The Ten Commandments: Rules for Representation
From the Ten Commandments.
THE RULES FOR REPRESENTATION. THE FIRST COMMANDMENT: Exodus 20:1-3, “Then God spoke all these words, saying, ‘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'”.
#1. A RULE: Language representations are not to be used to generate false realities.
#2. The God of revelation is no rationalized god; He is ABSOLUTE CAUSATION in person. The Lord had acted in time & in the personal history of individuals. And the Almighty had chosen sides. He acted in the favor of Israel & against Egypt.
#3. The first commandment holds that ABSOLUTE CAUSATION precedes the use of language (linguistic representations).
#4. This eternal, invisible reality is the true foundation for human reason. The Ten Commandments, therefore become the starting point for right understanding.
#5. Accordingly, ABSOLUTE CAUSATION is elevated above human reasoning & the wisdom of human lived experience. Any other perception is, of necessity, a false reality.
#6. The relation between God & causation is the determinant unity; the axis of the universe & of human existence in time. It must precede human thought, speech & behavior. Any rationalized unity between “…other gods…” & causation is a manufactured, false, lying reality.
#7. False reality is constructed by false thinking & the language manifold used to generate it. The misuse of language representations is the source of false realities.
#8. The Almighty stipulates in verse two, that there is no natural explanation for Israel’s escape from Egyptian enslavement. The people of Israel were given the privilege of understanding reality from the Lord’s point of view.
#9. ABSOLUTE CAUSATION is the pre-condition for understanding & for the behavior of the Israelites. The Ten Commandments were given, among other things, to affect the phenomenon of human language.
#10. Actual reality (biblical reality/the way things are) has three parts: The invisible part, the visible part & the causal link between the two. Idolatry is founded on human rationalization of one-third of actual reality! It is irrational at best.
From the Ten Commandments.
THE RULES FOR REPRESENTATIONS. THE FIRST COMMANDMENT: SUPPLEMENT.
#1. ABSOLUTE CAUSATION changes all of the rules. The most immediate issue in human existence is not time nor the things & conditions in time.
#2. The most important factor, with which men must be principally concerned, is that the Almighty governs in the affairs of men in time.
#3. Correspondingly then, human reason is pushed downstream from ABSOLUTE CAUSATION. The people of Israel were to comprehend this truth & were to order their thought, speech & behavior relative to it.
#4. According to THE FIRST COMMANDMENT, reliance upon unaided human reason, human experience & natural explanation is unreliable.
#5. The initial commandment holds implications for the use of language & just how language is to be used to represent human experience.
#6. Human reason does not go away, but it is displaced as the starting point for understanding. In its stead, the supernatural starting point is ABSOLUTE CAUSATION.
#7. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery”. In consequence, the driving force of language could no longer be naturalism, the power of appearances, nor human lived experience. The driving force of representations was to be the word of God.
#8. All of their days, generation after generation, the people of Israel were commanded to harness human reason & experience to the determinant supernatural reality of ABSOLUTE CAUSATION.
#9. Their thought, speech & behavior were commanded to become extensions of the will of God in time. Israel was to be different than all the other nations. They were purposed to be exemplary to the nations.
#10. Surely the truth of THE FIRST COMMANDMENT has never been rescinded. Today, in the contemporary, believers are to index (link) their language always & only to a greater reality than the temporal.
#11. The people of Israel, eventually, forgot that human reason & experience tend to obscure the greater absolute reality. We cannot afford that mistake!
From the Ten Commandments.
THE LAWS OF REPRESENTATION. THE SECOND COMMANDMENT: Exodus 20:4-6, “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing loving lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments”.
#1. A RULE: Beware artificial representational fields & recognize them.
#2. The artistic creation of an “idol” is only one part of a much larger godless agenda. Which is, to will into existence a complete “false Field of Representations” along with an internal logic linking all the parts together.
#3. The false Field of Representations is used to displace & discredit the word of God; a very vast project.
