"You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." Exodus 20:1-17.
That is, just look at your own piece of the pie, not the other fellow’s. You will look at what you have, not what someone else has. You will not act upon a desire for something that belongs to someone else. What's your is yours, what's theirs is theirs. You will focus on your property, not their property. It is not about them and what they have; it is about you, your journey toward God, and what you have along the way.
Why would God require this?
Implementing this commandment yields a certain kind of social structure. Not following it creates another. And the social structure in which people grow up and live their lives affects how people are trained up for God.
What are the practical consequences of this?
I am not a preacher or Bible scholar, but the consequence of this vs. the alternative are easily obvious to any thinking man or woman. A social structure based on the Tenth Commandment is a training camp in which:
1. Each of us must work to create what each of us has, and we are not parasites upon others.
2. Each person must be productive, creative, and skilled.
3. We are cooperators not predators
4. Charity is a voluntary personal decision with one’s own time or money.
5. Good feelings are fostered toward our neighbors, not jealousy to get or resentment for have been taken from.
6. We build each other up, not oppress each other.
7. Each is independent, not dependent.
8. Personal moral development is promoted, not retarded
9. Individual thinking and choice making is cultivated over obedience. By doing so God trains us to be like Him and see who should be with Him.
Let's look at the practical personally and social results of each.
Work.
The act of work keeps one busy, breeds skills, results in less trouble being around, fosters better company and mutual respect, teaches us to cooperate with each other, confronts us with thousands of decisions demanding the best results, and teaches us to be productive. What type of company do you think God is surrounding himself with in heaven? Loafers? Someone who is always trying to get something out of God or other inhabitants? Producers? Someone who is ready, willing and able to do something for God and the others there and elsewhere?
Productiveness.
In a parasitic societal system, some people are taught to think it is their right to live off of others. When each produces their own, it removes suspicion of others. It avoids each guarding against all, like an early farmer having to spend most of his time guarding against people and animals circling, watching, and waiting to pounce and take. It enables us to focus on creating and producing, not protecting.
Cooperation, Not Predation.
If I live under a set of rules that lets me go after what I see and like, and I fixate long enough on things my neighbor has that catch my eye, I will eventually decide to go and take some of it for myself. If I run a charity and fixate on the fact that other charities have bigger donors apparently more easily than does mine, I will become discouraged and want to quit, feel cheated or unfairly treated, and soon come to think that part of what they are getting really ought to come to my charity. If my group of any type does not like the way your group is better succeeding than mine is, then through various rationales we will come to decide to take some of it for our group. I become a predator. You then have to spend money and productive time protecting against me instead of creating and producing more. I then spend productive time and money trying to take some of yours for me, instead of creating or producing more. And in the end just it just shuffles the taken property from pocket A to pocket B, and hasn't produced anything additional for the collective societal good.
Charity is Voluntary.
An act of charity moves one closer to God. It is a voluntary decision. A choice. A choice which on its surface seems to have us diminishing our wealth or moving it away from us, but which in actuality makes us bigger and better by drawing us closer to God. We are not docile cattle. Our value to God is in choosing. He makes us first decide whether not to choose Him. If we do we find He has given us the principles He wants us to apply in making choices, and locates us in a societal context which constantly confronts us with dilemmas requires us to practice properly choosing. To the extent that government provides everything, there are (a) fewer opportunities to yourself step up to the plate, and (b) less money left for you to use to learn the lessons of charity. If you use the government to take money from others and give it to someone else, you have done nothing directly yourself. To the extent that government is socialistic, the range of opportunities to choose to perform acts of voluntary charity are reduced and large numbers of people are taught practices that keep them out of the practice of properly choosing.
Good Feelings.
A socialist or property-redistribution societal structure causes us to look at blocks of other people as takes, losers, users. Following the Tenth Commandment in our social structure avoids that. God does not seem to be trying to breed a pack of docile, lazy, parasites to laze around in heaven always wanting more and expecting Him or the others to do it for them. If He did, he would have skipped an awful lot of lessons and instructions in the Bible. He seems to want to train up people who are interested in what they can do for others, more so than what others can do for them. Socialism returns us to the law of the jungle, a war of each against all. When each was alone in the jungle so to speak, we each had to defend our person and property against the threat of all. So we organized into societies for mutual protection of our person and property among ourselves (otherwise of what use would it be to be in the group) and against outside predators and marauders “ those who take for themselves instead of producing. An example would be villages protecting against Viking or Indian raiders. Socialism moves the takers and users in amongst us and has them cleverly use our societal rules to forcibly extract it away from us in a peaceful manner.
