across it. The tax on whiskey might be less legitimate, but again no one is forced to make whiskey, and whiskey is also potentially corrosive to the moral order so it is hard to count that one against them. Up until this point, the collection of money for the government was arguably morally legitimate from a Ten Commandments viewpoint.

(As an aside, the Supreme Court of the US notwithstanding, corporations are not people. Corporations may have rights in our system, but under G-d's system they have zero rights because they aren't real and they aren't people. They're a legal construct. So go ahead and tax the hell out of them if you want, you aren't breaking the 8th Commandment.)

Anyway, getting back to the history of taxation in the US. The Civil War changed this benign and so far biblically sound basis for government finance by instituting the first income tax. Now, tariffs could be extremely unpopular, and in fact conflict over tariffs exacerbated tensions between North and South leading up to the Civil War. I am not saying tariffs were popular or even good, just that they were morally defensible from a Ten Commandments viewpoint.

Congress imposed the first income tax on the North in 1861 to help finance the war. However, it was not until 1913 that Congress wrote itself a blank check from the American wallet. This was when the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, which reads:

"The Congress shall have power to lay

and collect taxes on incomes, from

whatever source derived, without apportionment

among the several States, and without

regard to any census or enumeration."

So a blank check drawn on the American bank account, pretty much.

This is still theft, and still an institutionalized breaking of the 8th Commandment. It actually does not matter who breaks the Commandment, king, prince, President or Congressperson, pauper beggar or anyone else whatsoever. G-d is no respecter of persons. What matters is that it is broken.

So this is the sad state of affairs at the beginning of the 20th Century, but while nobody could rightly defend it biblically, people could defend it practically. America needs those big guns to chase off the bad guys, and someone has to pay for it. Of course America would also wind up using those big guns to oppress the less fortunate and to pursue empire-building, but that for another time.

THEN the Great Depression hit. Then FDR came along. I think it is very hard to object to Social Security because nobody wants old people begging on the streets, least of all me, since I am an old person. However, SS was not set up as a sort of government insurance program that you could opt into, which it perhaps should have been. The government knows better, you must pay. And probably they are right that no young person is going to want their pay docked for the sake of their old age, so they made it mandatory. Here's the thing: you can find instances where breaking the Commandments truly appears to be for the greater good. I actually DON'T want Social Security to be abolished: I only believe that according to the morality of the Ten Commandments, it probably OUGHT to be. It is still theft. It is hard to argue that any of the social programs of FDR weren't for the good of the citizens. I agree that they were: I also have to agree that all that has to be paid for, and it has to be paid for by theft in the form of taxation.

The mold was set, which it wasn't really up until that time: the government can steal from you for whatever it considers to be the good of the country. And the government is people. And the Ten Commandments applies to people, however important they are considered to be.

Now, you could argue that even worse forms of taxation and even forced labor were practiced by biblical Kings like King David and that is totally true: it is never said that G-d agreed with it. IN fact it is stated in 1 Samuel 8 that G-d disagrees with the whole idea of human kings and warned people of all the terrible consequences that having human kings would cause.

"But when they said, “Give us a king to judge us,”

their demand was displeasing in the sight of Samuel;

so he prayed to the LORD.

And the LORD told him: "Listen to all that the people

are saying to you;

it is not you they have rejected,

but they have rejected Me as their king.

Just as they have done from the day

I brought them up out of Egypt

until this day, forsaking Me and

serving other gods, so they are doing to you."

~1 Samuel 8:6-8

So, the government is illegitimate (setting up a king other than the only rightful king, G-d, and His law) and their taxation is illegitimate (a violation of the 8th Commandment.) The fact that we don't like the implications of this reality does not make it go away.

So what is happening today? People are urging the government to go even further in their theft and redistribute wealth. Some are pushing for government-paid reparations for blacks. They are wanting government to abolish student loans (which you could make an argument for that being at least partially biblical) but more, to provide free college education. And many other such things they want, at the cost of more government theft.

It should be said that in a truly biblically-based society, such enormous concentrations of wealth as exist today would be an abomination. Traditional Jewish society has help to the poor as a moral obligation. G-d has some pretty damning words against the wealthy in the Tanakh, the Christian Old Testament. Income inequality beyond a certain point is regarded as proof of a society's godlessness, which in this society it seems like proof would be abundant. G-d's wrath is poured out on those rich who do not help the less fortunate.

How do we fix this though? G-d's solution is through revolution in our hearts, a society turning its hearts to G-d. America's solution is theft, the breaking of the 8th Commandment. And upon whom is the majority of this tax burden placed? Not the rich, they can afford lawyers and accountants to make sure they don't pay a stinking penny. The working class, the middle class, even the poor; they pay the bill. Yet more injustice piled on America's moral account sheet.

