As the title says, I just
found out that my first commandment wasn't really one; it was just a phrase
kind of introducing the commandments. I didn't know that, I thought it belonged
to them, but then there would be eleven. Of course now I could just go back and
delete that post, but I put some work into it and I'd rather edit in the fact
that I misunderstood it, than to delete it completely.
The thing is I don't see
much point in continuing the series proper anyway. I'm bored by it and my brain
is filled with ideas for other topics and I kind of go nowhere by writing about
those bible texts, as I have little knowledge of them all. I'd much rather not
finish the project, though I said I wanted to stay committed towards it.
When I read the next verse,
on which I should be commenting today, I decided that it wasn't worth it
anymore.
8Remember
the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six
days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your
son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any
foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the
heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the
seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the
Sabbath day and made it holy. (genesis 20, 8-
I don't respect neither the Sabbath (which starts on Friday evening to Saturday evening), nor Sunday. Yes I go to
church on Sundays, but I do not
rest, I do the stuff I usually do, I enjoy my life, and when I used to go to
school I did my homework then, which is work, and thus should not be done on a
holy day. That kind of was the final straw.
I initially made the series
for the commandment that said "honor your parents" but I had some fun
with the first ones, and the topic is now over.
Await a post on a different
matter in some days, hopefully tomorrow or the day after
Sorry for not being committed,
but barely anyone has read those so...
So here comes the third
part of the series, I hope that after finishing this post you will understand
what the title has to do with it.
"You shall not misuse
the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses
the name" (Exodus 20:7)
So firstly let’s talk about
some Names that God has. There is a whole list, but I’ll pick out some in order
not to write too much. For example we have ‚JEHOVAH-ROHI‘ (Psalm 23:1) ‚The
Lord my shepherd‘. This name is beautiful because it shows how much God wants
to look for us, how much he cares. Like a Sheppard he doesn’t want any of his
flock to get lost. A second one is ‚JEHOVAH-SHAMMAH‘
(Ezekiel 48:35)‚The Lord who is present‘ which says that, unlike Nietzsche said,
God isn’t death, but Nietzsche is instead. And last but not least ‚EL-SHADDAI‘(Genesis
17:1,Psalm 91:1) ‚God Almighty‘, which sums ist up pretty well.
But let’s talk about what
the verse really means, because this is really bad for me. It means every time
I say something like 'oh my god', or 'holy shit' or anything along those lines,
I do wrong, and God can hold me responsible for that. The thing is, I'm not
really good at holding back such things, they slip out of my mouth without me
even realizing what I just said. God wants us to respect him, respect his holy
name. I wouldn't shout 'Oh my Carolina' either, would I? To know his name, to
say it out loud, is a privilege and we need to honor him with it, which usually
is just really hard.
I thought that this
was the end, that I couldn't say more about this part when a different thought
hit me. What if God not only wants us to keep his name out of some things, like
swearing, but wants to be credited on others? Maybe it's not just we should not
misuse it, but on the same time use it when it should be used. In the name of
the Lord there is so much, a song says there is freedom, love, acceptance...
The list could go on forever. Plus God wants to be involved with us. He is the
creator of everything, he made you and me. Is it impossible that he wants to
hear a thank you from time to time? He had a lot of work in making this earth,
so maybe he wants us to acknowledge what he did. Sure, he doesn't need it, but
I don't need compliments either, but still you can make me happy with it. As we
saw earlier, his name is more than powerful and so we should stop talking about
coincidences or even fortune, because in the end it’s about God’s plan, it’s on
his purpose. He should be given the credit for it.
Isn't this part of
worship, giving honor to the one who deserves it? I guess so. For a long
time worship to me was just singing, or maybe playing an instrument, but there
is much more behind that as I found out in a conversation some weeks ago. Maybe
I’ll write about ist in another post, but I guess that we now have finished
what I had to say about the third commandment.
Cheerio
To be honest I'm already
pretty sick of my little series, but I should learn to be committed to
something, and obviously I need a little practice to do so. So let's talk about
the second commandment.
"You shall not make
for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath
or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship; for I, the
Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the
fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me but showing
love to a thousands of generations of those who love me and keep my
commandments" (Exodus 20, 4-6)
So in order to talk about
this properly I will divide the verses. First you shall not make yourself an
idol. I guess this applies as well to any kind of imaginary picture, at least
that's what I was thought as a kid. The thing is, as soon as I hear those words
I can see how God is portrayed in the Simpsons, an old man, long beard, but you
can never see his face. I guess most of us see God as some kind of old man, as
he is revered to as 'the father' in the bible. In fact, God doesn't have a
gender, he is genderless and by having images we limit his possibilities to be
more than just a human being. There is this book called 'The shack' by William
P. Young in which God looks like the typical Gospel singer, a not very slim
black lady. In another, he is a 17th century English woman. I guess that has shaken
up the image a little. On the other hand I get where those wrong pictures come
from, I mean it says in Genesis 1, 26-27: "Then God said: Let us make man
in our image, in our likeness... So God created man in his own image, in the
image of God who created him; male and female he created them". The question
that comes to my mind is, did he create man physically like him or mentally/ emotionally.
As human beings it's difficult for us to accept that certain things we cannot
understand. We want to know how God looks like, even though we can't get it
right anyway.
