Exodus 20:1–17
As we continue our time in Lent, with many of us marking a year in isolation due to the pandemic, our attention turns to the ten commandments in Exodus 20. While it’s easy to skip past the second verse of this section, the commandments must all be read in the light of this declaration.
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”
This setting, the God who brings people out of slavery, is the setting for what follows. These are not random and arbitrary rules, nor are they codes that provide a personal path to individual righteousness. These are commandments for those who follow the God that brings people out of the house of slavery. (And what else can prisons be described as except a house of slavery?)
Growing up, I was taught that the commandments could be bifurcated into two categories: relationship with God; and relationships with others. As I got older, and was taught better, I came to see that these are false bifurcations, and that relationship with God flows into relationship with others flows into relationship with God and on and on. Jesus expresses this when he tells the crowd that “what you do for the least of these, you do for me.”
As abolitionists, we look at these commandments, all commandments, through the lens of the God who liberates. Standing on the shoulders of James Cone, Gustavo Gutierrez, and many others who have formed liberation theology, we insist that the good news of the Gospel is the liberation of the oppressed, and how we treat others is how we treat God, who places Godself with the oppressed.
“God is taking sides with those who are voiceless and weak, and he is empowering them to know that they were not made for slavery, not made for exploitation, but was made for freedom, just like everybody else in the world,” James Cone said in an NPR interview describing Black Liberation Theology.
When we read the ten commandments, keep first the idea that these are commandments from God, the liberator.
Mitchell Atencio (he/him/his) is a discalced writer and photographer based in Washington, D.C.