are 10 commandments too many?

            Been thinking today about religion, which, for those of you who know me, is kind of weird.  Specifically, I was thinking about how a relatively close approximation of the 10 commandments exists in pretty much every religion, major or otherwise.  No news there,  but then I got to thinking how if you forgot—or just never knew—that Moses got his commandments from a burning bush, you might think, “damn, he was one pretty savvy dude.”  

You might think that because,  if you throw out the first four (three in the Roman Catholic version), all of which exhort us to honor only the one true God (Allah for Muslims), the  commandments (and their cousins in other religions) are really just expressions of what we might call societal common sense.  They provide a fundamental—one might even say essential—framework for people living together successfully in a social unit.  As such they constitute as much a social compact as a moral contract.

            Think about it: don’t kill (more on this in a moment), don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t cheat, honor your parents, have all come to be regarded as moral dicta because they were on Moses’ tablets and among Allah’s revelations to Mohammed, but they are also pretty clearly necessary agreements we make with one another if we want to live harmoniously with others. And that would be true even if they had no moral gravitas.

            I’m not trying to diminish the spiritual importance of these dicta, just suggesting that they would be equally important without any moral connotations at all. 

            Ah, but then there’s the first four (or three) commandments: I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other Gods before me; you shall not make for yourself any graven idols; you shall not take the Lord’s name in vain; you must remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. (The Qu’ranic equivalents are: There is no other god beside Allah; protect me and my children from worshipping idols; make not Allah’s name an excuse in your oaths against doing good; when the congregational prayer is announced on Friday, you shall hasten to the commemoration of God, and drop all business.)

            The problem with these dicta  is that they assume the existence of  an all-powerful being who takes a very personal interest in being recognized as the only one of his kind and in being worshipped in very specific ways and at a very specific time.  Why do I call that a problem?  Because it’s very hard for me to imagine what the human race gains by acceding to those exhortations if it is in fact fully committed to following the 6 or 7 commandments that follow. 

             Stay with me on this.  If I honor my father and mother (and by extension all those who earn/deserve my respect), if I never cheat or lie, if I never steal, if I never commit murder, if I never commit adultery (and by extension, never break any compact I’ve freely made with another person), would I not fully qualify as a good person?  Someone you’d welcome into your heart and home?  Someone who, and this is key, fully deserves a heavenly reward if in fact such a thing exists?

            Cut me some slack now and stay the course.  The commandments, it seems to me,  fall into two categories: one that charges us to recognize the divinity of  a superior being, and one that gives us very specific guidance about living well among our neighbors.  The second category we clearly need—indeed, couldn’t survive without.  The first, maybe not so much.

            Hindu and Buddhist religions offer a god figure considerably more laid back and less needy than the god of Christianity or Islam.  That may explain why their followers have more frequently been victims of religious persecution than instigators of it. Christianity and Islam--kind of a different story.

            You can  make a case that the Christian god and the Muslim God share so many attributes that they might easily be considered the same being.  Muslims and Christians (at least the rank and file of each) have never seen it that way.  Hence, when the Christian god leads off his commandments with “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other Gods before me,” and Allah leads off his revelations to Mohammed with “There is no other God beside Allah,” it’s easy to see the potential for conflict.

            And conflict there has been, from the beginnings of Islam in the 7^th century straight through 9/11 and today.  Lest there be any confusion, as much of that conflict has been started by  Christians as Muslims.  Witness the Crusades of the 12^th and 13^th centuries or the imperial proselytizing of the Middle East during the 19^th and 20^th  centuries.

            And how many thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of lives have been destroyed by wars over—not my god is better than your god—but over my way of worshipping OUR god is better than yours.  How many Jews have Christians killed?  How many Protestants have Catholics killed?  How many Catholics have Protestants killed?  How many Protestants have Protestants killed?   On the Muslim side, how many Shi'ites have Sunnis killed?  Or vice-versa.

            Does make one wonder what the world would be like if we all just chose to ignore the first few commandments.  Maybe, without those “I’m your god, fall down and worship me” commands at the top of the list, it wouldn’t make sense to amend Thou Shalt Not Kill to Thou Shalt Not Kill Unless .  .  . with the ellipse standing for You Try To Put Your God (Or Your Way Of Worshipping Him) Over Mine.