Cafeteria Commandments

Last week, both the BBC and CNN, as well as other media outlets, reported that a group of Congolese rebels trying to establish a government based on the biblical ten commandments had murdered somewhere between 200 and 400 people, with some having their lips cut off to discourage their speaking ill of the group. This shortly before the group hacked to death dozens of civilians at a church near Doruma in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I can’t help wondering if the rebels who committed these crimes in the name of the ten commandments wondered whether or not they might be violating the following commandments before they took innocent lives:

• You shall not kill
• You shall not steal
• You shall have no other gods before me
• You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your god

Not that I’m an expert or anything, but it seems like hacking dozens of people to death violates at least three of the above commandments, if not all of them. What do I mean?

• You shall not kill – Self explanatory, I think.
• You shall not steal – Surely the death of a parent robs a child of much-need security in the form of clothing, food, shelter, love – just as the death of a child robs that child of its future.
• You shall have no other gods before me – When any man presumes to act in the name of god, he has in mind made a god of himself and is in fact placing himself before his god who, in the form of Jesus, surely set the example of believers as servants, not gods themselves.
• You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your god – Can there be any question that a person who murders in the name of a god who commands him not to kill has made wrongful use of that god’s name?

It amazes me that believers are so blinded by faith (which in my mind is just a prop for human ego disguised as right-thinking) as not to see the truth and horror of their own actions. What will it take for us as humans to see the light?