Exodus 20: 1-3

 

From my The New American Bible, here is the first of the Ten Commandments: “The Ten Commandments: The God delivered all these commandments: I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. You shall not have other gods beside me.”

 

My response: The fabulous, wonderful miracle of a Father Sky God manifestation, Yahweh, coming down from His Holy Mountain, to give people moral commandments to live by and in accordance with, is an example of a powerful, transformative event that now seems ho-hum, commonplace and routine, but it is none of these things.

 

That it occurs informs us that God exists and that God is spiritually and morally good. God freed the Hebrews from slavery, pagan culture, and political and socioeconomic hell on earth, and now, in preparation to be worthy to find liberation and milk honey in the Promised Land, these postlapsarian sinners require a moral code so they can worship Yahweh as a moral people in Israel.

 

One cannot be spiritually good if one is not morally good, and one cannot be morally good unless one is spiritually good. We are allowed by the good deities to enter heaven, based upon our faith in the deities, especially Jesus, to receive the gift of grace removing sin from us, and based on our ethical behavior and good works.

 

Indeed, I would argue that one does not believe in the divine gift of grace, or at least one has not really opened up one’s heart to receive this gift unless one is a very ethically decent person. And it goes the other way around, if one has not willed to receive the freely offered, unearned gift of grace and salvation offered one by Jesus and the other deities, then one is limited as to how ethical one has become or can become.

 

I am a polytheist, so the monotheist command to serve only one supreme deity is not what I fully can agree to (I believe that Father Sky and Mother Earth deities are the Light Couple, but they do not mind if we worship other good, minor deities solely or in unity with worshiping the Divine Couple, the Light Couple.).

 

Nor do I think that it what Yahweh, Allah or any other Father Sky manifestation of the Supreme Ruler today intend that we obey this First Commandment literally. We should worship them. People 3,000 years ago needed a monotheistic deity to worship, but, today, as moderation in theology comes into play, we are allowed (even encouraged) by these Father Sky and Mother Earth deities to worship several deities, as long as they are good deities.

 

Here is the First Command from the Holy Bible (KJV): “And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

 

My response: This translation of the book of Exodus seems to say that thou shalt have no other gods before me in the sense that the Supreme Ruler of the universe, was the only God that exists, or is the only one worth worshiping, and that people are not to trot out and display publicly other deities to worship in front of God. This is likely the correct interpretation.

 

Another translation (my translation) would be that one can worship other, good, minor deities, but that one’s primary religious duty is to worship the Supreme deity first, but not solely.