#4. It works to put a loop of “manufactured explanations” & contradictory to scripture around all things; thus supplanting revealed truth & understanding.
#5. Motive: The motive for the generation of false Fields of Representations is hatred for God & hatred for His revelation. “…visiting the iniquity of the fathers on…generations of those who hate Me”, v.5.
#6. Hatred for all things eternal, supernatural & hatred for the unworldly language manifold that obstructs unfettered human control of the temporal. Marxism, evolution, naturalism, empiricism, hedonism & the worship of man himself, humanism, example just such false Fields of Representations. But the Ten Commandments rip those false Fields of “explanation” apart!
#7. False Fields have their own anti-God, anti-Bible educational processes; teaching subsequent generations false assumptions & humanistic reasoning; “…children…third…fourth generations…”, v.5.
#8. From the mountain, cut into stone tablets, comes the warning about ideological enslavement! Ancient Israel suffered repeated breeches of this commandment. Contemporary believers are not immune, unless we love God enough (“…love Me…) to keep the Ten Commandments (“…My commandment”), v.6.
From the Ten Commandments.
RULES FOR REPRESENTATIONS. THE THIRD COMMANDMENT: Exodus 20:7, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain”.
#1: A RULE: The name of God is never to be made relative to any humanistic use of it.
#2. Just such a vain use may be the human expression of ignorance, rage, carelessness, thoughtlessness, frustration or arrogance. This commandment would have to apply to the use of any undisciplined language about the Almighty.
#3. This sin is a violation of the name of God & of everything that His name represents.
#4. The name of God, at the very least, represents A SPECIAL CASE REALITY. The “Lord” does not fit on any humanistic linguistic scale of reference. He is not like His creation, He is not like men. It is routine for many human beings, when taking the name of God to separate it from its revealed content & meaning.
#5. Taking the name of God in vain DISARTICULATES HIS NAME FROM THE ACTUALITY OF GOD. Therefore, the name of God is intended to make every utterance, in which it is included, sacred & holy!
#6. One must be on guard, lest a human familiarization with the name God & its symbolism be emptied of its greater significance. ANY USE OF THE NAME OF GOD THAT MAKES HIS NAME RELATIVE TO ITS USE, IS “VAIN”.
#7. The third commandment indicates that the vain use of the name of God, in human discourse, is a discernible pattern. And that pattern of language is objectionable to the Almighty.
#8. Taking the name of the Lord in vain is a punishable violation. No language pattern is acceptable that undercuts the sovereignty of God, nor the biblical presentation of the reality of God.
#9. Human language is a shared conditionality with God. It has no natural explanation. We have this capacity because the Lord had it first. In other words, language is a supernatural capacity. It is His medium of expression.
#10. Since our language capacity is a shared phenomenon with the Creator; implicit in the third commandment is the Lord’s personal objection to the complete & strict humanization of it. Taking the name of God in vain is one result of the assumption, that men have the right to strictly humanize the use of language. That is forbidden among the people of God!
From the Ten Commandments.
RULES FOR REPRESENTATION. THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT: Exodus 20:8-11, “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy”.
#1. A LAW: All representations must begin with revelation.
#2. Remembering the Sabbath symbolizes a way of knowing.
#3: The Lord established the seven day week as a symbol. It is given to represent a way of understanding the universe of things.
#4. We may refer to this epistemology (way of knowing) as Biblical Remembrance. To “remember the sabbath” is an act of pure consciousness. Revealed meaning had been given by the Lord; to remember the sabbath, one must start with the words of God & then map that meaning on to the seventh day. In doing that, one honors the true & only source of all things.
#5. The observance of the sabbath day enwraps a revealed epistemology: Revelation must come to bear–> upon all things, situations, circumstances & states of being.
#6. The holiness of the sabbath is not achieved by not working on that day. It is accomplished by remembering its meaning.
