Humility & The Ten Commandments

By Rod Dreher • June 28, 2012, 1:18 PM

You know how I get on my high horse about theological ignorance, right? Well, consider this real-life dialogue from around the dinner table the other day:

Older Person: “The churches these days, they don’t teach kids anything. I bet the young people here can’t even tell you the Ten Commandments.”

Me: “I hear you. The research bears this out.” [Turning to Young Relative] ”Can you tell me the Ten Commandments?”

Teenage Churchgoing Person: “Uhh … ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’?”

Me: “No, that’s the New Testament. But hang on, [Older Relative], do you know the Ten Commandments? I wonder if I do?”

Thus commenced a few minutes of embarrassed grasping as the grown-ups at the table — churchgoers, all — tried to list the Ten Commandments. Collectively we got only six of them — a performance that was so lousy it ought to shut me up about the march of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. I’m a big whiner about that stuff, as you know, but as I learned to my great surprise, I’m part of the problem.

That was an important moment for me as a parent. It embarrassed me, and it ought to have embarrassed me. What kind of mature Christian doesn’t know the Ten Commandments? That is so basic. But sure enough, I failed the test, and I failed it badly.

It occurred to me afterward that many churches may be falling down terribly on teaching young people the basic doctrines and creeds of the faith, but that only means that religious parents — the primary educators of their children, after all — should do what we ought to have been doing all along.

We’re going to start doing a more formal catechism of the kids in our home. Maybe Your Mr. Know-It-All Working Boy will learn something himself.

Posted in Religion. Tagged Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, Ten Commandments.

77 Responses to Humility & The Ten Commandments

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John Mark Ockerbloom says:

June 28, 2012 at 7:31 pm

Nate says:

“Proscriptions are absolute and exception-less and are therefore very important to right living. Positive duties, which are tremendously important to know, can never be given precise parameters.”

I’m not sure you can characterize the Ten Commandments as “absolute and exception-less proscriptions” though. The boundaries on many of them are fuzzy when you push on them. Non-pacifists don’t take an absolute view of the commandment against killing, for instance, and even when you read that commandment as only prohibiting “murder”, what that covers in situations like war or judicial proceedings is subject to debate. Likewise, people argue about the exact cases in which the “false witness” commandment prohibits misleading someone. (In some cases, for instance, the duty not to betray a confidence and the duty to tell the truth conflict.) And what about those graven images? There’s debate even between different branches of Christianity as to exactly what that means you shouldn’t do concerning them.

Well, at least the commandment against adultery is pretty clear-cut… or it was, until Jesus had to go complicate it in the Sermon on the Mount. What was He thinking?

The existence of tricky edge cases does not, of course, mean that the positive and negative commandments are not valuable and important to follow. Both are indispensable. And while it’s good to think carefully and prayerfully when edge cases do come up, there’s a subtle temptation to use hard-and-fast rules and boundaries not so much as a guideline for our own consciences, and for assisting others, but instead as an easy way to condemn and put ourselves above other people we think are Doing It Rong. It’s an insidious form of Pride that religious people can fall into if they’re not careful.
Mont D. Law says:

June 28, 2012 at 7:39 pm

Erin

I think you exactly correct. I only do King James, because that was all there was. I can do large parts of your list, but not all of it.

I was surprised at how many I could do, no sonnets, but large parts of soliloquies from my favorite plays. None of the American founding stuff and nothing from my own country’s founding stuff. No Pi past 1 digit. No to Newton and the distance to the sun. No ballet or Carroll.

But the rest yeah and all the Kings and Queens of England. From the stupid rhyme I don’t even know where I learned. I swear I sometime fall asleep to “Charlie, Charlie, James again. And a poem about having a shadow and three songs one about a linnet with a secret, one about a capitol ship for an ocean trip and one about footing it out together. I also know the jingles and theme songs for many 10′s of tv shows and commercials. I remember jingles that are so old the first part of the phone number is a word.

I remember my first phone number but not my current one, it is in fact in my phone.
JonF says:

June 28, 2012 at 7:40 pm

Re: What makes a god “strange”?

I don’t know beans about Hebrew, but in the Greek of the Septuagint the phrase is theoi heteroi, which is simply “other gods”.
Turmarion says:

June 28, 2012 at 7:58 pm

Erin, your post is challenging. Let’s see.

