Are the ethics of the Ten Commandments the ethics of genocide?

Below is an excerpt from a "Weekly Message" I enjoyed from a Unitarian serivce here in Vancouver a few weeks back, by the Rev. Mark Gallagher. His talk was entitled "Ten Better Commandments".

A very enjoyable and thought provoking viewpoint, I thought. Perhaps it's just the sort of thign that will one day come up and haunt my presedential campaign, though ...

Full test available at the link below.

http://msuuf.org/phpwcms2/download.php?86da49d8c56f64ef3fac0e5e35ba8bb9

The Ten Commandments. Everybody knows the Ten Commandments,
right? They are the foundation of law and ethics, at least in Western civilization. Everybody knows that.

Well, not everybody actually knows the Ten Commandments anymore, but that’s part of what’s wrong with our society isn’t it?

Far too many people today have lost their ethical and moral compass, and if the Ten Commandments were more a part of our public and private lives, that would surely be a step in the right direction.

According to Robert Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council: “The problems we face in America are moral problems, which cannot be solved legislatively or judicially. We need a moral code to address them. There is no better educational and moral code than the Ten Commandments.” You hear this sort of thing a fair amount these days.

In reply, liberal folk are likely to say something like, “Well, the Ten Commandments are a good moral guide, and pretty much everyone agrees with them. But they are religious so it’s not right to put them up in government buildings.”

Sometimes I feel like I have wandered into a maze of fun-house mirrors.

In the first place, when people talk about the Ten Commandments, they are seldom talking about them as found in the Bible. Many of us may think we know the Ten Commandments – we were raised Christian or Jewish, after all. We know we can’t rattle them off quickly and in order, but I’ll bet many of us think we could get all ten, given a little time. Or at least nine or eight of them.

We’d say: Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, No other gods before me, No adultery, and so forth. That is not the Ten Commandments. That is a list of key words from the Ten Commandments.

But I’ll bet there is not a single person here (and very few in most Christian churches) who really knows the whole Ten Commandments. And I am not just making a quibble about not having it memorized it word for word, as we shall see.

In the second place, the Ten Commandments are not a good moral or ethical guide. They hardly provide any moral or ethical guidance at all. Nearly everyone who would supposedly be uplifted by exposure to the Ten Commandments is actually far beyond them, morally and ethically.

And in the third place, they are in some ways morally reprehensible.

Just this week I discovered this is far more true than I had realized.