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 “You shall …” –
God Respects the Free Will
of His Children
God, the truth and the light, is unchangeable. Jesus, the Christ, taught this time and again. In the Ten Commandments, which God gave to the people through the prophet Moses, we also experience the God that Jesus, the Christ, showed us, and who said nothing of all those things supposedly commanded by the “God” in the “Books of Moses.”
In the Ten Commandments, God leaves everybody free to keep His commandments, or not. God forces no one. God says: “You shall.” In the “Books of Moses,” on the other hand, the “Old Testament God” gives mandatory instructions; He does not respect His children’s free will. In the Ten Commandments, God teaches us people neither cruelty nor killing, neither the murder of human beings nor the slaughter of animals. Had God, the Eternal, commanded all the things contained in the so-called “Books of Moses,” He would have sinned against His own commandments, and He would consequently be a sinful God.
Many people might object and say that killing is permitted, only murder is not, because “You shall not kill,” according to the latest theological thought, means “You shall not murder.” (The Ten Commandments were changed accordingly in the 1985 edition of the German New Jerusalem Bible. But if this were true, Jesus would have given the wrong advice to a young man who asked him: Master, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?
Jesus told the young man in the same edition of the Bible: Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments. He then asked him, Which ones? And Jesus answered: You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Mt. 19:17-19)
Jesus said: “Keep the commandments” and admonished the young person: “You shall not kill.” Jesus did not say: “You shall not murder.” He also did not say: “You shall only kill under exceptional circumstances.”
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