I don’t know any Shakespearean sonnets by memory, but I know John Donne’s sonnet “Death Be Not Proud”, I can almost recall all of “The Village Blacksmith” which I had to memorize in 8th grade (they still made you memorize back then) and “If” by Kipling; and I know several favorite poems by heart not because I was made to memorize them but because I wanted to (e.g. “Fire and Ice” by Frost, “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll, several of Fitzgerald’s translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, and some of the Carmina Burana in Latin and English, since I’ve made it a hobby of translating them).

I know the Preamble to the Constitution (courtesy of Schoolhouse Rock!), though I can’t quote full paragraphs from the Declaration (I know many phrases); nor do I know Patrick Henry’s speech by heart (though I’m well familiar with it) nor could I quote the entire Gettysburg Address (though I think his Second Inaugural Address is his greatest, probably the greatest speech any American president ever gave; though I don’t know it by memory, either).

As a teacher of math and physics, I know the Pythagorean Theorem well; I can tell you that pi is 3.1415926, off the top of my head; I know maybe a dozen chemical formulas (HCl, H2SO4, CO, CO2 spring to mind–sorry for the lack of subscripts); I know Newton’s Laws of Motion (Inertia, F=ma, Action/Reaction), what entropy is, and that it’s about 200,00 miles to the moon and 93 million miles to the sun.

Classical pieces: Beethoven’s 5th, 6th, and 9th, Tchaikovsky’s 6th, and his “1812 Overture” (I could list several more, but I’ll leave it at that).

Paintings: La Persistancia de la Memoria, and The Last Supper by Dalí; The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Hieronymus Bosch; The Scream, by Munch, just off the top of my head.

Finally, though I’m familiar with some of the associated music and I do know a little about modern dance (Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, etc.), I admit that I can’t describe or discuss any classical ballet.

I do agree with you that we seem to have lost a lot of general knowledge, which is really too bad; and I, too, rarely memorize phone numbers any more!
Roland de Chanson says:

June 28, 2012 at 8:02 pm

Hi Erin,

Einstein once said, noli ediscere id quod in libris inveniri possit.

Of course he most likely didn’t say it in Latin, though Latin can be looked up in a book. He had a point, though I doubt that a prodigious memory would diminish the ratiocinative abilities of the brain.

Who needs pi to 5 decimal places? Though to be safe I always calculated it as twice the arc cosine of zero with double precision floating point. But that’s enough to construe the circumference of the universe to within a cubit or two. Mr Google only knows 8 places. But he knows all the ten commandments. He knows all the other stuff you mentioned too. You don’t have to know stuff. You just have to know where to find it. This is the essence of the art of the high school term paper.

I wonder if Einstein said that in German or Yiddish? Mmm. Anyway, here’s the English since Mr. Google’s books aren’t good enough: Don’t learn by heart what you can look up in books.
Roland de Chanson says:

June 28, 2012 at 8:07 pm

JonF,

Yes, that’s true. The KJV meaining is simply “foreign” gods. I.E. those god of the non-chosen ethnicity. But I was just being a wag. Or a Talmudist.

No wonder the Mohammedans don’t allow translations of the coran. Another case of a lot of wool pulled over the eyes.
Nate says:

June 28, 2012 at 8:17 pm

John Mark Ockerbloom,
Good points! Though, I confess that besides the fifth commandment, I cannot see how the commandments admit of reasonable exceptions. Perhaps I’m not seeing something here, though.
I also think it’s interesting that you mention graven images. My list didn’t have that as one of them. It was certainly mentioned, but it wasn’t one of the ten. #1 was no other gods, #2 was don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, und so weiter. And then we had to thou shalt not covets. (I know that some lists have one covet one and then the graven image one.)
Perhaps that’s neither here nor there.

Regardless, I think I might disagree slightly with your last couple of sentences. The sin of pride, like the poor, will always be with us. That people can get Pharisaical and legalistic is no reason to rethink the wisdom of absolute prohibitions, right?

Though, as you say, they are valuable and important to follow. I guess I would underline that point.
Liam S says:

June 28, 2012 at 8:41 pm

The Orthodox use the same list as the Protestants, i.e., idolatry gets its own commandment, and there’s no distinction between coveting thy neighbour’s wife or ass.

The Greek Fathers also typically list eight deadly sins instead of eight, choosing to divide pride and vainglory. And some Byzantine writers list as many as ten sacraments.

