Ten Commandments: At Society's Crossroads
Reverend Fred Klett, CHAIM Ministry

My dear friends, our world stands at a crossroads. In the West, many, because of a denial of anything beyond this world, have abandoned the concepts of truth and falsity, right and wrong. In the East, the old Communist ideology has crumbled but what can take its place? What can give a reason and a sense of direction to a society struggling for an identity?

We look at the turmoil in the world around us and see terrible crime and cruelty. The massacre at Columbine High School makes us wonder how two teen-age boys could commit such an atrocity. I did some internet research to help find some answers and found an interesting quotation from a well-known atheist: There is no god above Man. Man has the right to live by his own law to live in the way that he wills to do....Man has the right to think what he will....Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.

When man cuts God out of his thinking, chaos results. When we suppress the truth of God, the result is having no basis for moral judgement. This is the root of the tree that bore the bitter fruit of the Columbine tragedy.

When I was a teenager and I asked my parents why something in particular was wrong, they told me: It just is. They meant well, but this in no way satisfied me. My philosophy had already become: If God does not exist, then everything is permitted. We need a standard above mere human opinion or societal tradition to truly know what is right and wrong. But even if we do know, how do we live in a manner consistent with this knowledge? Those who know what is right often fail to live it, myself included! So, we need an authoritative standard and also the ability to live it.

At the difficult crossroad our society has come to we have only one direction we can go: upward. We must first go up a mountain called Sinai. This is where God gave his Law to Israel. There is a standard above man. There is a Creator who made us, and he is the one who can tell us how to live. He has spoken to mankind in a book called the Bible.

As a pastor, it is my desire to bring you words of life, not simply moralistic teaching or rules and rituals. The experience of God and his fatherly instruction is infinitely more than following a rule book! We've all experienced people who are overly moralistic and judgmental. It is for us easy to follow the letter of the law and miss the spirit of the law. This occurs on a societal level as well as a personal level. How often bureaucracies make fine distinctions of law and justice suffers in the process! So, even having God's Law, we have a dilemma.

The answer to this dilemma is also found by going up another mountain, the mountain of the Beatitudes, where Jesus explained to his disciples the heart and essence of God's Law. When Jesus was asked to explain which commandment was the greatest, he responded:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." (From the Bible, the Book of Matthew 22:38-40)

The commandments of God are spiritual. God's word is spirit and truth. As we seek to understand and apply the commandments, we must seek, most importantly, to know their author. Knowing God must be the center of our pursuit, otherwise, the Commandments of God will simply be for us a bicycle without wheels. The basic structure may be there, but one cannot get it to go anywhere!

In coming articles we will explore the commandments of God, how they are relevant for our individual and communal lives, and what is at their essence. I will approach the Ten Commandments from a New Covenant, that is, a Christian perspective, as I am a Christian pastor, but I will also interact with Jewish thought, as our destinies are bound up together. Jesus is a Jew, and so I must also consider what has been said by members of Jesus' own family and community! It is my hope that these articles will be a blessing to both Christians and our Jewish friends, through whom God gave his commandments!

Let us pray as we consider these matters together that we might come to know better the One who has given us his word as the light for our path.

(Reklama i Zheezn, August 23, 2000, Philadelphia)