When my son was younger, as a simple apologetic, we would talk about how much better the world would be if everyone followed God’s rules. About how, if most of us just tried to live by one tenet – the “Golden Rule” – things would improve dramatically…
Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you,
do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
~ Matthew 7:12 ~
To make it easier to remember, we shortened it to “treat people the way you want to be treated.” And we agreed it was sometimes really hard to do.
Dennis Prager wrote a great article this week that describes how much of the evil in the world could be eliminated if we all actually followed God’s word – The Big Ten: Still the Only Solution to the World’s Problems
Properly understood and applied, the Ten Commandments are really all humanity needs to make a beautiful world. While modern men and women, in their hubris, believe that they can and must come up with new ideas in order to make a good world, the truth is there is almost nothing new to say.
If people and countries lived by the Ten Commandments, all the great moral problems would disappear.
Or, to put it another way, all the great evils involve the violation of one or more of the Ten Commandments.
Prager goes on to list the Commandments and, along with current and historical examples, explains how each of them is relevant both to our relationship with God and our relationships with others.
In giving us the Ten Commandments, God wasn’t setting Himself up to be a tyrannical ruler (like some of our politicians!). Rather, in His omniscience, and human nature being what it is, He was providing us with the best possible means for individual and collective happiness.
If we’re honest in looking back over our lives we can see where it’s been the failure to keep any or all of the Ten Commandments that has lead us astray. And been the source of our own misery – or misery to others.
Sometimes it’s really hard – if not impossible – for we fallen humans to to obey all God’s Commandments (that’s why we have a Redeemer!). But they’re still the best “rules” to live by, and the only hope for a better world.
