The Ten Commandments
Jonathan Brickman

It is said that the Ten Commandments are important to the founding of the United States of America. It is said that the U.S.A. is excellent, and even good (see Matthew 19:17), and worthy of love and service (see 1 John 2:15-17), because it and its laws are based upon the Ten Commandments. I am fairly certain that most, if not all, of the readers of this document know that the original writers of the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence did have Bibles open and available while they wrote, and that they prayed often and very publicly (see Matthew 6:5). My question is not about their superficial forms: I know what their claims were. My question is: Regardless of their claims, did they or did they not actually build a nation of this world based upon the Ten Commandments?

Let us examine the Ten Commandments, one by one, and see if the U.S.A. was truly built upon them.

1. Exodus 20:2-3
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me.

The First Commandment is a law stating that no one shall have any gods except the particular One God. All other worship is to be eliminated. I suggest that the U.S.A. was built upon an exactly opposite principle, under which all worship, of anyone called "God", is to be considered equally good by the law. And onward we go:

2. Exodus 20:4-6
You shall not make a graven image for yourself, or any likeness in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth; you shall not bow to them, and you shall not serve them; for I am Jehovah your God, a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of fathers on sons, on the third and on the fourth generation, to those that hate Me; and doing kindness to thousands, to those loving Me, and to those keeping My commandments.

The Second Commandment contains two parts. The first part has been obeyed by approximately no one at all for perhaps twenty-three hundred years: it is a ban on all likenesses, meaning all sculptures, all paintings, all maps, and everything else which is a likeness of any thing in the heavens, in the earth, or in the oceans. The second part has been consistently ignored by the U.S.A. as a nation since its beginning. A few exceptional communities have banned the bowing and the servitude to various graven images characteristic of many churches and other houses of worship, but these communities were rare at the beginning, and today, there are none. There are none today, because of the violation contained within the First Commandment widely loved in the U.S.A., from its beginning.

3. Exodus 20:7
You shall not take the name of Jehovah your God in vain; for Jehovah will not leave unpunished the one who takes His name in vain.

The Third Commandment is simple: it is against this Law to take the name of the Lord in vain. This means that it is a violation of this Law to speak the name of God without meaning, and/or without holy purpose. From the beginning, the U.S.A. has constantly violated this law. The U.S.A. has constantly encouraged persons who neither believe in nor care for the One God to speak of Him and to refer to Him, in oaths of evil (see Matthew 5:33-37), in “pledges of allegiance” to a flag (see Luke 16:13), and other situations.

4. Exodus 20:8-11
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy; six days you shall labor and do all your work; and the seventh day is a sabbath to Jehovah your God; you shall not do any work, you, and your son, and your daughter, your male slave and your slave-girl, and your livestock, and your stranger who is in your gates. For in six days Jehovah made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all which is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; on account of this Jehovah blessed the sabbath day and sanctified it.

The word “sabbath” means “seventh”; the root in Hebrew is identical. It is therefore a lie, a violation of the Words of God, to state or imply that the first day of the week is the sabbath day. The U.S.A. as a nation has never incorporated this, the Fourth Commandment, at all, though smaller communities have in various different contradictory ways.

5. Exodus 20:12
Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long on the land which Jehovah your God is giving to you.

The Fifth Commandment, also, has never been seen in the law of the U.S.A. Dishonor to fathers and mothers is not part of any law of this nation. And historical behavior is quite the contrary: the founders of the U.S.A. rebelled against their fathers, the English; and they imagined themselves justified in dishonoring them. It is evil to rebel, according to Scripture. See Proverbs 17, verse 11, and also Mark, chapter 15, verse 7, both of which describe the "founding fathers" of the U.S.A. with great accuracy.

6. Exodus 20:13 You shall not murder.
7. Exodus 20:14 You shall not commit adultery.
8. Exodus 20:15 You shall not steal.
9. Exodus 20:16 You shall not testify a witness of falsehood against your neighbor.

The sixth through ninth commandments have, obviously, been placed within the law of the U.S.A. However, the U.S.A. would not have come to exist were it not for the violation of the Sixth and Eighth Commandments by the founders of the U.S.A. The U.S.A. would not have come to exist were it not for the wholesale murder of native Americans and of Englishmen, and were it not for the theft of land from the one and authority from the other. It is often claimed that the U.S.A. was "founded" upon the Ten Commandments; I suggest, rather, that it was founded upon murder and theft, and the Ten Commandments and other pleasant things used as a kind of whitewash over it all.

10. Exodus 20:17
You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male slave, or his slave-girl, or his ox, or his ass, or anything which belongs to your neighbor.

The U.S.A. has enacted some very limited law against covetousness. Covetousness is not theft, which is banned in the Eighth Commandment: covetousness is envy, desire for possessions and positions belonging to someone else. Covetousness is a thought, an evil thought, which the U.S.A. addresses only slightly, by adding certain words to a few crimes.

But the U.S.A. would not have come to exist were it not for persistent and constant covetousness. Coveting land, coveting wealth, coveting privileges, coveting evil self-righteousnesses (ranging from “the pursuit of happiness” to Prohibition), and coveting license to sin (rebellion, deism, slavery, conquest and possession of the Phillippines and other places, abortion), the founders and promulgators of the U.S.A. have always done exactly as all of the nations have done, and killed, subjugated, and/or enslaved whoever was necessary to get or achieve that which their human and therefore evil imaginations said was their due.

We should not do as the world around us is wont to do: they fight their neighbors in order to force them to respect their favorite empty symbols. We must love our neighbors, and must stop causing them to stumble (Matthew 17:27), by trying to force them into things they have no good reason to understand.

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