Ten Commandments Shouldn't Be So Difficult for Us to Follow

The Boston Herald

It came out of nowhere. Without preamble, without warning, it was simply there - a long-forgotten fact that I didn't search out because I didn't know it still existed. 

That fact is this: When I was a child, I knew all the serious talk about keeping the Ten Commandments had nothing to do with me or anyone else I knew. With the certainty of innocence, I was sure human beings wouldn't break these rules because the rules were easy and if you followed them, the road to heaven was certain.

Maybe it was the murder of a 14-year-old boy that resurrected this moment from the place where all the moments of a person's life are stored. Thou shalt not kill. Who would? Why was this even a rule, I wondered so many years ago, before I read the newspapers and watched the news and knew better.

I was sitting in a pew at St. Bernadette's Church in Randolph, Massachusetts.  We were preparing for First Communion. A sister was going over each of the commandments. I was seven.

All you have to do is not do these 10 things - and you get to go to heaven and live with God forever? This was it? "This is going to be simple," I whispered to Janet Butler, who was sitting beside me.

I am the Lord thy God, do not put false gods before me.

This meant don't worship golden calves. Who would worship a golden calf?

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

This meant don't swear. No one we knew did.

Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath.

This meant go to church on Sundays. Everyone went to church on Sundays.

Honor thy father and thy mother.

This meant obey your parents. Who didn't obey her parents?

Thou shalt not kill.

"Not even if a bee stings you?" someone asked. "What about if you put a cricket in a jar with holes in the top and it dies anyway?"

"Though shalt not kill human beings," Sister explained.

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

"What's adultery?" we begged to know, but Sister skipped right over this commandment and went on to Thou shalt not steal.    And then, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

This meant don't tell lies about people. Why would you make up lies about people? Who would do something that dumb?

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.

Sister had trouble explaining what this meant and lumped it with Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods, which meant don't envy the things other people have. If they have something and you don't, you shouldn't think about stealing theirmstuff.

And that was it. The rules of life. Right and wrong etched in stone. It couldn't be simpler.

Now one more child is dead, the inconceivable sin of killing daily news. It's all daily news - killing, stealing, lying, coveting. The world imagined is so different from the world realized.

You grow up and you grow wise but you grow numb, too.

I remember walking home from church with Janet Butler - maybe it was the day we leaned the Ten Commandments, maybe it was another day - and we were talking about what we were going to tell the priest for our first confession, worried because we had nothing to confess.

Are 7-year-olds as innocent now? How can they be in a world where they can't walk home from church alone, where you have to tell them never to talk to strangers, where you have to watch them even when they're in their own front yard. Where a 14-year-old boy can't walk down a street in his neighborhood on a clear winter night.

The world changes us when we're supposed to be in the business of changing the world. And the change is so radical that everything now, even killing, is rationalized, politicized and even excused.

How did we get from the innocence of youth to this? And how do we go back to the time when those 10 rules were simple and not so difficult to keep?