I am not saying that obeying the Commandments is easy or that doing so would be without issues. I am saying this is G-d's law: DO IT.

G-d alone is Life; G-d alone we must obey. Those who love not G-d will not have life. There is no true freedom apart from G-d's law. Remember that G-d FREED the Israelites. He did not free the Israelites from bondage in Egypt so that He could bind them in Israel. He freed them so that they can be truly free. And there is no freedom without the Law.

We can be bound by G-d's law or we can be in bondage to men. There is no third option.

Man the Outlaw #2: False Witness

You shall not give false testimony

against your neighbor.

~Deuteronomy 5:20

Much as I wish that this commandment was against lying in general, and much as the rest of the Tanakh expresses a hatred of lies, technically this is not a commandment against lying. It is against lying to someone else's injury. Specifically falsely accusing another person of a crime, or failing to speak truthfully in a legal proceeding.

Middle Eastern culture has generally always been tolerant of what might be called "salesmanship," even in ancient times. If you are selling a sheep, you say that it's the best sheep ever, even if it has scabs on its udder and walks around like a drunken panda. It is actually somewhat expected. Much as the Lord expresses hatred of falsehood, it is not one of the Commandments that you mustn't ever lie. It is one of the commandments that you must not lie to someone else's harm. Particularly, you must not say someone did something they didn't do. This is a particularly pointed commandment since most legal punishments including death required two witnesses. The honesty of those witnesses is of the utmost importance to protect the innocent.

This fact is brought home in the story in 1 Kings 21 where the wicked king Ahab wanted to buy a vineyard owned by Naboth the Jezreelite for his vegetable garden. This vineyard was conveniently located next to his palace.

But Naboth replied, "The Lord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my ancestors."

Ahab went home and pouted. His super-wicked wife Jezebel conspired to get the land anyway by getting two "scoundrels" to falsely accuse Naboth of capital offenses. Naboth was killed, Ahab got the land.

Honestly, we rarely lie for someone else's well-being. It can happen though: if a child asks how his or her father died, you don't say he cried like a little bitch and puked on himself. You say he was brave. Some may disagree with that, but in that case it is a favor to the dead person to not go into the gory details.

Almost all the lies we tell are to our own benefit though, and often to another's harm. They are intended to give us a benefit our deeds do not deserve. The aforementioned "salesmanship" is to the harm of the buyer if he believes it. By telling the truth to the customer, perhaps you don't maximize profit, but at least you gain a reputation for honesty which is practically an endangered species these days. Everyone lies, the world is full of lies. We are living in a "post-truth" era.

And whether it is technically a commandment or not, it is clear in the Tanakh: G-d hates lies.


*As an aside, Naboth is clearly a man after my own heart. If in many periods of American history farmers had refused to put their land in hock to chase profits, there would be a hell of a lot more small family farms in the country now and more people would be on their ancestors' own land rather than working wage slavery in cities. This tendency was particularly damaging in the South, where independent yeoman farmers who were for generations subsistence farmers with crops like cotton or tobacco on the side for cash, wound up in debt to buy equipment and tractors and trucks to invest in the unstable markets for cotton and tobacco and sugar and rice. In the end their lands were often swallowed up by the big fish when they couldn't pay off their debts. Ahab and Jezebel have many children today, particularly in the banks. If you are lucky enough to have a family farm that has been in your family for years, never put it in mortgage to chase some short-term profit. It's a sacred trust from your ancestors. 

Man the Outlaw #1: Do Not Covet

I am going to try to treat the Ten Commandments in reverse order, one a day, in terms of how Mankind in general and our society subverts them. How Man the Outlaw disobeys and tries to undermine them.

Why reverse order? The last 5 commandments are very down to Earth. The first 4, though they are rightly placed first, can be harder for non-religious (and even some religious) people to understand. So, I am doing the easy ones first, but that does not mean they are easy to DO. This post deals with Commandment 10:

You shall not covet (desire, lust after) anything that belongs to someone else. 

Do not covet? That is what our entire way of life is based on, coveting. You see a television commercial for an automobile, and it is not telling you about its mechanical superiority over other automobiles. It is presenting the automobile as an object of desire. Modern capitalism inherently suggests that desire is GOOD. That lust is good. If any actual capitalists refrain from suggesting that, they would be practicing religion not business (and G-d bless them if they did.)

The real default religion of America and much of the world is that desire and "happiness" are the ends of life. The desire, the lust for stuff and experience, gets you out of that bed in the morning and the experience or consummation of that desire, whether shopping for cars or sex or drugs or whatever, is the reward for your work. You deserve it. That is what society tells you.