Rote knowledge and memorisation are important, but not nearly so much as inculcating a real love of God. Fear can only get you so far. My lapsed roommate in college could rattle off the gifts of the Spirit like nobody’s business, but never, ever went to Mass. And I’ve known people who barely knew the Creed, yet practically radiated piety and Christian love.
Liam S says:

June 28, 2012 at 8:42 pm

‘…eight deadly sins instead of eight…’

That’s eight instead of seven, of course. Sorry.
Brett R. says:

June 28, 2012 at 9:24 pm

This discussion made me think of this scene in Mel Brooks’ History of the World Part I (hee hee) I guess we’re lucky there are only ten?
The Sicilian Woman says:

June 28, 2012 at 9:26 pm

Surprisingly, I remembered all 10 (though the most basic versions of #1, #3 and #10) and, and in almost the correct order.

That’s all I’m good for though, as I can’t remember the 7 deadly sins, almost none of works of mercy (was never taught them, that I remember), nor most of the gifts or any of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Sigh. Rock on, 70s catechism.
Roland de Chanson says:

June 28, 2012 at 10:16 pm

The Baltimore Catechism.

Mr. Google know where it is. Why did God make me? God made me to know Him, to love Him and to serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him in the next.

Is that right? It’s pretty damn close, I’ll bet. But, is that all there is? Then let’s keep dancing.
Peter H says:

June 28, 2012 at 10:52 pm

I can’t recite Luther’s short commentary on each of the commandments like my older relatives could (at the drop a a hat, mind you), but it didn’t take me long to fill the back of an envelope with nine of them. I knew that nine and ten are both about coveting, but I didn’t split them right.
David J. White says:

June 28, 2012 at 11:01 pm

Don’t learn by heart what you can look up in books

I guess my problem is that I simply regard knowing stuff by heart as fun, and I recite stuff to myself just for my own amusement — and to see if I still remember it — far more often than I recite it for other people.
Roland de Chanson says:

June 28, 2012 at 11:03 pm

Liam: there’s no distinction between coveting thy neighbour’s wife or ass.

Is this to be taken as a Biblical axiom? What about coveting thy neighbour’s wife’s …

Oh, never mind. Been there, done that. Adultery in the heart, etc. Believe me, adultery in the flesh is better than that of the heart.

Domine, Iesu Christe, Fili Dei, miserere mei peccatoris.

I sure as hell hope they have a sense of humour in Heaven. Otherwise, I’m toast.
Erin Manning says:

June 28, 2012 at 11:23 pm

David, I’m the same! I think that memorization sharpens one’s mind, or at least keeps it from fading altogether. I think it’s fun and rewarding to memorize things, from lots of different disciplines, and for nothing more than the satisfaction of having done so (well, and the occasional trivia game).

Of the list I posted, the things I can’t yet do from memory and must look up are: recite Newton’s three laws (though I can make a stab at their contents), cite the number of miles from the Earth to the sun, because I tend to forget it (though, in a pinch, I know that light travels at roughly 186,000 miles per second and that the sun’s light takes about eight minutes to get here, so I could do the math, though it’s going to put me off by about four million miles from the average distance), give more than some really easy chemical formula (somebody already mentioned CO2, for instance), or quote more than pieces of the historical documents I mentioned (though I’ve certainly never attempted to memorize the entire Constitution–I’m not that crazy).

I’m at 17 decimal places for pi so far, and when I had to take blood pressure medicine for the first time and was worried about mental acuity, I did some simple algebra equations in my head, declined “hic, haec, hoc” (which my high school teacher used to make us recite forward and backward), and conjugated a Greek verb in the present tense (since I never progressed very far in Ancient Greek)–and then I was able to relax and know that the medicine wasn’t making me any more forgetful or unfocused than simply being middle-aged does.

Something sort of silly: I keep trying to memorize Ohm’s law, because electricity is one of those things I think I ought to know more about given how much time we spent on it in science back in grade school and high school–but I find it puzzlingly difficult to memorize in a way that makes it make sense to me. It’s frustrating, because it *appears* to be simple, but whenever I think I’ve got a grasp of it I find it has escaped again. Maybe resistance really is futile…

Anyway, David, it’s nice to know that there are still people who like to memorize things for fun, even in the Internet age!
Kristoofus says:

June 29, 2012 at 1:07 am

Alas, I fear for you, Rob. This non-churchgoing objectively disordered homosexual came up with 9.5 of them.

I am available for tutoring.
ChrisP says:

June 29, 2012 at 1:39 am

I think the topic of how deeply we know things we think we know is really important, especially in this “information” age.

We know things “by heart” or “by rote,” and we think we know things (but really don’t) by impression or “gut feeling.”

