Quiz: What's the Second Commandment?
(draft) Don't cheat! Do you know it?
The Ten Commandments have a pretty commanding reputation in the Christian world.
(add a beautiful painting of a Christian parable)
They were handed to Moses on tablets at a pretty dramatic juncture. By God. There are only ten. They are Commandments, so you'd think they should be scrupulously obeyed. And you could be forgiven if you thought these would be the ten best statements of distilled wisdom about how to run a great society. At least, that's what I would hope they are, after the two millennia Christianity has relied on them.
Now to the question I asked, which you may be comforted to know very few people can answer. In my experience, fewer than one in ten can name the second Commandment.
The first is (roughly) I am your only God. You shall have no other Gods before me. More people know that one, but it's still surprising how many people can't name the #1 Commandment, the top of the countdown.
Funny enough, The Commandments aren't set in stone (extremely intentional pun): they have wiggled around a bit by denomination and over time. Number Two is one of the wiggliest, but by and large, it is No Graven Images.
Saying that always gives me pause. What the heck is that doing at number two? Graven images? Eh?
The historic explanation is that back in the day when the Commandments were dropped, most tribes were worshipping idols of different sorts, which was not going so well. No Graven Images was a way of getting them to stop. Sort of.
We both know that Judaism and Islam observe Number Two very strictly. You can walk into any temple or mosque around the world, and you will not see representational art. (where does Islams restriction come from? do they have Ten Commandments?)
Christianity, on the other hand, violates Number Two constantly, and twice on Sundays (couldn't help that one). You have to tip your hat to the time and treasure spent building and ornamenting sacred Christian structures around the world. Some of the most famous paintings and sculptures in the Western world are Christian art, from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling to tktk famous doors, and (tktk most famous Christian art?) innumerable beautiful paintings illustrating Biblical stories.
How is that not violating No Graven Images? Oh, there's some kind of metaphoric dispensation tktklink. Yeah, no.
Just take it off the list, right? There seem to have been some historic attempts to demote Number Two, but its resilience is a comment on Christianity's obstinacy.
I'm pretty secular — I'm a None tktk, though I lean very Quaker, thanks to Wilton Meeting in the early 90s — but boy, do I love Fauré's Requiem, Verdi's Requiem, Mozart's Great Mass and Rossini's Stabat Mater (here's a playlist with them all, plus a few bonuses). A lot of Christian art is amazing.
What to make of it? With it?
I can only conclude that the conservative Right's obsession with the Ten Commandments is performative. It's a theatrical attempt to say that moral behavior matters — while ignoring actual moral codes in the meantime, which is a huge topic all its own.
I am sincerely interested in what the best distilled wisdom is for running a great society. Look for that in future posts (and please join that quest by replying with your best finds here!). But I'm not starting with the Big Ten. The late Christopher Hitchens left us with this fun start.
Next time you find yourself in a discussion about putting the Ten Commandments in all our schools, quiz your conversation partner: What's the second Commandment?
This article is cross-posted on Substack here, Medium here and LinkedIn here. It's also here in my Brain.