I really like how the Arabians
have solved the problem. They don't have pictures of any humans in their
mosque, just flowers and ornaments. Essentially I think they won't give you any
room for wrong inner idols, unlike the old masters who draw Jesus and Moses in
their paintings.
The other thing I wanted to
talk about was the past when God admits to be jealous. I mean that's what I'm
talking about when wondering if we are emotionally made after him, as seems to
be having feelings. He is jealous, get's sad or happy, and shows love. He is definitely
having those emotions in a greater range than we do, but still, I can see how
we connect. Plus I want to add, and correct me if I'm wrong, that through
Jesus' blood we can get set free of God's anger punishing our children and up
until the fourth generation. He died for our sins, so we can escape our
parent's mistakes.
Cheerio
The first of the Ten Commandments
is quite an easy one, at least that's what I thought. The bible says: "You
shall have no other gods before me" (Ex. 20.3). An annotation adds that we
shall not have any gods beside him either.
It sounds so simple, but
then I think of all the stuff that is important to me. I spent quite a time on
my computer for example. To be honest, I guess I spend more time on the internet
than I do anything else, meaning I have less time with God than I do with a
machine. Isn't it the way that we always have something more important to do
than sit down and read the bible? Sometimes it might happen then that we put it
very high in our list of priorities, like a goddess. I can't be the only one,
right?
Another thing is that I
believe in one God, but then I'm a curious soul. For example the way Hinduism
works is really interesting. You have thousands and thousands of goddesses, but
in the end it's just one God in different bodies. That's genius. And you can
pray to the one that fits your situation the most. It's really
fascinating.
And let's talk about
horoscopes and superstitions. First, I do not believe in astrology, but
whenever I get to that part in a newspaper, my curious side wants me to read
what it says about Pisces and I still wonder if it's true. Sadly I have to
admit that I can relate to the stereotypes that are given for my zodiac. To
this day, this has given me loads of questions, it's really stupid. The thing
is, the first Commandment orders me not to read them, but I'm just not strong
enough not to. Another thing is the whole 11:11 thing. There is a saying that
when you check your watch on a number like 14:14 then somebody is thinking of
you. I'm positive that this is complete rubbish, but whenever it happens I am
like "it would be so cute and what if and bla". My mind knows about
the superstition and tells me that there is a chance, even though it's pretty
childish. Oh and please don't let me get started on the whole karma/destiny stuff,
which makes me confused and insecure since forever. I know so many people who
do not believe in a God, but believe in destiny, which makes me wonder who
writes your destiny then?
A different side of things
opens when you think of the three monotheistic religions that we have. As the
name says all three, namely Judaism, Islam and Christianity, believe in one
God. I've had the discussion before, and this question comes up regularly, do those
religions believe in the very same God? Some people say that only Judaism and Christianity
'share' him, while others are positive that we talk about three different ones.
The rest shares my opinion and says, they are the same, but God is shown from a
different perspective. The old testament of the bible is as well part of the Jewish
Holy Scripture, and the Quran confirms the existence of most of the bibles
prophets and their stories. For me it's obvious that at least when it comes to
the one and only God, the three of us do agree.
As you can see, it's just
one sentence and it has to do with a lot of different topics. I feel like I
missed out half of the points I wanted to add, and still I wrote down those
that were most important to me. I would've never imagined that there is so much
to it, but obviously there is. In the end we can say that whether there is/are
a/some/no god(s), in the end we are free to choose whatever we believe in.
Cheerio
Ok, don't give me that
look. I know how you might look at your page right now, I mean, I've already mentioned my believes in other posts before. Yeah I
know, it's old fashioned and you think it's boring, but before you leave
angrily, let me just explain what I've planned. It's not all bad, believe me.
I have no intention to turn
my blog into a religious place, that's not me. My believes are part of my life,
but I am not a saint. This little series is not made up to make you change your
mind about Christianity, I'm not into forcing people to change, it's not even
informative, no, I want to invite you to laugh at the things I did that have a
relation to the commandments, and to read about the thoughts that I have. I
might not even write about all, because I don't have a genius kick-ass story
about all of them, we will see where this goes.
I'm no specialist; I am
still the same girl, who happens to have an opinion on everything. Don't take
me too serious please. This post is an introduction to the topic, so I will
explain two more things.
First a little back-story
for people who don't know anything about them. The commandments were ten rules,
written down on stone plates, given to Moses on the mountain Sinai. I don't think
they were the first rules the Israelis got from God, but the story is somewhat interesting.
To this day they are one of the most well known commands, as some of them are
similar to ethical rules and even some official laws. Just take it as a kind of
history and politics lesson, ok?
On the other hand I guess
you should know by now that I get my ideas out of recent events, so why do I
write about them now? Well I had an argument with my father yesterday, and I
got really mad. I don't want to talk too much about it now, I'll keep it short.
I just remembered the one commandment that says something like honor your
parents, and how I can't do it. Then I remembered more and more of them and I
realized how madly I fail at fulfilling them.
The good thing for me is
though, that I don't need to get them all correct and stuff. If you want to
know why, let me know somehow, but I don't want to spoil this blog to much
about faith, I'm no preacher babe. And if you think this idea is crap let me
know too, I don't get feedback and I want to improve.
So yeah, first part will
start in the next post I write, except something unexpected happens, I’ll let
you now anyway.
Cheerio