And what if you get all these things you supposedly deserve? The American standard of living is pretty high, but so is opioid addiction, suicide and general despair. Look at Tony Bourdain, dude had EVERYTHING. Traveled the world, ate the best meals in existence, could probably have any woman he wanted. Hung himself in a hotel room. And they say he suffered from depression, that's why. Well there is a hell of a lot of that going around, isn't there? Is that normal or natural? I doubt it.

Why is the commandment "do not covet?" Most of the Commandments deal with what you DO: this one deals with how you ARE. The reason for this commandment is another commandment, written in Deuteronomy 6:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your strength.

These commandments that I give you today

are to be on your hearts.

~Deuteronomy 6:5-6

You are not obeying this commandment if your desire for created things is greater than your love of the One who created them. To love the gift and not the giver is a kind of spiritual theft.

Now, what specifically is mentioned in connection with coveting? That the object of desire does not rightfully belong to you. Coveting something too much, even if you could go out and buy it immediately, order that stuff up from Amazon, is not good, but that is or can be a minor failing. It's like greed, or gluttony, or lust: it's definitely bad but it's not murder. To covet something that rightfully belongs to another though, like their wife or their husband, is a double sin. First, that you have a wrongful priority in your heart, because lust or excess desire is inherently a disordered state of mind. Secondly, you have insulted or diminished one who is made in the image of G-d, your neighbor, for the sake of your desire.

When the Bible says "love your neighbor," it is not referring to an emotion. I do not love my neighbor, emotionally. I usually don't have any emotions towards my neighbor to speak of.

I DO respect his personhood however, his dignity as my equal before G-d. That is what "loving neighbor" actually is, not an emotion. To seek to deprive him of something rightly his, is to dishonor or seek to diminish that dignity and personhood. Which is the origin of many sins, disrespecting G-d by disrespecting His image in people. So when you covet something belonging to your neighbor, first you have a lustful mind which is not good but it's a common failing. Secondly though, you have treated him as unequal, which before G-d he IS your equal, made in the image of G-d no less than you.

{Now, G-d can make the decision that a person or group, like the Canaanites, are no longer equal, no longer "your neighbor," but you are not entitled to make that decision yourself. In the Tanakh, the Israelites are commanded to do truly awful things to the Canaanites because their wickedness is being judged by G-d, but individual human beings don't get to make that call. Not justly, anyway.}

This demonic desperation for pleasure or experiences is the source of much suffering in the world. Conversely, the love of G-d can make a person happy even in objectively less than optimal circumstances. A life oriented around coveting and sensual experiences and greed is practical nihilism, it is nihilism in action. It says in the Torah that Moses was on the top of a mountain in the desert without food or water for 40 days, and did not hunger or thirst. The Israelites in Sinai ate bread where there was no bread; drank water where there was no water. A man can live by whatever G-d says he can live by, if G-d says that he lives. That was a big part of the point of Sinai: to blunt the edge of desire and make the people understand that G-d created all these things that they desire, the cucumbers and melons of Egypt. So love him first, not just what He makes.

"Do not covet" is a commandment meant to be written in our heart, not just in our actions. If we have the commandment of Deuteronomy 6:5-6 written in our hearts as it should be, the 10th Commandment just naturally follows. Love G-d first.

You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.

You shall not set your desire on your

neighbor’s house or land, his male or female servant,

his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your

neighbor.

~Deuteronomy 5:21

Judgment

The world is going horribly wrong. Surely you can see that.

Suicide rates are going through the roof. People who seemingly have everything are bumping themselves off. Why is that happening?

We have some kind of maniac in charge here in the US, but we're not alone. An official after the recent G7 conference described Trump as an incompetent version of Heath Ledger's Joker. But even in such a "civilized" place as Denmark, people are barring the gates and manning the walls. Thinly veiled Nazis are ascendant. Maybe battening down the hatches and hunkering down is not such a bad idea, considering how things are going.

We are destroying the planet and everyone knows it. What, you think you can just keep on doing whatever you want and it will all be okay? We can keep on ripping the tops of mountains off to get at the coal to burn, and it will all still be okay? We can keep consuming resources at unprecedented levels, and nothing will come of it? There will be a reckoning.

Robots and AI will take our jobs soon, eventually all of them. What happens to the people after no one needs employees any more? Machines will also be our soldiers soon, soldiers perfect and without pity. Interesting that millions of people are about to be superfluous at a time when the perfect technology is being developed to kill them.

We are descending into madness and no one can stop it, and no one even really has a plan to. Most honest environmentalists are already accepting that applying moderate and sensible environmental legislation will not stop or even much slow the destruction of the planet. In other words, that even the political best case scenario for saving the planet won't really work well enough.

Hatreds we thought we were well on the way to burying, have risen from the grave and nobody can stop them. You can't stop hate with a bullet. You can't stop it with a law.

