The Ten
I am the Lord, thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods before Me.
II. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
III. Remember to keep holy the Lord’s Day.
IV. Honor thy father and mother.
V. Thou shalt not kill.
VI. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
VII. Thou shalt not steal
VIII. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
IX. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’ wife
X. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.
This version of the Ten Commandments was put to memory by every seven-year-old Catholic child in the 1950s and 60s.
Later on we learned by experience #9 can be a little problematic-and caused a lot of trouble-to quite a number of Catholic lesbians – “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”
George Carlin has a hilarious take on the Ten Commandments. He discusses them as a put-up marketing job by a bunch of religious hucksters to “keep people in line” and reduces them to an easy two to follow. Whenever I need a good laugh I play his mp3 monologue.
Mel Brooks did a wonderful vignette of Moses coming down the mountain with “the Fifteen,” SPLAT (as he drops one of the tablets) “no, the Ten Commandments.” I can see that happening!
“The Ten” is a new movie with a modern story attached to each old law. It will be interesting to see how some evangelical Protestant and traditional Catholic bloggers view Commandment IX in the movie, where the coveting of the wife is some other inmate’s prison “wife.”
