The Ten Commandments

After having decided to try and live my life in accordance with the Ten Commandments my next step was to consult with Wikipedia. While I could remember some of the commandments (such as murder and adultery being highly frowned upon) I couldn't remember all of them and I certainly couldn't remember the order or the details. To my surprise, I learned that there were two sets of commandments based upon similar passages in Exodus and Deuteronomy. While I'm not religious now, I was raised Presbyterian and I certainly don't recall this being mentioned, either in Sunday School or in any of the sermons I listened to as a child. Complicating matters further, depending upon which passage is used there may in fact be more than ten Ten Commandments, the various religions/denominations use different divisions and phrasings of the commandments, and the first set of commandments were reported to have been broken in anger by Moses and later replaced with a second set provided by God.

What began as a simple idea in my head to lead a more ethical life by aspiring to follow the Ten Commandments was suddenly growing very confusing and murky. Which version of the commandments was I to try and follow? The simplest solution would be for me to just accept the version of the Ten Commandments used by my church - but I don't belong to a church. Given that I tend to be an originalist, at least in regards to the United States Constitution, it seems appropriate that I would take a similar stance with the Ten Commandments. As such I decided to use a Jewish version of the commandments. Below are the commandments and my initial thoughts on each:

1. "I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me..."

It is because of this commandment that this blog is named Nine Commandments. While I don't place any gods before God, I also don't necessarily believe in God either. Does that count for half credit? Maybe I should rename this blog to "9.5 Commandments".

2. "Do not make an image or any likeness of what is in the heavens above..."

While I haven't constructed a golden calf for me to worship, I can't discount the possibility that I have a more modern false idol in my life. I'm a little worried about this one.

3. "Do not swear falsely by the name of the LORD..."

The amount of profanity that I use on a daily basis is somewhat disturbing. If I get nothing out of this exercise other than a reduction in my swearing I should be satisfied.

4. "Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy"

It could be argued that I abstain from work and other productive forms of activity on more than just one day of the week! I'm not exactly sure how I am going to apply this to my life.

5. "Honor your father and your mother..."

I think I'm doing all right with honoring my mother although there is room for my improvement. My father on the other hand...

6. "Do not murder"

I have never murdered anyone nor do I intend to ever murder anyone.

7. "Do not commit adultery."

As with murder, I don't see adultery playing a role in my future.

8. "Do not steal."

This is apparently more of a reference to kidnapping and slavery than it is to theft. I am going to be extremely disappointed if this commandment becomes an issue for me.

9. "Do not bear false witness against your neighbor"

I have yet to bear witness, false or otherwise, against my neighbor.

10. "Do not covet your neighbor's wife"

While I don't covet my neighbor's wife, I am probably guilty of envy in a more general sense.

I have decided to taken an incremental approach to the commandments. Given that I have never intentionally followed these at any point in my life, I believe that I will increase my odds of successfully following them if I introduce them one-by-one. How quickly I introduce them remains to be seen. This will also allow me to comment on each of them, especially as they apply to me, in more detail. To keep things simple, I will start with the first commandment and work my way through them until I reach the tenth. The drawback to this is that I am going to be getting off to a horrible start given my current agnosticism. Oh well!

Can The Ten Commandments Get Me Back On Track?

I used to have goals and dreams. I was going to leave the small town that I grew up in, become a successful and highly-paid attorney, enter politics and then eventually become President of the United States of America. While theoretically that could all still happen, I'd have to say the odds are rather slim, especially given that those achievements now fill me with dread. About ten years ago, after having left the small town that I grew up in, I realized that I no longer wanted any of the other goals I had assigned to myself. At that point, to put an extremely positive spin on the situation, my life took a sharp detour. Eventually I found a job working with computers that both challenged and excited me. It was great to have something to care about again even if the rest of my life was in shambles.

As time went on - and as my ego grew, or perhaps returned - the novelty and challenges of the job began to fade. Fortunately I was drinking a lot during those years so I managed to dull my senses. Even now my memories are hazy. While that isn't a compelling long-term approach to life, it got me through the day, or at least allowed me to postpone any thoughts to the contrary as long as I kept up that facade. Then, just when I least expected it, I would meet the woman who would become my wife. While it didn't happen overnight, suddenly I began to care about a lot of things again, including life. I was no longer content to just kill time, whether through alcohol or other means, until I eventually retired and/or died. No, I now wanted more than that and felt a greater sense of responsibility. Over the next several years I would quit smoking, practically quit drinking, get out of debt, start saving-and-investing, buy a car and even quit a job that made me miserable and replace it with a new one that was far more promising. And of course I also got married!

That wasn't enough, however, although looking at that list now provides a certain sense of perspective that I normally don't possess from day-to-day. That's not a bad set of accomplishments for a couple of years!

Eventually the new job, while an improvement in countless ways over my prior job, would lose its initial sheen and I would find myself wondering what it is that I wanted to do with my life. I once had goals that provided focus and clarity in my life. Then, for nearly a decade, I managed to get by - but not succeed - without having any explicit goals. Instead I just drifted along with no clear direction but trying to make the best of whatever came my way. One of the coping mechanisms that I had developed during my "dark" years of the past decade has now come back to bite me. My coping (or perhaps avoidance) mechanism was that instead of finding a productive, or at least entertaining, hobby to occupy my time, I instead perfected the art of killing time. I excelled at spending an entire day doing nothing and then getting up and repeating the exact same thing the next day. Repeat repeat repeat. This is no longer how I want to spend my time, however, but my years of extensive practice and training have ingrained that practice deep within me and I find it hard to stop.

This is where I now find myself today, trained far too well in the act of killing time but instead wanting to cherish and make the most of each moment. It is hard for me to battle against years of practice and training. This leads to me spending lots of time trying to decide what it is that I want to do with myself with the idea that if I can find the "right" goal I can motivate myself, become productive and make more of my situation. These brainstorming and planning sessions frequently go off on a tangent and become just another opportunity for me to procrastinate and delay even further. This makes me extremely unhappy which in turn causes me to put more pressure on myself to find the "right" goal. This is an unproductive cycle.

While I've never been very religious - and I have at times been very anti-religion - I have always been fascinated by religion. A few days ago, after another bout of being frustrated with myself after having wasted almost the entire weekend in a bout of extreme procrastination, it occurred to me that I should embark upon a "good enough" goal to give me some direction while I continue to try and figure out my "right" goal. The "good enough" solution that I decided upon was to try and create some structure and provide some guidance in my life by living in accordance with the Ten Commandments. I knew this wouldn't solve all my problems nor answer all my questions but it would at least provide some direction. The Ten Commandments, at least as I recalled them in my head at the time, also make for a pretty decent set of moral and ethical precepts. There are certainly worse ways to lead ones life, after all. The fact that I knew I was probably violating several of them on a regular basis just made the idea even more compelling.