Let not thy worship of the lord overshadow thy responsibility to thy fellow man

Let not thy worship of the lord overshadow thy responsibility to thy fellow man.

A rather simple idea that would have saved the world uncountable numbers of lives by effectively putting an end some of the bloodier battles in mankind’s history if it had been included as a note under the Ten Commandments.

Simply put..
Follow the above commandments unless following them will have a negative impact upon your fellow man. Evaluate each possible task on an individual basis.

Benefits: The benefits of this new Commandment should be fairly obvious, but here are a few.

Bloodshed - The above commandment would remove the appeal behind one nation, one culture setting out to systematically destroy or convert-by-force another culture due to the fact that the other culture has different beliefs.
While the argument for conversion is certainly stated within the religious text, the fact that the effect of this action goes against the responsibility that one has towards one's fellow man.

Resources - Donations to the church are normally invested in maintaining the church for worship of the lord. These funds could be more effectively used helping the less fortunate.
With such a commandment, the upkeep of the church, the gold, the expansive land holdings, all would no longer be required. Doing god's work would be simply helping people, instead of murmuring prayers to the lord's greatness as a sign of a worshipper's devotion, the spirit of the lord's message would be achieved, rather than glorifying the words.

There are of course a few problems inherent with this rule, the first being the phrase "fellow man".

Definition -"Fellow Man" would have to include not only the people of all races, but also both sexes. Differences in Color, Culture and language would have be eliminated as a sign of inferiority, as would geographical position, caste status and technological means.

Evasion -The second would have to be the abuse of this commandment as a loophole. Where an individual would seek to 'write-off' his sins as acts performed for god. This is not a new problem, but could be alleviated by setting a few guidelines.
E.g. Do not commit murder because you -think- the person you plan on killing may harm another. Committing adultery in order to increase the individual's pleasure is not really a good thing.

Overall however I believe that including this would have saved a lot of trouble for mankind, it would have eliminated some of mankind’s darkest days and resulted in a much nicer place to live.

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The Author would like to thank Alcohol, lack of sleep and Christmas Day for their contributions to this Writeup.

The Opinions contained herein are not set in concrete nor are they something the author lose sleep over... ( anymore )

Hmmmm. The way I understand it, worshipping God and respecting thy fellow man are supposed to be pretty much the same thing.

And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
And the second is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Mark 12:29-31

Of course we've screwed things up big time. But that's why Christ came in the first place.

Merry Christmas!

If that commandment had been included, it would've been systematically ignored by most followers and supported only by a small minority. My justification for this cynical viewpoint? Easy, look at the full text of the second commandment:

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

Hmm, that would rule out pretty much all non-abstract art. Now, with the wide-spread proliferation of Christianity across the world, do you notice anyone complying with this commandment? The orthodox followers of Islam do (as far as I know). So, as I said, the eleventh commandment that you propose would've been found... inconvieniant, and thus ignored or reinterpreted so that it wasn't so limiting towards the senseless slaughter of unbelievers. It would be yet another noble attempt at morality shot down by reality.

Something to note the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself appears before Jesus, he just calls extra attention to it. The first mention mention of loving your neighbor as yourself appears in the book of Leviticus (Leviticus 19:17), part of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. Also the Hebrew Bible includes a lot more than just Ten Commandments. The Rabbis give the count at 613. These commandments are designed to set up a whole system of laws to live closer to God, and all 613 are important, not just the "10 commandments".

Also even if one did edit the 10 commandments, that would only effect the religions that include Moses and the 10 commandments as part of their tradition, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and then only to the degree that the 10 commandments are really considered that central to sacred law. There would still be plenty of chances for religiously inspired evil left. Almost all religions include some message of care for your fellow humanity, the question is whether it gets put into practice.

Some other life guiding instructions to be found in Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and other New Testament books include such useful informations as: How to sell your daughter into slavery; how and when to kill your neighbors; how and when to kill your own children; instructions on when to kill every male, from children to adults and married women (keeping the younger girls for yourself) after battling an enemy tribe; which races need to be cleansed from the earth and many many other fun and interesting facts about rape, muder, war and slavery. And people say the bible is boring.