'Thou shall not kill'

Bienhome Muivah *

God made us to live with each other, and the very process of living requires certain rules. Without rules the process of living together would be impossible. Here is a highway over which many cars can travel safely if they obey such rules as driving on the right side, not passing except with proper clearance, maintaining a reasonable speed, etc. To break the rules make the highway unsafe for all who use it, and, instead becomes an instrument of death and destruction.

Now, life can be good or bad, it depends on how well we keep the rules as we go along. God laid down certain principles and rules to govern our relationships with each other. 'Thou shall not kill' (Ex. 20:13).

This applies to our own selves. We did not create our lives, and we do not have the authority to destroy our lives. The very fact of life carries with it an inescapable obligation to live. Frequently the question of suicide comes up. Clearly, it is a violation of God's law. Now, as to what God does about one who so breaks His law. God reserves the judgment for Himself, and surely He takes into account all the circumstances and one's mental responsibility.

Not only suicide, murder too, is prohibited. All sensible and sane people agree that we should not take a gun and shoot either ourselves or another person. But involved in this rule are the laws of health, which to violate is to kill, even though it may be by degrees. This commandment forbids exposing ourselves or others to needless physical risks such as excessive speed on the highways, unsafe working conditions, improper housing, harmful pleasures, and the like.

Also forbidden is exposing ourselves or others to needless moral or spiritual risks. We can kill by killing faith or ideals. In talking about a man who had leaped from the window of a high building, an old janitor who knew the man's life very wisely said, "When a man has lost God, there ain't nothing to do but jump". Jotham was a king who did not go to church. Being strong, he still remained morally upright.

But others, seeing his example, did not go either. The result was, "The people, however, continued their corrupt practices" (2 Chr. 27:2). Also, such things as ingratitude, neglect, cruelty, indifference can be slow but sure instruments of death.

Also forbidden are the destructive emotions of men: fear, hate, jealousy, anger, envy, anxiety, excessive grief, and the others. To counteract them requires developing within our lives the healing and life-giving emotions, such as faith, hope, laughter, creativeness and love. Love for example, is a process of giving, giving through love destroys selfishness, jealousy, which, in turn, results in the end of hate.

It is a very involved process, not nearly as simple as it state here. But take excessive grief, for another example. That is a form of self-pity, which grows out of selfishness, which is the lack of outgoing love. "Thou shall not kill" involves the entire realm of living and the reasons for life. To reverence the life of all men is God's law for us.

To live and let live is only half the meaning of "Thou shall not kill". Positively, it means to live and help live. Jesus did not find it necessary to warn us against becoming gangster and murderer, but very clearly does he condemn those who pass by on the other side of a wounded brother. The very foundation of this commandment is the fact that God values every man as He values me. One God who hath made of one blood all nations. One God who is the Father and all men who are brothers. The rule of Living means that we look at all men in the proper light.

Lorado Taft, in setting up a statue of a boy by Donatello, put some lights around it. First, he had them down on the floor shinning up on the boy's face. As he stepped back and looked at it he was shocked-the boy looked like a moron. He changed the lights. He tried every arrangement. Finally, he put them up above, until they came down on the boy's face. Then he stood back and smiled, for the boy looked like an angel.

That is a wonderful story. When you look at men from merely the earthly level, some do look like morons. Others look inferior. And it is so easy to feel, "Those people do not matter". But when we look at man, any man, through the eyes of the faith, with the light streaming down on him from God, then you see the divinity in him. All life becomes sacred, and you say, "I must not kill-I must help to live".

One of the high moments of Quo Vadis was in the arena at night. Queen Lygia had been captured in the early days of Christianity and brought to Rome. Also, her servant Ursus, a giant. Both were Christians and were to be fed to the lions. Their hour came, thousands were in the arena, and the giant Ursus was led to the centre. He kneels in prayer and intends to stay on his knees, offering no resistance. Then dashes in a wild bull, with Lygia the object of his fury.

Seeing the danger of his queen, ursus seizes the horns of the bull. It was a tremendous struggle, brute strength is pitted against the strength and heart of the giant. Slowly the feet of each sinks into the sand and then slowly the feet of the bull begins to go down. In the quietness the people hear the cracking of the bones in the bull's neck as Ursus breaks it. Gently Ursus frees his queen and carries her to safety.

That is the positive side of living. Such beasts as hate, greed, prejudice, war, ignorance, poverty, disease leave us unmoved until they endangered someone we love. It is then we exert all our strength against them. And as we come to love all men.

The day in whose clear-shining light,
All wrong shall stand revealed,
When justice shall be clothed with might,
And every hurt be healed.
Frederick L. Hosmer

A joy-filled New Year to all the readers: Live & Let Live!