#7. This epistemology of biblical remembrance consists of (a)an act of the will, to (b)index (c) the word of God (d)upon the universe of things.
#8. This way of understanding & knowing (epistemology) called biblical remembrance is, to the world, an immature, pre-scientific & therefore unsuitable basis for knowledge.
#9. So it has often been treated as a relic of the past & in consequence, superfluous. Ancient Israel often cast aside the Ten Commandments in favor of rationalized religion & in so doing, cast off the powers of biblical remembrance.
#10. The meaning of the Ten Commandments is surely, still in effect.
From the Ten Commandments.
THE RULES FOR REPRESENTATION. THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT: Exodus 20:12, “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you”.
#1. A RULE: All representations must locate the source of being in supernatural conditionality.
#2. Parents (a previous generation) are the most proximate material source of one’s being in time & how one came into being.
#3. Therefore, one is born indebted to something before, something causal, something prior.
#4. In consequence, father & mother & child are part of a living causal chain. Starting with God–>who caused Adam/Eve to be->in turn causing a subsequent generation–>in turn being the proximate source of the one. Each member of the chain partaking of the absolute causation of the phenomenon called BEING. That is not self-explanatory.
#5. To “Honor your father and your mother” is to honor the supernatural living causal chain of being. Being implies responsibility. One’s being in time is a supernatural gift, it is no accident & is dependent upon this living causal chain of being. Being, then, we are to understand, is conditional. Being is not rooted in nature.
#6. Our daily use of language must reflect that source of being: Supernatural Conditionality. Seeing to the factor “that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you”, requires a representational apparatus acknowledging supernatural conditionality.
#7. If that is lost, then supernatural conditionality changes or alters the terms of being! And that not in favor of God’s people. Our place in the promised land is conditional!
#8. The Ten Commandments create & maintain a universe of meaning & consequent behavior that hold us within the embrace of supernatural conditionality.
#9. This revealed truth immediately affects social liabilities like abortion, euthanasia & certain reproductive engineering, among other things. It negates Marxist/socialist perspectives on the place of the individual in society.
From the Ten Commandments.
AN INTERLUDE.
#1. The Almighty gave the Ten Commandments in order to enlarge the understanding of His chosen people; to enlighten them & the human race regarding the greater spiritual reality surrounding us all.
#2. The Bible teaches that language & the language capacity were concomitant (appearing at the same place & time) with the Creation. Language is not the product, then, of unpredictable evolutionary “accidents”.
#3. We shall employ the terms “education” & “educational” in a stipulated way. The reach & force of the biblical language manifold is given for this purpose: The Ten Commandments educate one out of the natural, worldly understandings & then, educate one into true revealed spiritual understandings.
#4. Thereby the people of God would not & could not remain compliant with & servile to worldly & pagan ways of representing human experience.
#5. The meaning of the Ten Commandments must still & entirely hold that reach & power. More than ritual, they exercise grammatical effect upon language.
#6. In the contemporary, with the absence of the controlling influence of the Ten Commandments, movements have materialized that purport that language & its uses are the gift of the state, the culture, the society.
#7. An ideology has surfaced that holds that language & meaning are no more than social constructions, devoid of any such thing called truth. According to that ideology there are only opinions.
#8. Social conditions & nature are the pivotal or axial ideas of such ideologies.
#9. The Ten Commandments were given as absolutes to provide grammatical authority over all representational phenomena.
From the Ten Commandments.
THE RULES FOR REPRESENTATION. THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT: Exodus 20:13, “You shall not murder”.
#1. A RULE: Human ideation is regulated by revelation.
#2. The case forbidding “murder” is an example of regulated ideation (forming of & use of ideas).
#3. The presupposition/assumption: This commandment presupposes that apart from such eternal regulation of representations, then, violence would overtake the human race.
#4. And the text further assumes that without an absolute & outside source of regulation, the human race would descend into categorical ruin.
#5. Murder begins in the abstract (realm of ideas, thoughts, representations) & from there it is brought to bear upon others.
