This Week

Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded 
under the law until faith would be revealed. 
Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, 
so that we might be justified by faith. But now that 
faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 
for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 
As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed 
yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, 
there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer 
male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 
And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, 
heirs according to the promise. 
----Galatians 3:23-29


Then God spoke all these words:

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, 
out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form 
of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, 
or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, 
for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy.

Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be 
long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. 

You shall not murder.
 
You shall not commit adultery. 

You shall not steal.
 
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 

You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not 
covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, 
or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. 

----Exodus 20:1-17, selected verses


(Huston Smith writes of four religious perspectives: atheists = there is no God, 
polytheists = there are many gods, monotheists = there is one God, 
mystics = there is only God.)

Monotheists have no trouble at all in thinking of God as richly endowed 
with the finest qualities that human beings exemplify: wisdom, tenderness, 
mercy, compassion, creativity, love, and the like, which, elevated 
in degree, add up to glory...Ethics enters as a corollary of passionate 
love when it is directed to God the creator, who "has the whole world 
in his hands." God loves the creatures she creates as if they were 
her children, so if we love God we will love them too. 
Ethics is absent from polytheism. It is inseparable from monotheism...

Ram Dass tells of walking with his guru, Neem Haroli Baba, 
in Bangladesh.  The suffering around them was so heart-wrenching 
that he could hardly stand it. His guru kept saying, 
"Can you see how perfect it is?"  As was just suggested, 
the great problem for mystics is the corollary that attends God's 
being all in all, which is that there is no evil. 
----Huston Smith, Why Religion Matters