The beginning of wisdom is learning that you don’t actually know most of what you think you know…
JonF says:

June 29, 2012 at 5:59 am

Re: some Byzantine writers list as many as ten sacraments.

We Orthodox are comfortable with any rite that transmits grace being sacramental.
MH - Secular Misanthropist says:

June 29, 2012 at 9:59 am

I didn’t try it yesterday, so I wrote them down from memory and got all 10. Except not in the right order. It took me a while to remember the idolatry one.
astorian says:

June 29, 2012 at 10:56 am

I knew all the Ten Commandments, in order, and was even capable of breaking them down in both the Catholic and Protestant manners.

But I didn’t come here to brag! Honest! I just retain trivia, whetehr religious, historical, or baseball stats-related. It has rarely done me a bit of practical good.

That said, I’m not surprised that MANY people, even those who attended religious schools and who have gone to some kind of Christian church for years, have little or no idea what their religions teach.

I’m a 51 year old cradle Catholic who went to Catholic schools for 13 years. That means I got BOTH the last of the old-school nuns (before they retired in the early-to-mid Seventies) AND the last of the young, hippie-dippie folk-singing nuns (before they all left their orders in the early-to-mid Seventies).

You’d EXPECT that Catholic kids taught by the hippie-dippie nuns would have no real idea what Catholic doctrine was. And you’d EXPECT that Catholic kids taught by lay teachers from 1975 on would have no real idea what Catholic doctrine was.

But surely Catholic kids MY age and older, the ones taught by stern old nuns… surely WE were taught all the important Catholic doctrines, right?

Uh, no. And that’s REALLY disheartening. Most of my old classmate, even those who are still faithful Catholics, are as ignorant of and apathetic about Church dogma as any modern teenager.

As I’ve said here before, old nuns were sticklers for the trappings and the minor traditions of Catholicism… they just never cared enough about the BIG subjects to spend any time on them.

The old nuns beat it into our head that it’s a mortal sin not to go to Mass on Sunday and Holy Days of Obligation. They told us over and over that we MUSTN’T eat for one hour before receiving Communion! They told us we MUST raise money to baptize pagan babies. They drilled us on the right way to dress for Mass, the right way to receive Communion (though those rules were completely changed later!), all the proper times to stand, kneel and sit during Mass.

But did they ever teach us what Communion meant? That the bread and wine were the body and blood of Christ? Nope. Hence, I’m never surprised when Catholics my age think Communion is purely a symbolic act.

It’s a sad truth that, for all practical purposes, we’re ALL Unitarians now.

3)
Richard Johnson says:

June 29, 2012 at 11:28 am

Given that for too many Christians the Decalogue is something that is to be written on the walls of public buildings or on stone monuments in the public square rather than on the walls of their own hearts, this dinner conversation should not be surprising.
Erin Manning says:

June 29, 2012 at 12:30 pm

Richard, that’s true, and it also brings to mind Christ’s encounter with the rich young man, who not only knew the commandments but lived them–and yet when Christ told him to sell everything he had, give it to the poor, and come and follow Him, he went away sad because he couldn’t part with his things.

From the perspective of any modern Christian, we see that this rich young man gave up the chance to be one of Christ’s disciples–a priceless gift!–for the sake of some fleeting materialism. How many of us are doing the same thing every single day?
J the second says:

June 29, 2012 at 1:42 pm

Given that for too many Christians the Decalogue is something that is to be written on the walls of public buildings or on stone monuments in the public square rather than on the walls of their own hearts, this dinner conversation should not be surprising.

American Christianity is to a large extent a lifestyle choice.
Gus says:

June 29, 2012 at 2:55 pm

Do students in public schools have memory work?I can still recite the first 12 lines of the Canterbury Tales in Middle English, courtesy of my public high school English Lit teacher. Oddly, the stanza of Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and the piece of Donne’s Meditation 17 that I also memorized in that class are mostly gone. I assume it was the novelty of Middle English that made the Chaucer stick. It has been 30 years of course. I doubt they still do that in my old school.
Lord Karth says:

June 29, 2012 at 6:48 pm

Gus writes: “Do students in public schools have memory work ?”

You must be kidding. Of course not.

Your servant,

Lord Karth
Sean Nelson says:

June 30, 2012 at 1:08 am

So, faithful church-going Christians can’t come up with the Ten Comandments, but they know ALL ABOUT what the Bible says about “traditional marriage” and a thousand other culture war issues? That certainly says something about what’s emanating from our pulpits these days, and what isn’t.