The United States has been extraordinarily blessed for the past 70 years. No nation has ever been so successful. We have been so prosperous. But all good things come to an end. The bill finally comes due, for everything we have been doing. We imagined that our particular model of freedom and progress would continue forever, that we would succeed forever, but it was all a lie. We have been living in a dream world. Our dark ghosts are rising from our closets now. Who we really were, all this time, is finally being revealed. The mask has been ripped off the face of Lady Liberty and the visage we gaze into is the visage of madness.

That face has been there all along, but we didn't know.

People can fix a lot of things, but one thing they can't fix is G-d's judgment. G-d's judgment, you have to adapt to what He says. If you don't, even worse things will happen. G-d's judgment cannot be bargained with or pleaded with, you either do exactly what He says to do or the full weight of it comes down on you.

The book of Jeremiah showed us exactly how that works. Jeremiah told the King of Judah that the king of Babylon has been given power to destroy him. Whatever the king of Babylon says to pay as tribute, you suck it up and you pay it, every cent. Otherwise, he is coming down and destroying Jerusalem and you. And G-d will allow it because you are evil and disobedient and have forgotten Him. But he didn't pay, and Babylon destroyed Judah.

What is America, really? The idea that as long as you can pay for it, you can have or do whatever you want. Human willfulness is the essence of America. You want to have your own space program while your employees slave away in un-air-conditioned warehouses under terrible conditions. You can have it, Jeff Bezos, because you have the dough. No G-d watches what you do, Jeff Bezos, as you crush your workers to become the richest man in the world. This is America: those who have the gold make the rules. Are we not the very picture of an empire ripe for G-d's vengeance?

Unless we change and accept the G-d of Sinai and Him alone, denounce the worldly churches who say all is well while everything is burning, denounce the idea that Jesus or anyone or anything else is G-d except G-d, follow the Torah and live according to the Ten Commandments and the other wisdom of G-d, this is only the beginning. 

"They offer healing offhand

for the wounds of My poor people

saying, "All is well, all is well"

when nothing is well.

~Jeremiah 8:11

Only Him

Two blog posts in one day is a bit much, even for me. I am not sure I will want to be doing many more after this however. This may kind of be it for awhile.

I was thinking to myself, "when you fall in love with someone, how do you know you are actually in love with them and not your own image of them?" And of course you do fall in love with your image of them. Over time that image may be changed and improved as you learn more about them, but is it still an image of them rather than them? In some ways at least, it still is.

Then I thought, "how is the love of G-d any different?" Well, in a sense you can love G-d without knowing anything about Him. If you love peace, mercy, truth, justice, you DO love G-d even without knowing him. So then can we keep on loving peace, mercy, justice and the rest and leave off loving Him in any other way?

Well many do. And I am not saying that is wrong: in fact it's pretty right. But let me tell you what IS wrong.

We are. We and the world are. We are ourselves sin.

In Daoism, it is said that you can see the "unity" or else you can see the "ten thousand things." The "ten thousand things" are the multiplicity of stuff in the world. The world as it is, the world as it appears to normal folks. The world of the "ten thousand things" is itself sin because it is itself sundered, fallen from the primordial unity.

If you are a normal person, the idea is that you be a good person and do what is right and that is pretty cool. That's what you are supposed to be. Nobody could ever argue with that.

If you are a weirdo like me however, that might not be enough, that might not satisfy, because you understand that the world - or at least the world to YOU - is sundered. Is Fallen. And nothing else will do but to ultimately cease to see yourself and to cease to see the world, but only see G-d. Even the word "God" goes.

The Sufis are so much better at language for this than anybody else is, though they speak often in terms of romantic love. Which is what I started this post with, the strange difficulty in ever actually knowing the Beloved (human or otherwise.) Do you know them, or do you know your image of them? This also ties into my previous post for today, on idolatry. Do you know Jesus, or just the Bible or that wooden figure on a crucifix? Do you love G-d or just the Tanakh? This is part of the "ten thousand things," the sundering. We are separated from our object, from the object of our inquiry. When you love another person, that person is not us and in many ways is forever unknown to us. Everything is separated. The Ten Thousand Things.

But I see before me a great shining sword to sunder the sundering, to render it whole. To render it whole the only way it could be. "I" passes away, we pass away, the world passes away, and there is left only G-d. Where there is no longer Robert looking at G-d, but only G-d, and Robert is no longer thought of and the world is no longer thought of. And He is there always... in any given moment that could happen. That I forget myself, that I am annihilated yet still live. Dead yet alive. I leave - He stays.

"All things in creation suffer annihilation

and there remains the face of the Lord

in its majesty and bounty."

~Surat-L-Rehman 26-27