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    Decalogue: A Meditation On the Ten Commandments
    Decalogue: A Meditation On the Ten Commandments
    Decalogue: A Meditation On the Ten Commandments
    Ebook89 pages1 hour

    Decalogue: A Meditation On the Ten Commandments

    By Lance Matteson

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    "Decalogue: A Meditation on the Ten Commandments" is a series of reflections on the ten-pillar Mosaic code.

    For 3,300 years, the Ten Commandments have constituted a central moral framework for human society with a broad and deep influence. "Decalogue" plumbs afresh this moral influence, while also arguing for its metaphysical and remedial importance.

    The book is neither academic nor sectarian in approach. Instead, author Lance Matteson takes up his subject from a biblical standpoint based on his study of Christian Science, founded in the late nineteenth century by Mary Baker Eddy. The author also brings to bear his training as a lawyer - bringing out legal nuances about such pivotal elements as justice, consistency, and accountability. No doubt the author gained insight too from his nine years working in the Holy Land, doing projects with the Palestinians that required ongoing negotiations with Israeli Jews and Arab Muslims and Christians – that is, with the monotheistic heirs of Abraham and Moses.

    The book's structure is simple. After a prefatory introduction, a single chapter is devoted in turn to each of the Ten Commandments, with a closing chapter that looks comprehensively at the Decalogue as a whole. The discussion is straightforward, yet at times dense. Each Commandment is analyzed thoroughly. The sequential logic and connection of each command with the next is indicated.

    The overall attitude of the book is "big picture": generic, reflective, rational. How can we place these simple historic laws in perspective? How do they interrelate? What is their rationale, their underlying logic? What is their importance to society and individuals? Why do they matter?

    Matteson challenges the reader to think. The author is upfront about his reverence for Scripture, while displaying respect for nonbelievers. But those under the impression these axiomatic norms are quaint and obsolete should be prepared for a spirited counterargument.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateMay 31, 2018
    ISBN9781543935035
    Decalogue: A Meditation On the Ten Commandments

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      Decalogue - Lance Matteson

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      Preface

      The relevance of the Mosaic Decalogue to our era is palpable to anyone who is not asleep. Mankind’s moral turbulence alone begs for a new look at the most influential source of moral guidance in human history. Humanity is implicitly governed by the Ten Commandments through their reach into the very fabric of culture. They are simply the framework for how people should behave.

      At a time when so much attention is given to moral relativism, it is worth remembering that much of mankind takes the Decalogue quite seriously as history’s most inspired reference point for measuring right and wrong in human society. But conventional wisdom tends to skim along the surface of this subject, rarely plunging to any depth. This essay’s primary subject is the profound moral meaning of the Ten Commandments.

      A secondary aspect is metaphysical: the light these laws shed on the nature of being. To the sensibility open to the idea of existence apart from bare materiality, moral premises are never far removed from spiritual ones. This transcendental perspective rejects the view that norms of behavior and conceptions of truth are mere offshoots of human opinion or social structure. Deep spirituality is not a cultural epiphenomenon, an opiate, an artifact of animal organization, a shallow piety, a superficial religiosity, nor an undemanding vogue. It is a fundamental power which demands that we awaken, see truly, pay attention to what matters, think, look upwards, be helpful, and affirm life and worth—even in the minutia of practical experience and in the face of screaming danger, wrong, destruction, and mortality’s apparent last word. Our conceptions of ought spring from our paradigm of is. We yearn for meaning—for the Word. The Decalogue speaks directly to this primal craving of the human heart for a truer sense of right, reality, and love. It also dares to suppose that we have the God-given capacity to do the right thing.

      A third theme is curative, touching on the healing potential in each and all of these inspired laws. The early Hebrew thought leaders were thinkers and passionate ethicists, but they were also decidedly practical—routinely exhorting the tangible benefits and healing effects of loving and following the laws of God. They taught the therapeutic influence of such consecration for the community as well as for individuals.

      The standpoint of this essay is reverent, rational, and general. It embraces as valid the world’s basic intuition of a divine presence and a spiritual reality. Yet the aim is to insist on asking the whys and wherefores, to seek the reason of our hope, the logic of our love. Finally, the stance is general, pushing for principle, searching for the wider meaning of the text, the broader analogy, the most universal sense.

      The perspective presented here is informed heavily by the author’s study of Christian Science, as discovered and explained in the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, whose principal work is Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the final edition of which was published in 1910. The author would also like to acknowledge and thank, for their feedback on ideas and drafts, Bruce Fitzwater, Tom Johnsen, George Moffett III, my wife, Candace Matteson, and BookBaby Publishing. However, the subject’s development here, and any of its accompanying shortcomings or missteps, are the sole responsibility of this author. No pretense of scholarship accompanies these reflections. Doubtless the ample and ancient literature of theology and ethical studies has plowed this ground already. Yet hopefully there is room for this fresh effort to explore an old subject of such vast scope and influence.

      Starting with renderings from Exodus 20 of the King James Version of the Bible, each of the Ten Commandments is discussed in a distinct chapter. (Why the King James Version? Quite simply, the time-tested poetry and majesty of its language are unsurpassed in English.) A concluding chapter offers a few observations on the Decalogue as a whole and on its place and power in contemporary society.

      Today’s thinkers were not the first to ponder duty and truth. Is there a unity to the cosmos, and are rights universal? What or whom do we idolize, why, and to what effect? Does sincerity matter? Should we make time to meditate about what has ultimate worth? Do we value the institution and attributes of parenthood, and do these bear largely on the state of humanity? Is the worldwide, mainstream, macho culture of aggression innocuous? How does keeping promises affect the stability of society, the economy, the nations? What does identity theft suggest about the underlying character of dispossession? Are white lies—or gray ones—legitimate, and what are today’s subtler modes of deception? Can we, and should we, outgrow habits of objectification and acquisitiveness?

      Clearly these and related issues, which are addressed frontally in the Decalogue, are at the core of human thought and policy, contemporary as much as historic. These issues and themes compass the heart of humankind. Wrestling with these questions, searching them, is worthwhile. Indeed they only hint at the treasures that can be discovered by digging into the depths of the Decalogue. Such a systematic search should have value even to those not sharing the author’s perspective. But this book is particularly dedicated to all who share the conviction that the Ten Commandments, far from being obsolete, constitute not only a definitive and timeless code for moral conduct, but an inspired spiritual and conceptual structure for beginning to grasp the nature of existence and the possibility of healing and redemption.

      I. ONE GOD

      Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

      The oneness of God is a powerful idea. The monotheistic concept was a radical departure from the traditional anthropomorphic notion. A typical ancient mythology involved a polytheistic pantheon, a tribe of gods led by a chief god, such as the patriarchal Zeus or Thor. The Hebrew God emerged out of this tribal or national or early superhero concept of deity. This new sense of God included a radical incorporeality, a supreme Ego (the I AM), a lawmaking nature (the origin of the Commandments themselves), and such attributes as wisdom, truth, goodness, and universality of scope, reach, and power. God is strongly identified with good or righteousness and justice, as well as mercy and provision. And God was the ultimate Creator, the Source of all that is. Indeed, the divine Ego’s self-affirming redemptive statement in Exodus 20:2 is inseparable from, and even undergirds, the famous prohibition in the next verse: "2. I am the Lord thy God, which

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