Why The First Commandment is not ridiculous.
Yesterday someone wrote that we as people and culture should just get rid of the Ten Commandments - and that especially the first commandment was laughable.
For those of you who've forgotten, the first commandment reads -
"You shall have no other gods before me."
I'd been at an event all evening, and didn't have the energy to address that sort of thing past midnight - but kept thinking about it until I fell asleep. And again when I woke.
And I'd actually like to expand my thoughts on it in a post, rather than a comment that more easily gets lost. Because there's something of value to understand for anyone - whether you're simply curious about your faith, whether you struggle with your faith, or whether you'd like to have illuminated, in more everyday Danish terms, what that commandment actually - practically and pragmatically - means in our lives.
And oh yes, of course also for those who believe they don't believe in anything at all. Especially for you. 🤓😁❤
So allow me to share my thoughts - and sketch the outline of an understanding and a path. Here goes -
I understand why someone might read that commandment and think -
"Why on earth would an almighty god be so jealous that he wants to be the only one?"
But this heavily simplified and childish reading reveals more about the reader and their lack of understanding - than about the commandment. Because it's built on a fundamentally mistaken grasp of what the word "God" - in one understanding - actually covers.
"God" in this text's context is not just a heavenly figure, an old man with a beard, some supernatural entity who wants your undivided attention because he's childishly possessive and ruled by emotions.
Try instead to understand it as -
God is The Highest Principle.
It is what we place highest.
What we subordinate everything else to.
We can barely call it religion.
It's rather Life's Law itself.
Because ALL people always have something that gets first place.
And if we don't call this God, then something else takes the place.
Money. Power. Technology. Climate. Nation. Sex. Identity. The State. Ego. Or Feelings.
The first commandment is therefore not a religious straitjacket, but a deep psychological and spiritual warning -
What you place on the throne within will come to rule over you.
(Read that sentence again!)
Because what you give first place becomes your compass. It steers your choices, your relationships, your morality, your direction in life.
If it's MONEY, you risk becoming cynical and willing to sell everything - including your soul - for profit.
If it's POWER, you risk ending up in manipulation, control and oppression.
If it's THE STATE, you risk making yourself dependent on a system that can never love you back.
If it's TECHNOLOGY, you risk seeing the human as an error that can be improved or replaced.
If it's CLIMATE or IDENTITY, you risk becoming a fanatic who sacrifices people for the cause.
It's therefore important to understand - that all these things in themselves can be good and necessary - but as 'absolute principles', as what you place above everything else - and therefore as "god(s)", they are corrupting.
They are too small to carry the wholeness of life. Too one-dimensional.
That's why the first commandment says - "Don't let the partial become your all". Or. "Don't let the finite pretend to be the infinite". Because if you do, both you and the society you live in will collapse.
So it's not just Old Testament morality.
It's existence's own law -
Something always gets the throne.
The question is - What?
And therefore the first commandment is not ridiculous, but actually the most realistic of them all. It says - "Be careful what you make your God. Because you cannot live without one. You can only choose who or what it shall be. And all choices less than God will have consequences you probably won't like."
So when people today say we don't need God, we don't end up without a god. We just end up creating new gods for ourselves - which take form as ideologies, systems, the market, the state, identity and feelings. And we usually discover far too late that they are far far more tyrannical than the original commandment.
Everyone must naturally answer for themselves - but the question echoes through eternity -
What is worse - to subordinate yourself to the highest, which always contains the whole? Or to submit yourself to a one-dimensional idol that devours you and makes you blind to everything else?
That is what the first commandment is about.
....
And if you made it all the way down here - then let me share what the thinking part of me understands by God.
When I say "God", I'm not talking about an old man on a cloud. I'm speaking (in this context) about the values and principles that stand outside the reach of our intellect and small egos - which I strive to align my life with.
For me the easiest way to speak about the word God is the highest pillars in the whole -
Truth - without it everything else is deception.
Freedom - because without freedom the human dies inwardly.
Love - because nothing can stand alone without relation and mercy.
Humility - to acknowledge one's limitation and know you stand under something greater.
Faith - not blind, but courageous. The trust that life has a direction and deep meaning that is good - even when we don't see it.
Hope - the belief that light always exists, even in darkness.
Patience - the strength to wait, endure and act with calm when life demands it.
Forgiveness - the ability to release bitterness and let relationships heal.
Grace - to be able to give and receive unconditional love, without demand for return.
Faithfulness - to stand firm, to be reliable. To take and bear responsibility, even when it costs.
Justice - the principle that keeps us in place, so we don't lose ourselves in selfishness.
Wisdom - the ability to discern, understand and act rightly, when the whole is seen.
Strength - to bear the difficult, to protect and to rise again.
Health - body, soul and spirit in balance, as the fruit of a right life.
Beauty - the crown of the work. That which lifts us out of the grey and reminds us that life is holy.
These are not small ideas I've invented myself.
These are eternal principles, a thousandfold greater than myself, which I attempt to subordinate myself to. They stand highest, and I would rather fall in the attempt to live by them than trade them for idols that promise short-term gain.
... and I know what some will say when they see this list -
"... But Thomas, that there - that's not you at all!!??"
And sometimes - often - they'll be completely right. I am utterly incomplete, unfinished, and incapable of in every single moment embracing and integrating such an extensive list. We all are.
But here's my answer.
Without the list, without having defined what you place highest, without a unifying umbrella term - God - you rarely hit a single one of them.
And instead you're dragged away, as with a fishhook caught in your mouth, by whatever spirit of the age happens to get hold of you.
Therefore it's worth exploring what "God" means to you. It's worth placing it highest. And it's worth spending your life struggling and striving to come closer to this - so you might, just might, be able to embody a bit more of it.
So to tie a bow on the whole thing.
The first commandment says practically speaking in reality -
Place the highest highest.
Place what is greater than you highest.
Because if you don't, then something lesser, something corrupted, something one-dimensional - will take the throne. And it will always end up breaking you.
Therefore the first commandment is not ridiculous.
It's actually perhaps the wisest advice we've ever received.
And from a talking bush on fire at that...
It's not about religion.
It's about Order.
About living by the highest, so we don't ourselves fall into the depths.
That's precisely why the word God has such enormous power. Because it's not about a childish heavenly figure, but about what encompasses all the highest in existence. The word God points to the wholeness - that which cannot be reduced to a single value, a system or a feeling.
When we say God, we're really saying: truth, freedom, love, wisdom, humility, strength, justice, beauty... All that which individually can be misused or distorted, but which gathered under one umbrella becomes a wholeness we can orient ourselves by.
Without me wanting to interfere in what you believe. That's entirely up to you.
Something along those lines - do you recognise it?
❤️🔥🪽