#6. Murder is the removal of another person or persons by violence & for the satisfaction of the murderer’s personal interests.
#7. This commandment is not just a prohibition; it exposes & warns against unfettered human ideation.
#8. Obedience to the Ten Commandments in general, has an immediate & fully laudable effect upon anyone or any collective. IT SEPARATES THE POTENTIAL FROM THE ACTUAL!
#9. Each one of us has a potential for evil or ungodly behavior, but obeying the commandments precludes that worldliness from becoming actual in time & among men.
#10. Universal obedience, just to the Ten Commandments alone, would change historical conditions.
#11. This is precisely why unbelievers despise the very thought of yielding to the Commandments.
#12. The Almighty intends, not just to render Commandments; He intends to regulate the thought world of human beings. The inner being of representations is the causal source of human behavior. To yield to the Ten Commandments is to embrace the mind of God!
From the Ten Commandments.
THE SEVENTH COMMAND: Exodus 20:14: “You shall not commit adultery”.
#1. Marriage is a picture of the way the universe is. Husband represents the position of God; wife represents the place of time, Ephesians 5. It is a cosmology. Each human member of the marriage is part of a greater reality or construct than just the union of the two. The pre-conditions of marriage (God’s authority & personal obedience to it) stipulate a hierarchy of reality.
#2. At the top of the hierarchy is ultimate & final reality Himself, God. Below that is the realm of the marital pre-conditions. Where husband & wife, each in turn, consciously conduct their spiritual relation to God. Then there is the temporal reality of marriage between a man & a woman. Every step up or down this hierarchy of reality represents an order of magnitude.
#3. The Lord & His word builds divine priorities into the cosmology of marriage. (a)Every marital union has the priority of serving revealed truth. Marriage is an instrument of service to God, not a mere convenience nor social convention. (b)Every marital union is given the priority of consciously representing the eternal wisdom through the conduct of marriage. Therefore, it is not just relational, it is a mode of spiritual conduct in time.(c)Husband & wife are charged with the priority of conserving the marriage through time & history. (d)There is the priority of the protection & provender of the family. (e)Lower on the axis of priority are the elements of physical gratification.
#4. These priorities must not be inverted! To do so displaces the cosmological purpose of marriage & puts in its place the lowest common denominators of the flesh.
#5. This commandment establishes marriage as a vessel of spiritual priorities. It is a symbol.
#6. All language use projects a cosmology; one of God’s absolute sovereignty over man & time, or one of human will & his priorities.
From the Ten Commandments.
RULES FOR REPRESENTATIONS. THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT: Exodus 20:15, “You shall not steal”.
#1. A RULE: Revealed limitations on behavior generate the necessity of corresponding representations.
#2. Wants, desires & worldly personal motives do not provide the grounds for representation of the material universe. One’s reasoning should not elevate money, things, acquisition nor wealth above ultimate spiritual reality.
#3. No immoral representations are allowed to frame behavior toward the temporal world. Stealing something that belongs to another is forbidden.
#4. One’s use of language is to be shaped by respect for that which is off-limits, that which is forbidden. Certain ways of reasoning & their consequent behaviors, are not acceptable, not right in the sight of God. The sight of God becomes the control factor.
#5. This commandment, inherently, recognizes the legitimacy of private property. Wherein one enjoys unobstructed ownership & the disposition of private holdings.
#6. With the idea of ownership, comes a certain recognition of individualism. But the Almighty makes Himself the arbiter of the phenomenon of ownership. Ownership is the index (link) between a person & a thing (of whatever description). That index is put there by God. Ownership & possession are not the same thing. The will of God determines the difference.
#7. The eighth commandment, generalizes to the idea (truth) that things are not as causal, as some consider them to be. Karl Marx was wrong. Nothing truly rivals the causation of the God of the Ten Commandments.