Building Each Other Up.
Ever hear of the “pay it forward” idea? Why do people feel that need? Because of something someone has voluntarily done for them. Ever wonder why there is not much charity in socialist countries? Because it engenders the mood that “the government takes care of that” and “I haven't got enough left after taxes except to look out for myself.” It diminishes duty to ones individual, personal, fellow man. It is a miserable system breeding a miserable a population and removing millions of people from the presence of opportunities for personal growth and good will to their fellow man. A social structure the follows the Tenth Commandment makes me respect you, not disdain you, because you are my equal in producing, not taking from me. It makes me be responsible, leads to my kids respecting me, and emulating my behavior, and all of us being proud of one another.
Independence.
Keeping a social structure based the Tenth Commandment keeps us free to choose. Socialism removes large sectors of choices that otherwise have to be daily made by each of us. Not being dependent on a caretaker gives us the difficult freedom we need in order to make the decisions and choices God wants us to go though in order to learn. No sports team ever becomes great by only being put through easy times in training camp. It also gives us the wonderful variety of life to enjoy the opportunity to jump in a take a risk, fail and try again, and taste the victory of a well fought game, or race and challenge. Personal freedom of gain or loss increases the number who will make the right kind of choices, be good choosers for God, and in the end increases the number that get to be with God. It is better for us and Him.
Moral Development.
God is not interested in the morality of the state. He did not put states here. He put each of us here. He is interested in our individual morality. We form states for our purposes while we're here. States do not go to heaven, people do. Or, at least some of us do. He is training and testing each of us personally, not a collective unit. You will at the end be interviewed for admission, not the city council, not your club.
Moral growth arises from having to make personal choices to act rightly. A social structure which organizes people for the most part through controlling means inhibits their growth to higher levels of moral development. This is because it encourages only a morality of submission to its rules. But these rules are external rules of compulsion, peripheral to the person's conscience, not internalized principles of motivation. To the extent that moral decisions remain out of one's hands and are decided by another, one's moral development and growth is retarded. To rise to a higher level of moral development one must be stimulated, and the necessary stimulation is the responsibility of choice-making. Therefore, the more social, economic, and political freedom a societal structure pro vides, the greater the opportunities for the moral development of each citizen. In fact, that freedom is the sine qua non of moral development; it is necessary for the human growth of each and so an essential component of human well-being. Socialism diminishes this and therefore God prohibited it.
Thinking and Choosing.
It is only by making choices that we become valuable to God. He is raising company for Himself. And He wants good company. And good company is company which chooses to be with you according to common principles. A proper social context compels us to make choices employing all of the other principals and examples of proper choices God has provided for us. But if someone shows up and feeds, clothes, and shelters you each day, you do not have to make choices. You just have to do what they say to get what you need. The reason God's Tenth Commandment prohibits us from organizing ourselves under socialism is that it produces a sick social context which robs people of their humanity, turns them into cattle, and cheats them out of their value to God by creating a context in which they don't have to make the full range of tough choices that trains them up to be valuable to God. That is, His prescribed training regimen will yield what He wants, and is stupid for us to think we know better, build instead a training camp practicing regimen B, and offer those products to Him thinking they will be what He wants.
Conclusion.
God wants us to treat each other a certain way. Not murder for yourself or another, which of course includes not having someone murder at your behest. Not lie for yourself or another, which of course includes not having someone lie it at your behest. Not steal for yourself or another, which of course includes not having steal at your behest. And for the reasons pointed out above, not covet/take another's property for yourself or another, which of course includes not having someone do it at your behest.
"You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."
It's time for all of us to man up and get back to the Truth.
Martin C. Boire
Overly educated, overly experienced. Often right, often wrong.
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