#8. This commandment, in part, sets the relation between a believer & his/her neighbor. Anyone who steals, whatever, & for whatever rationalized motive, has no fear of God, has no respect for the one from whom he/she steals.
#9. Rights, ordained by God, are to be observed, for the sake of all. Political/economic systems find no relief from the eighth commandment.
From the Ten Commandments.
THE RULES FOR REPRESENTATION. THE NINTH COMMANDMENT: Exodus 20:16, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor”.
#1. A RULE: Language is not to be used to destabilize peaceful relations among others.
#2. Violations of this commandment occur regularly in American society. Some in the free press employ its negative against one individual or group without restraint. That is the world, but among believers it is not permitted, by the Almighty.
#3. False accusations are never to be made against one’s neighbor. The motive might be revenge, subterfuge or for personal gain of some sort. To bear false witness is an illicit use of language.
#4. A lie must be conceived against another & it must carry a degree of plausibility or it will immediately collapse. Among other things bearing false witness creates a cloud of public doubt about the intended target.
#5. Manufactured, spurious accusations can be difficult to defend against. Such false witness puts the victim on the defensive. How does one dispel false claims made against him/her?
#6. Bearing false witness is inherently a public act. Calculated, as it is, it is the attempt to draw other people (publicly) into the false situation. False witness is the attempted manipulation of the collective.
#7. These kinds of false language calibrations are not grounded in reality, in actuality. That is part of its potential power over the opinions of others.
#8. The object is to turn the collective against the individual & still protect the offender. It is all about sowing discord.
#9. Here, then, is language consciously used to destabilize peaceful relations among others. Words, thoughtlessly uttered or deliberately, have the power to destabilize any range of relations with others.
#10. Bearing false witness is one example among others of the larger category of DESTABILIZING LANGUAGE. The Ten Commandments provide rules for the right use of words.
#11. Destabilizing language is to be found everywhere in society. In the home, schools, professions, government, personal relations & especially in the arts (entertainment).
#12. Use of such a forbidden language manifold can effectively distort the marriage relation. Using destabilizing syntax in our own minds will erode trust in God & elevate the authority of human experience.
From the Ten Commandments.
THE RULES FOR REPRESENTATION. THE TENTH COMMANDMENT: Exodus 20:17, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor”.
#1. A RULE: Stand behind the holy wall of absolute representations.
#2. The tenth commandment prohibits THE MOTIVE OF DISPOSSESSION OF ONE’S NEIGHBOR. To dispossess another is to take from him/her or to deprive same of lands, houses, wife & other holdings belonging to him/her.
#3. The infraction of this commandment begins with ideas, thoughts, words & motives. Covetousness is a specific way of representing things owned by another. It is a form of thought about things in the world belonging to another. The sin here is not theft; it is the condition of soul.
#4. To covet what another has, is to desire to take that something away from a person or persons, to earnestly wish to deprive them of their holdings, whatever they might be.
#5. This commandment requires that one’s mind, one’s reasoning, one’s desires & one’s potential for sin be carefully controlled. Because the next step after covetousness is possible direct action toward that end.
#6. How, then, is this to be done? The answer is the Ten Commandments. Conscious obedience to them, in effect, raises a wall of absolute representations around one’s heart, soul & mind.
#7. To stand behind that wall of absolute representations generated by the Ten Commandments, is to overcome such perverted desires for the things that belong to one’s neighbor.
#8. The absolute meaning derived from the Ten Commandments has never been rescinded. The tenth commandment is somewhat different than the preceding nine.
#9. It presents a kind of summation of the importance of absolute meaning for the use of language & in consequence, for thought, speech & behavior.
#10. The Ten Commandments, being observed, exert a force of protection around the believer. Obedience to the Commandments holds us within their embrace. Behind that holy wall of absolute representations, we are safe from the world currents of distortion & lies; safe from the inner demands of the flesh.
#11. The Lord intends to shape the universe of representations, of language, of meaning. And so the Ten Commandments came down from the mountain.
About The Author
